Mario Tennis Aces devs on the game’s mechanics, story mode, how new characters were decided, name, more

Illustrating Characters through Movement – He Who Controls his Time Controls the Match

So, about the live commentary that happens during Tournament Mode… Was that added to make the mode more involved?

Hiroyuki: We were definitely trying to convey an image similar to Pro Wrestling. During development – particularly from around February to March of last year – we were following Pro Wrestling pretty closely.

Shugo: We thought it’d be great if we could successfully mimic Mr. Furutachi Ichiro’s*2 commentary – it was something we crammed into the game at the last minute, essentially.

I see, I see.

Shugo: Boosting the competitive spirit can be difficult depending on what type of game you’re making, and it can be equally as difficult for the people watching to follow what’s going on. Tennis is relatively easy to understand though, I think; the game’s speed, how the match unfolds, as well as the players’ strategies all make for an interesting game.

Hiroyuki: It goes without saying that both Nintendo and those of us working on the game at Camelot were fixated on even the game’s smallest details. For instance, when the player performs a Zone Shot, it feels like everything slows down, right? Yet when your opponent performs one it feels like it happens in the blink of an eye! We felt that that difference in particular was something that a player could feel when actually playing a sport.

Shugo: Yeah, there can definitely be moments like that in a real tennis match, can’t there? Like when Kei Nishikori*3 slackens his body to perform a Down the Line – it feels like time just stops completely!

Aiming too far in Zone Shot could earn you an “out,” though.

Hiroyuki: Right, right.

Shugo: With each Mario Tennis title our goal has been to broaden the scope of the game; yet despite that, there hasn’t been an “out” mechanic yet, so we added that in for this title. How could we not, it’s a fundamental part of real tennis! If you could perform a body shot or a shot down one side of the court, wouldn’t it be interesting to include something like an “out” mechanic? It’s possible to feign a serve and then immediately hit the ball after, too! Controlling how you use your time like that can really deepen the gameplay, I think.

Creating a Character through Movement

Each character’s Special Shot is completely new, right?

Hiroyuki: In Aces, a character’s Special Shot isn’t accompanied by any extra effects, so we made sure to make the moves themselves as interesting-looking as possible. In order to accomplish that, I met with each staff member one-on-one to get their thoughts on how to go about that.

Shugo: Each character’s Special Shot and Trick Shot is based on a theme, so we drew up some rough drafts based around those. It took about two to three months of in-house meetings and meetings with Nintendo to come up with a concrete goal.

Izuno: For this title, we wanted to completely change up the Mario characters’ motions; we had a variety of requests for Camelot! We didn’t want to work with any preconceived notions of these characters – we even asked to have Mario wear some cool-looking tennis wear instead of his traditional overalls! In that same vein of thought, the characters’ super moves had to be unique, too.

Hiroyuki: Having all of the characters express themselves through their movements was of incredible importance to us. It was a pretty tough challenge for us, I think.

Whose Special Shot did you end up making first?

Hiroyuki: Mario’s – his was the first shot that I felt like I knew what I wanted to do.

Well, did you have any Special Shots that left an impression on you as you were making them?

Shugo: If you ask anybody at Camelot, then it’d probably be Waluigi’s. (laughs) He looks pretty stylish with a rose!

It was Camelot that created Waluigi, after all.

Shugo: That Waluigi sure is a wild one, huh. While we weren’t necessarily free to have him do whatever we wanted, it sure felt like we could a lot with him. (laughs)

Hiroyuki: We also put a lot of work into Wario; we have a lot of emotional attachment to him, despite him not being our character. (laughs) We pretty much arbitrarily made them a pair in the first game. Contrarily, though, it was pretty troubling trying to come up with Special Shots for some of the more dignified characters.

Shugo: I like Peach’s Special Shot though, it almost reminds me of rhythmic gymnastics!

Luigi’s Special Shot is pretty imposing too!

Shugo: For the more human characters we made them as if they’ve trained to use those kinds of techniques, so that’s why they probably seem more imposing.

Hiroyuki: Every character’s movement ended up looking good. Each of them had a lot of potential moves that we had to narrow down. And in the end, the designs and the graphics worked in tandem to produce a lot of interesting characters.

New Additions to the Cast: The Iron Ball-Wielding Spike and the Unfeeling (?) Chain Chomp!

So, why did you choose Spike and Chain Chomp to join the Mario Tennis crew?

Izuno: Every time we’ve considered adding new characters, Spike was generally among them.

Really? Spike?

Hiroyuki: Somebody that likes Spike was there at the time… Probably. (laughs)

And what about Chain Chomp?

