Another Three Mario Tennis Aces Characters Officially Unveiled, Available Later This Year

Alright, Diddy Kong 😃

I want Mii.

With the amount of characters been held back for free updates, and the relative lack of launch day characters compared to older entries, it really does make you wonder if they're rushing the game out too soon.

I'm buying this game, I just hope it doesn't suck

My son is going to get this from his grandparents for his birthday I think. Can’t afford this right now since I have a trip coming up next month with my daughter.

Just like Smash Bros Ultimate: Everyone's here!

Great. More data that will eat up precious microSD space rather than being on the cartridge, where it should be.

@Spike6958 Eh, at the very least the base game most definitely seems to have more content than Mario Tennis Ultra Smash... but then again, that's not saying much.

Thanks a lot for not spoiling the characters in the title! Had to click the article though to write this comment 😅 but nevermind

@Spike6958 not much 1st party output this year, so you're probably right

After playing the demo, and realizing how bad I am at the game, not sure if I’ll be purchasing anymore

Btw, what if the next new characters is from ARMS (Springman, Ribbon Girl, Ninjara, etc) ?
They can cheat by extending their arms to hit the ball from far away.

@Silly_G The whole game is around 2GB, it's not that much. Besides dataminers found most if not all of the unreleased characters in the game already.

@DockEllisD You'll probably have to unlock by playing but by the time they release, if you've played a lot, you'll have already passed the unlock point for them (much like Splatoon weapon packs requiring lv30 while you're like level 60 when they come out

This game really keeps looking great.

@Yorumi the only good thing about this, is that they are not paid content.
can't disagree that the wait is annoying though.

I’ve scrolled past the entire article and comments, purely so that I can thank you Ryan for not mentioning their names in the title, nor putting one of them in the thumbnail. I complain a lot about Nintendo Life leaking stuff on the homepage: only right I say thanks when they don’t!

@Yorumi They missed out by not calling this game "Mario Tennis Service".

That's supposed to be a play on words tennis joke and games as service, sounded good in my head.

Everybody who is against you now will be freaking out when SSBU releases with only the 28 characters shown on the menu screen at E3.

@Silly_G
Yeah, but. I don’t know. Do owners of switch have to have every game they own downloaded? I will speak for myself, but I delete completed games. And if I want to play it again. Well. I download it again.

I missed the demo due to being on holiday but have this on pre order so can't wait

Kind of annoying that this will eat up memory on the system instead of being on the cart but going for a Splatoon-style monthly update system is cool too. I love the updates in Splatoon because they always keep me coming back to the game.

Either way I’m not buying this. Maybe Mario Golf or Baseball.

I hate all these leaks... Remember when you had suprises when playing??? ... Do you think this game is worth £9 on launch??? (I got lots of money off lol)

@Yorumi Yeah me too. Online tournaments are awesome, and I like the idea of alternate costumes. But the characters themselves should be unlockable from the get go. They are all obviously in the games files. Mario Tennis is an awesome game, but to me it's not one of those games that I will keep playing forever like Mario Kart, Splatoon, and Smash.

@Yorumi: This kind of reminds me of the GBC Mario Tennis character models being discovered via Gameshark codes, (to be) in the N64 game. Coming forward to Aces, if I recall, the data mining discovery was on the pre-launch pre-load. Were the characters in the data completely, or just partially, is the thing. I agree with you, though. Regardless of completely, or partially, I would still prefer a 100% completed game, no needing updates. Updates hurt, or ruin long-tern re-sale, unless those updates can be easily collected, applied to a game.

@rjejr: I got the joke. Very good. As for games as a service, I hope not.

@Everyone_Else: Dlc is a functional way to release updates for a game. It also can completely ruin the ability to sell the game later, once the servers providing the updates are gone. I prefer games that are 100% complete, and able to be sold later, as a complete game, should I choose to sell later.

Based on the Treehouse, and footage I've seen so far, I will probably get this eventually. To date, my favorite Mario Tennis is the N64/GBC combo. Too bad the custom character/game-transfer features were absent from Power Tennis(NGC)/Power Tour(GBA).

@rjejr No joke... I swear I heard Sakurai say that the opening roster for SSBU is like 12 characters and the rest unlock... he said something about wanting to keep it interesting.

I think the game starts with the original 12 characters from SSB64.

@Nincompoop Except they actually put Waluigi in this game.

Pretty sure they're just doing this to encourage players to play tournaments online. It's a classic wacky Nintendo move, but it makes sense.

