This Month In Retro August 2022

Hello all and welcome to This Month in Retro! Today, I am taking you back to August 2000

Western Releases

This month had several bigger hits on the western side! We'll be going over the most succesful ones in a bit, although the winner is probably obvious since... well, the plumber himself released another game this month. It's not that easy to overcome the man, the legend, the... tennis star?

Game
Mario Tennis (Nintendo 64)


Release dates	JP: July 21, 2000
	NA: August 28, 2000
	PAL: November 3, 2000
Sales	3,500,000
Average score	87% (GameRankings), 91% (Metacritic)

The second game in the Mario Tennis series, but commonly seen as the first since Nintendo wants us to ignore the Virtual Boy ever existed, Mario and friends duke it out with enemies in a competition of tennis. If karting or golf doesn't work, tennis is your next best friend after all! But as it always goes with sports and Mario, the games become beloved by many people due to their more simple- and accessible approach that make the games more easy to understand for people not familiar with the rules of the original sport. The same applies here, making all shots compatible with just two buttons, but how those buttons are used results in different effects. Like always, Mario took the world by storm and critics absolutely loved the game--GameSpot even going as far as having it a runner-up for the "Best Nintendo 64 Game" award. The fans are generally in agreement here, making it a strong "start" to a new sub-franchise that is still going on to this day. But... we all know that everything regarding the gameplay is irrelevant. The true only reason this game did so well is because it introduced WALUIGI LET'S GOOOOOOOO!!!! The game could have even scored a 10 and "Best Game of all Time" because Camelot asked Miyamoto to give Wario and Waluigi girlfriends for doubles since their good counterparts had them in Peach and Daisy, but he rejected the idea. What a shame.

Now, while I am slightly familiar with the Mario Tennis games... I'm probably going to butcher describing this achievement set since I have no idea what rings are. Please don't hate me. I asked around in the Discord and user Delmaru told me the rings achievements are for side modes where you have to hit the ball through rings multiple times, and upon doing so successfully, the difficulty is cleared. Aside from that, we also have achievements for the cups and playing as various characters. It sounds like solid set, but multiple people in the comments have complained about bugged achievements so this is something to keep in mind.

But aha, I have baited you! I said that nothing could compete against the big plumber himself, but that's not entirely true! Although that is going to vary depending on who you ask.