Shugo: Nintendo actually requested that! Though it left us thinking, “how on earth is he going to hold a racket!?” I remember saying “he’s always attached to a post or locked in a cage! How is he going to play tennis?” (laughs)

Izuno: We chose him because it’s hard to image him playing – he’d be a complete surprise!

Oh, I would’ve thought it was Camelot’s idea!

Shugo: Is it because we’re always putting out weird suggestions?

(all laugh)

Shugo: It was actually because he’s just a popular Nintendo character; in making him though, we were told that he “doesn’t have any feelings.” I said “what!? He has a voice but no human emotions!?”

Izuno: Well, from the start Chain Chomp has only made one sound.

Shugo: Up until then we’d been working with characters that expressed themselves largely through their voices; Chain Chomp has those emotions in check, I suppose.

Izuno: When it came to making Chain Chomp, we really focused on the minute details. When other characters are waiting to return a shot they’re always facing forward, but Chain Chomp doesn’t really care about winning or losing so he’s usually looking off to the side.

But of course! By the way, whenever Spike serves, is he holding the ball in his mouth?

Shugo: Any Spike fan would know that he spits iron balls from his mouth; that’s where that comes from.

Izuno: That’s right! We went to Camelot and asked them to have him store his ball in his mouth. (laughs)

Story Mode’s Setting is Based on Hawaiian Motifs!?

So aside from the story itself, Story Mode also offers a host of different kinds of stages, right?

Hiroyuki: Right; there are even boss battles! Some of the mechanics in those fights are pretty out there compared to a normal tennis match.

Izuno: We were experimenting and working with some gimmicks for stages before we even started writing the story, actually.

Shugo: There were a lot of ideas for stages.

Hiroyuki: Yeah, for instance, we had a stage where characters would be walking around a train station, right? There were a lot of gimmicks like that that didn’t really… bring anything to the gameplay itself. We wanted to make something that made returning the ball to a character actually fun. There were a variety of mechanics that we created independently from each other; everything felt separate.

Izuno: There was also the question of where the game would take place. There was already a “Tennis Island” concept, so I said, “why not develop the story off of that?”

So, you just wove the story together out of pre-existing elements, then?

Hiroyuki: Yes – you can’t really build a proper story out of nothing. After we could sufficiently picture the world, we could start building the story off of that and applying existing concepts. There were things that worked that we kept, and things that didn’t that we ended up dropping; all in all, we used about 60% of the ideas that we had come up with. Of course, we came up with new ideas afterwards as well.

Izuno: That was also the point at which we started designing the island itself.

Shugo: The idea of the game taking place on an island had been floating around for a while: a place where a lot happens, but none of it is really mysterious, because that’s just how fun the game’s world is! In order to convey that kind of image to Nintendo, I asked the people in charge of graphics to whip something up, and they told me they couldn’t really do anything because they didn’t know what was necessary for the story and what wasn’t. My response was just “well… we have to have something to show them, so make it.” We continued like that for quite a while.

Izuno: There were already stages centered around themes like “Desert” and “Volcano,” so they had to put something together based around that, at least. I was a little surprised to see that it had started looking a bit like Hawaii at the time!

Hiroyuki: In the first rough draft, it looked like a lot of smaller islands making up an archipelago, but that didn’t seem right – the climate wasn’t consistent across them.

Izuno: An island like Hawaii has volcanoes and snow-capped mountains, though; hearing about that, I thought “I see!” From there, we spent some time sketching some things up on a whiteboard together – “put this here, turn that around,” etc. – and eventually decided to go with what we had come up with! That must’ve happened around last summer, I think.

Shugo: Special Shot and Trick Shot animations got more and more intricate, and the deadline was approaching pretty quickly… The graphics department must’ve been feeling the pressure.

Hiroyuki: There wouldn’t be enough time to translate everything, too, so we had to cut the story off where it was.

There’s also a boat that moves throughout the map, the sound design for that section in particular is really good.

Hiroyuki: And that would be thanks to his efforts!

(Masaaki Uno – who is responsible for directing Camelot’s sound department – enters)

Uno: I went in expecting to make sounds for a tennis game, but I was asked for sounds like “a treasure chest opening” or “an iron door opening.” I caught myself wondering, “what kind of game are we even making?!” at one point.

(all laugh)

Hiroyuki: The sounds of footsteps, too.

Uno: That too. There are all kinds of tennis courts, but sand, tall grass, soil, wood planking… “Why am I making all of this!?” I thought; I really was surprised!