Are imported characters from the GBC version of the game allowed? I'm guessing no since it requires you to have the ability to transfer data from a GBC version to N64, but want to be sure.
To anyone else who may come across this thread in the future, the answer is yes, they are legal.
They seem to have pretty big potential. I'm not sure about singles as I'm currently running doubles, but it seems that decently-leveled transfer characters don't suffer some of the same plights as your CPU partner/your player character suffer. For example, many times in a doubles run your partner doesn't "put away" a very easy overhead, but the chance that a transfer pak character does this with a decent power stat is significantly lower. Additionally, you can have transfer pak characters with a high power stat and, as a result, generally hit the ball harder than you should be able to in a standard tournament cups run with 'unstarred' characters (e.g. I can serve at 120 MPH with pak characters, and additionally 'starring' doesn't apply to pak characters, they just are what stats they are and always have the option to pick between tournament cups and star cups at the selection screen following when you select them as a character).
It's been so long since I messed about with them but I just don't even see a maxed out character from what I remember stand up to Baby Mario.
As much as I don't care about them being legal either due to that, I have to be honest if it was ever to be found that we could make the GBC characters the highest tier I'd be more leaning towards them being banned. The last thing a game like this needs would be another wall for accessibility to run it with the lack of recent activity as it is.
It probably will never matter as I've said, so maybe something that needs more extensive testing to make sure.
I want to add some information regarding the GBC characters, Alex, Harry, Nina and Kate as I refer to them with their default names, it is indeed possible to max their stats out and when done correctly, they can easily outperform any non-Star character in the game, and even be on par with Star characters in every category: Tricky, Power, Technique and Speed.
First, your starter character which can be Alex or Nina, who they also happen to be small characters like Baby Mario and therefore have the ability to hit more Smash Overheads because of their short height and jump with reasonable range. Anyways, these two will have the best possible stat total regardless of how you distribute the stats at MAX Level which is 99, they can have a minimum of 7 and a Maximum of 9 or 10 if you distribute the skill points evenly.
But the same isn't true for your partner character, again, Harry and Kate will have a below average stat total by the time they reach Level 99. There is no way of having them evenly distributed decent stats without minmaxing and sacrifing one particular stat to improve the other 3.
However, in many Mario Tennis GBC forums they conclude that the best possible solution for this is to simply leave your character SPIN stat unleveled, this makes sense because if your character has more SPIN than any other stat it will become a Tricky character when you transfer it to N64, like Paratroopa and Boo their swings will have a pronounced curve which can be hard to catch for human players, but not the CPU, so its better to focus on the other 3 stats which are way more relevant for speedrunning purposes, by doing this you will have a Lv99 character with a maximum of 10 in every other category (Power, Control and Speed), without any drawbacks because the stat you will leave at 1 isn't useful for speedrunning anyways.
At Level 10 Power, a GBC character can have a 115-125mph serve, much like a Power Character with a Star. Just don't be careful to not overcharge your swings because it's pretty easy to hit many Outs with too much excessive power.
At Level 10 Speed, a GBC character will move equally as fast as any Speed Character with a Star.
and At Level 10 Control, well, you guessed it, a GBC character will have accurate shots much like any Technique Character with a Star.
If maximized properly, I'm pretty sure they would be viable for speedrunning and I'd argue they will be even better than Baby Mario, even with a Star.
The only drawback to this is that they are not available from the start and you have to do a long tedious grinding process to get them to MAX Level. Using emulators helps speeding up the grinding process but it still takes time to set up the stuff you need. Also, in some cases is better to leave at Lv98 because you happen to be ok with the stats at that Level. Accesibility-wise, it would be hard to obtain what you need for console runs (the GBC cartridge, a Game Boy, and the Transfer Pak), however for EMU/VC runs it should be easy to obtain them since you can just search the savefile in the forums or ask someone who has them (you can ask me if you need any help assistance whatsoever)
I will leave screenshots of my GBC characters stats at Level 99 so you can have an idea of how powerful the can be.
Alex (All-Around), hits hard, moves fast, reasonably accurate, imo he is pretty much on par with Baby Mario + Star, totally outclasses any non-Star character for sure.
Nice! Flat Serve up to 107-113mph, Normal Flat Serve of 100-106mph
Nice! Topspin Serve of 103-107mph, Normal Topspin Serve of 95-101mph
Nice! Slice Serve of 97-102mph, Normal Slice Serve of 91-96mph
Notice that Alex's partner, Harry, despite having the same stat distribution as Alex on the above picture, gets a far worse stat total, he plays pretty much like Mario/Luigi without a star, with a reasonably strong serve and above average mobility and accuracy, but no doubt he loses to any character with a Star. He performs fairly well vs non-Star characters.
Harry (0 Spin, MAX Stats) lightning mobility, hits like a truck. Nice! Flat Serve up to 125mph
In order to fix your partner character, you have to distribute the stats like this, the drawback is that your shots won't have any spin, but that hardly matters when you can brute force your victory with sheer power. Also, despite having 3 stats evenly distributed with 10's across the board, the N64 still considers him as a Power Character because the game will assign the highest priority Stat in case of a tie, which is as follows:
Spin (Tricky) > Power > Control (Technique) > Speed
Nina (All-Around), has Nice! Flat Serves of 100-105mph, Nice! Topspin Serves of 96-101mph, Nice! Slice Serves of 92-97mph, has weaker serves but stronger volleys and more accurate than Alex and is also slightly slower than Alex but can be fixed by sacrificing more SPIN. Still moves decently fast tho. Also outclasses any non-Star character in every category.
Kate (All-Around), the partner of Nina, also suffers from the same problem as Harry. Fix her by maxing her stats with the points you were (not) supposed to use on Spin.
Kate (Speed), since the game is unable to give the All-Around type if at least one stat isn't close to the other 3, so I dropped Power and Control to give her the Speed type, and also because Harry was too powerful and I nerfed her power a little. Also has a Nice! Flat Serve of 113-118mph, Nice! Topspin Serve of 108-113mph, Nice! Slice Serve of 102-107mph
Part 2 because the editor didn't let me post the full thing at once:
Finally, the fastest way to get your GBC characters to Lv99 is by transferring your GBC characters into N64 and have a Lv1 character with no stats as the CPU on MAX Difficulty, if not available Intense still works but you will gain less exp, on a court with Strongest Bounce (either DK Court which you get in-game or Bowser Court which you can transfer from GBC), your GBC character should have MAX Power and High Control in order to Ace Serve consistently, this video explains it better:
On the Game Boy you can use the Training Machine or the Wall Practice to get level fast, then when you get enough power and control, transfer your GBC character to N64 and start grinding.
You can also "cheat the exp", by using emulators, you will need VisualBoy Advance and Project64, with Nrage plugin with RawData checked, you can emulate the transfer pak and select the Mario Tennis GBC file you want to emulate the Transfer Pak, and also check the VBA savefile which you will use to cheat exp. The process is somewhat convoluted but once you get it is easy to repeat and in no time you will have enough exp to level from 1 to 99 saving hours of grinding. Also VBA lets you use Turbo Mode which will be needed to advance fast the levels which can take some minutes if you don't fast forward it.
do the same step as above, farm as much exp as possible, I'd say 4000 Exp should do the trick, then check the emulator N64 .eep savefile on Project64 folder, look for MarioTennis.eep, copy that file and rename it to have identified your cheat exp file, then retrieve the exp to the GBC, delete the file, paste again, repeat a bunch of times until you have farmed enough exp to level both characters to Lv99, this will save you a lot of time
If you wish my Mario Tennis 64 or GBC savefiles to have access to the Lv99 characters I posted here, you can ask me on Discord: VeliZer0
Part 3: Gameplay footage of Alex, Harry, Nina and Kate vs Mario, Bowser, Baby Mario and Peach, all characters with a Star and the CPU on Intense difficulty.
Alex Lv99 vs Mario with Star, stats in Round 1: 24/25/25/24, stats in Round 2: 23/26/25/24
Harry Lv99 (with perfect Stats: 0/36/29/33) vs Bowser with Star.
Note to self: fuck the Clay Court. Don't challenge a CPU player on Intense/MAX, never again.
