What do tennis greats Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi have in common with Mario? Well, they all have at least one tennis video game with their name in the title.
Mario Tennis was originally released for the Nintendo 64 on August 28, 2000 in the U.S. The game was developed by Camelot and published by Nintendo, and received an ESRB rating of "Everyone" with no content listed for gamers and parents to be aware of.
The game was re-released on the Virtual Console in the U.S. on June 28, 2010 and cost 1,000 Nintendo Points, or $10, to download. The game features 16 different Nintendo characters, and marked the first Nintendo game that Waluigi appeared in.
How many hours have U.S. Wii owners spent serving up aces in Mario Tennis on the Virtual Console? Let's take a look!
The Brew
Mario Tennis has approximately 8,298 U.S. Wii owners that have reported game-play data through the Nintendo Channel, since the game released in 2010. The game's average play-time per day/session is just 51 Minutes.
The game has a "professional" review score average of 89.97%, based on 15 reviews from GameRankings.com. The reviews appear to all be based on the original version, and not the Virtual Console version. When searching Amazon.com for the original version it did show up and it has a customer review score average of 93.55%, based on 121 customer reviews.
Mario Tennis' U.S. Virtual Console release has made Nintendo about $82,980 before taxes, just based on the number of players that have reported data and the game's $10 price point.
Caffeinated Thoughts
While I do not own any of the Mario Tennis games, I used to enjoy playing tennis in real life quite often when I was younger. While I used to enjoy tennis, I would now probably pass out within 5 minutes of hitting a court today!
A tennis game in real life can last between 2-5 hours, with the average 5 set game lasting about 3.5 hours, so I think it's interesting that the average play-time per day/session reported is under an hour for Mario Tennis, sitting at 51 minutes.
If you have never seen any footage of Mario Tennis, here is a video of the intro video for the game:
Questions
Did any of you play the original Mario Tennis on the N64, and/or the Virtual Console re-release? If so, where would you rank it among the other Mario Tennis games if you have played them?
If you have a 3DS, and purchased the recently released Mario Tennis Open, is that a game you would recommend to other 3DS owners (linking to your own reviews in the comments is okay)?
Also, do any of you perhaps play tennis in real life, or used to play like I did?
If you are interesting in purchasing Mario Tennis on the Virtual Console, or the new 3DS Mario Tennis Open, you can see links for a Wii Points card (notice, it is cheaper in stores I believe!) and the game on Amazon.com below:
