New Mario Tennis Aces Trailer Shows off Adventure Mode

Tennis meets RPG in the newest trailer for Mario Tennis Aces, and it looks surprisingly refreshing. The trailer opens with Luigi getting sucked into a nether-dimension while extra evil versions of Wario and Waluigi taunt Mario as his brother gets taken away. There is even a big baddie called the Legendary Racket. All is not what it seems to be on the tennis court!

What follows is surprisingly unexpected, as the trailer quickly reveals that Mario Tennis Aces’ adventure mode seems to function as a quasi-classical RPG. Mario traverses a world map a la Super Mario RPG, and as Mario traverses this map, he encounters mini-games that are all seemingly fun spins on the already arcade-style gameplay of the Mario Tennis series. Boss battles in the guise of more normalized tennis matches are present, as well as a leveling system. Mario can even equip new rackets (and hopefully gear) that will alter his stats. If this trailer is any inclination as to what to expect from the Mario Tennis Aces adventure mode experience, then Nintendo might just have something extra special on their hands.

Excitement aside, the Mario sports games have done this single-player style before, to an extent. Mario Superstar Baseball for the Nintendo Gamecube had a similarly laid out single-player mode that felt like a colossal afterthought, but Nintendo seems more confident in the malleability of their franchises than ever before. Hopefully, that will lead to an Mario Tennis game that is worthy of the title, because that last one missed one too many serves.

Check out the gameplay trailer for the Mario Tennis Aces Adventure Mode below.