Mario's Tennis

Mario's Tennis was bundled directly with the console in North America, so for the vast majority of Virtual Boy owners it was their very first encounter with the red stereoscopic display. Nintendo chose wisely: tennis is a sport where the player constantly judges the distance of a flying ball, and that's exactly where the new hardware was supposed to promise an edge over a flat screen. The view is from behind the character, the court stretches into the distance, and the ball really does appear as an object flying through space rather than a sprite changing size. After just a few rallies, you stop noticing the effect as a trick and start using it, which is the best endorsement a tech-demo game could get.

Gameplay-wise, this is straightforward arcade tennis without unnecessary extras. You pick from a roster of familiar faces from Mario's world, and each character has a differently balanced movement speed and shot power, so there's a noticeable difference between nimble and powerful players. Singles and doubles are both available, along with a tournament mode that gradually ramps up the opponent AI. Controls rest on a simple pair of shots, timing, and above all correct positioning, since opponents flawlessly punish short balls. The sound design is stubbornly sparse, which makes the characters' vocal cues and the sound of a hit stand out all the more, keeping the rhythm of the whole rally.

Contemporary reviews praised the game as the cleanest demonstration of what the Virtual Boy could do, while also noting it was a one-afternoon title that alone wouldn't convince anyone to buy the console. That turned out to be an accurate prediction. Today Mario's Tennis is interesting mainly as a historical document: it's the first tennis game to carry the Mario name, a distant ancestor of the later Mario Tennis series, and also proof that the stereoscopic image genuinely works. Playing a few sets is still enjoyable, you just can't spend more than about fifteen minutes at a stretch on it, which is incidentally exactly what Nintendo itself recommended in the manual.