Besides, Chain Chomp is unlocked at the get go. Do you really need any other character?

Still disappointing that Waluigi is not in Super Smash Bros. Definitive Edition. This character became a fan-favourite in Mario Tennis and Mario Power Tennis, the latter has an epic introduction.

@Yorumi I do think most of the tennis stuff will already be on the cart but if there are SSBU characters to come later hopefully they are smart enough to not have them on there and have people actually download the data. But we'll see, who knows, maybe all 66 will be on the cart and unlockable at your leisure. As much as I hate paying for stuff and then having to play to unlock it - AC:aF is the worst game ever - that's kind of the way SSB has always worked - a new challenger approaches - so I'm not going to fault them for that.

I will fault them if they screw up SSBU like they did SSB4U. I never got to see that screen or unlock a new character b/c even though my kids and I each had their own account on Wii U once 1 account unlocked them we all had them unlocked. Same for the side mission challenges and stuff. We each had our own save file in our own account but it was as if we were all sharing one. That was inexcusable. If SSBU has the same issue I may need a family boycott out of protest.

@MH4 Yeah, but I wish Nintendo adds Solid Snake in this game. Can't wait to use stealth in a Tennis game, opponents will never see me coming.

@Nincompoop Maybe they should just throw out all the Mario crud and replace the MTA roster with the SSBU roster. Then see what happens.

Inkling can swim across the net, playing against herself.

Bayonetta has tennis rackets built into her heels and holds two in her hands.

Villager keeps pocketing the ball.

Ice Climbers count as one player in both singles and doubles, but when Nana either gets tired or her racket breaks, Popo’s in trouble.

Pichu keeps hitting himself with the racket.

Daisy, Dark Pit, and Lucina all have the same animations, tennis outfits, and voice clips as Peach, Pit, and Marth (respectively).

And Waluigi is crying on the sidelines because not only was he not invited to Smash Bros Ultimate, the porcelain-nosed jerks who actually are in that game stole the one thing he loves most from him and told him he couldn’t play.

@holygeez03 "I swear I heard Sakurai say that the opening roster for SSBU is like 12 characters"

I heard that to, it was a graphic video in the E3 ND. I think what he meant though was they would unlock like they always do in SSB - beat a level, see "A New Challenger Approaches!" and fight it to unlock that. I'm ok w/ that, gives people something to do. They certainly won't release the game w/ only 12 characters though and add 2 every 3 months like they are doing with Kirby Star Allies. I could see them releasing the game w/ 34 characters, 12 to start, unlock the rest as you play, add 2 more every other week or so. Not exact numbers but something like that. Wether they will already be on the disc or we'll have to download them I dont' know.

But it's always like this with Ntineod, they answer 2 questions but it leaves us with 3 more. There will be another ND in September that will tell us more, and a Mini SSBU ND in November to tell us more, unless the ND in September tells us it's been delayed into 2019. I'm still mad about the 2 SSBB delays.

Yeah... I think all 66 characters will be available to unlock immediately within the game... but it sounds like it will require a LOT of unlocking, which is a bit annoying.

If any of the characters shown are timed releases... that will be VERY bad for the competitive community!

@Yorumi "A fighter in smash is WAY more important"

I think about that too, all fighters should be there day 1 to make it even. But then I think - do ANY fighters release like that these days? DBFz and DBXV2 have season passes w/ new fighters releasing all the time. DBXV2 had nto 1 but 2 season passes w/ new fighters in each. I'm assuming those 2 Injustice DC games did the same. Not sure about Marvel v Capcom or Mortal Kombat. From all the backlash I'm guessing SFV was missing a fighter or 2 at release as well.

So as nice as it would be to get all fighters at release, that doesn't seem to be the industry standard these days. Will be interesting to see how DoA5 and SC6 release. (I may have those numbers backwards.)

So lets ujst say anything is possible, it's all on the table until we hear otherwise. Remember "no planned DLC for SSB4U"?

@Yorumi I can't speak for everyone but for me the frequent updates in splatoon 1 and 2 were what made me come back over and over. So at least for me the drip feed method worked pretty well and it was the reason i bought arms. But i see why people could have a problem with it.

More DLC? Uuuugh, please don't make the game feel as bare bones as Splatoon 2 was for the sake of it.

