Camelot speaks about Mario Tennis Open’s glaring omission
Camelot, developers of the rather revered Mario sports titles have come out and announced that Mario Tennis Open for the 3DS will not have a roleplaying mode, despite the series tradition of having one in every game. In an interview with Nintendo Power, one half of Camelot’s founders, Hiroyuki Takahashi, has spoken out regarding the team’s decision.
Takahashi has justified that there is no mode in the game because Camelot are going for a more “console-quality” experience, including features such as online play and downloadable match play. The biggest reason though? You might want to sit down for this (if you’re not already). The inclusion of Miis!
[quote]Another reason is that the game’s cast includes Mii characters in addition to characters from the Mario family, which are difficult to work into an [RPG] scenario. It didn’t feel right to have already-existent Mii characters appear in an original storyline. But there are RPG-like elements in the form of costumes. I hope people will enjoy collecting the various costumes to customise their own characters and expand their abilities.[/quote]
Now we know why he’s so happy
Considering Camelot’s pedigree, which includes the reknowned Golden Sun series, it seems a bit flaky to assume that couldn’t have made it work somehow, but what can you do?
Mario Tennis Open will launch for the Nintendo 3DS in Australia on May 24th.
I’m surprised they talked about it at all…
Nope, still not satisfied. They took out the one major feature that makes the handheld Mario Sports games so memorable. They’ve lost a customer here 🙁
I’ll still buy it, but the given reason for leaving out the RPG elements does seem a bit flaky.
The heck is “downloadable match play”, though?
Im furious that they left it out! Best part of the game and it is far from hard to include a mii i the storyline, following the last set of rpg experiences on the hand-helds, which to this day i still have and play, would be simple and quirky. A pre-determined doubles partner could be selected depending on what gender your mii is and blamo YOU’RE in the story!!
grrr….
still byung it but so much grrrr!
Seems silly. I would’ve thought Mii’s would’ve made it BETTER to have an RPG mode. You play as your Mii, build up its stats and take it online. Still conflicted about whether I’m going to buy this now.