As long as Boo is back (not King Boo, just Boo will do. It's all about tricky style )

@Yorumi I don't see why you're complaining, it's not like Nintendo is making you pay even more money for these characters, sure you technically pay for them when the game comes out but they've been doing something similar to this with Splatoon and everyone was fine with it so what's the problem here?
If you want bad, try a game that has content on the disk/cartridge that's still being locked behind a paywall, now that's something to complain about.

@Spike6958 Or if they realized the slow trickle of hidden characters for Kirby didn't excite people that much sales wise, and "show their cards" right now as far as a full roster goes, is the smarter idea. I doubt this game is that rushed. Looks like it's built off of or at least modeled off of the WiiU Smash Tennis game. Slow trickle news is the game they wanna play now - Reggie said as much when responding to the dropping stock prices.

@Paraka Splatoon2 didn't feel bare bones....well, the amount of maps that were in the online rotation were lacking in number and got super old, but between Salmon Run, the customizations, story mode and online competition it didn't feel bare bones to me. Splatoon1 did tho!

@MasterWario Yeah, I'm definitely going to be playing with Chain Chomp.

@Spike6958 i think its a gimmick to keep people coming back to the game rather then a rushing problem, which doesnt really make sense to me because this is the kind of game your meant to come back to alot because its a multiplayer heavy game unlike say odyssey which is singleplayer heavy game

@Dang69 - I played the first 2 months of Splatoon 2 offline, it feels pretty barren. I can only imagine how someone would feel buying that off the cuff without considering a downloaded update. I cannot suggest a 60 dollar game that scarce.

@Paraka Yes I would agree with you in that case. But, typically and they aren't hiding it, you are buying that game for the online portion. That IS THE MAIN GAME. But I thought the story was super boring and dry and really easy with random high difficulty spikes. I guess if a parent were to pick it up AFTER Sept and not know you needed a subscription to Nintendo Online...but I don't know how many people pick up a $60 game off the cuff without taking a second to look it up on their phone if they know nothing about it.

@Yorumi I think Nintendo does these delayed content releases to keep people excited for aspects of the game. Lord knows they're gonna have to milk every release from this year and last to fill out the shcedule now that we lost Yoshi and ESPECIALLY Fire Emblem. I'm mad about FE being promised 2018 in January of 2017 they pry pulled a "whoopppps such and such game is taking too long to polish off, let's pull people from Intelligent Systems." That's why XBC2 was so patchy and buggy for so long. Lost 3/4s of their crew to Zelda.

Why does Nintendo think we want to play as lame koopas and their variants in their various sports and party games? Those character slots should go to much more interesting choices (and, no, that does not include baby or metal characters, either) rather than being wasted on generic mooks.

It's why "Mario Kart: Double Dash" actually has a better roster than "Mario Kart 8," as while having much fewer choices, almost (still has those lame koopas) every slot went to an interesting character and wasn't bogged down by endless lame variations, and Petey Piranha still hasn't made his return to Mario Kart since then.

Birdo! Now if we can only get Petey Piranha...

@Dang69 - Its not entirely out of the ordinary and skim through news, see it needs online updates, and still assume it just means the new content while expecting something meaty offline due to various reasons why one wouldn't have online support. I mean, back in my college days I lived in a pretty totalitarian situation that I went without internet due to their personal demands of me covering half a bill for 5 people. Why? Cause my job paid well enough and everyone else chose to be a group working at some coffee shop.

This doesn't happen to everyone, but some may look to save money, stick it to the man or just be a more in control parent. But the average consumer may not grasp the brevity of how MUCH this content adds when downloaded.

Then you got people like me, who looks for a more timeless investment with physical releases and also weigh their potential long after the console is no supported.

It's a shame that the extent of Nintendo's imagination for this game's roster is random Mario enemies that have been neglected in playable roles. I can think of a dozen Mario characters who would feel more exciting to control.

@DockEllisD yeah mate, I completely agree. One of the biggest let downs for me about Mario kart 8. There's something exciting about working through a cup to see what tracks get unlocked next like with the wii u version did. 8 on switch unlocked everything from the off and I feel like it was a mistake. I want something to work towards in games like this.

@Yorumi I understand where you are coming from, personally I would prefer it if they released the content right away rather than making us wait but I also feel this sort of thing isn't worth complaining over. Sure it does suck abit that we have to wait but at the same time it's not like it's costing us a penny. Also, it's kinda wrong to say "They are taking away content", you never had it to begin with, if you had it in the game and then Nintendo removed it they would be taking it away from you but you can't have taken away what you never had to begin with.

@Paraka Maybe it should have a little blurb on the cover