Nina Lv99 vs Baby Mario with Star, stats in Round 1: 25/25/24/24, stats in Round 2: 23/26/25/24
Kate Lv99 (with near-perfect Stats: 0/28/29/41) vs Peach with Star.
Since I played on emulator, I can give you the savefiles containing the GBC characters with the stats I used to play in the videos, in case you are interested in testing the characters yourself I played with Project64 and VisualBoy Advance. I can also give you a VBA savefile with enough exp to level up all characters up to Level 99 so you can test further with whatever stats if you want to try.
If you wonder why I didn't test them myself in a speedrun, is because I am not a speedrunner and I would suck at showing a good run, which is why I show a standard gameplay vs the CPU because this is easier to understand from a non-speedrunner perspective like casual players and such.
Lastly, here is the minimum level at which every character maxes out Power, Control and Speed with 0 points spent on Spin:
Nina Lv58: Maxes Power, Control and Speed at Level 58 (0/20/18/19)
Alex Lv62: Maxes Power, Control and Speed at Level 62 (0/20/21/20)
Kate Lv76: Maxes Power, Control and Speed at Level 76 (0/25/25/25)
Harry Lv83: Maxes Power, Control and Speed at Level 83 (0/26/26/30)
You can have access to the savefiles if you want to try the GBC characters, I would like to try speedrunning with them to see how well they can do https://www.mediafire.com/file/q18fhor55gr0hg2/MarioTennis-GBC-characters-in-64.zip/file
I failed to realize TheRetroPrime also speedruns both versions of Mario Tennis GBC and N64 so he probably knows more than me, but to anyone willing to discuss, I would like to address the points he made in his response.
You are stating that a maxed out character doesn't stand up to Baby Mario. Care to explain? Where do they fail to get good at? Not enough power? Not enough speed? Not enough acuraccy? Their character model (height) isn't convenient to hit with a Smash? Please I would like you to explain more so I can understand why you came to this conclusion. And if possible, provide your input about what is lacking in a GBC character or what do they need to become viable for speedrunning? Theoretically they can have perfect stats in 3 of the 4 categories, even though they can't have a Serve faster than Bowser**, they still gain access to a Serve that is faster than Baby Mario*, which also means they can hit harder than Baby Mario* therefore increasing the likelihood of scoring a point. This is also true for the other stats as well, they can have perfect Control and Perfect Speed too, assuming 0 points have been invested into Spin. Also, it's important to remind anyone that the partner characters (Harry and Kate) are always worse than the main characters (Alex and Nina), UNLESS they max their 3 stats with the Spinless build, otherwise they will perform worse than a Star character, only being on par with a non-Star character, effectively giving you the impression that GBC characters are bad compared to the Star Mario Tennis cast which simply isn't true.
This is only a problem for the N64 console speedruns. And even so, you don't need the Game Boy to actually access the character themselves, you could use an Everdrive and from there play in the Everdrive's built-in GB emulator, level up the characters there, conveniently you can max out Nina at Level 58 and Alex at Level 62 which can be done by simply playing Mario Tour in Singles. After your GBC character is ready for use you can use Project64 to transfer then copy the .eep savefile to your Everdrive. If you need directions on how to do that I can explain or make a guide specifically for this. Original Everdrives are expensive, but if you can get access to a cheaper second hand version or chinese imitation I'm pretty sure anyone interested in speedrunning Mario Tennis can afford that. On a real Game Boy tho, you don't have the same luxury, so you will be limited at 3 savefiles per cartridge, that is at least 6 characters you are able to build with different stats to test them in the N64. It takes longer because you don't have the tools the emulator can give you to speed up the leveling process, but by no means is impossible and you can always reach Max Stats with any character by just playing the game normally in a few hours.
People don't test because they see your second argument and they probably think it's pointless to test if you already tested and didn't find them useful. But I'm more than willing to help, I do not speedrun the game myself but I can give access to savefiles with the GBC characters so you don't have to waste time grinding them. Also I think they don't test because you have to setup this and need to have the time, resources and knowledge on stat distribution, if you split the stats the wrong way you may end up with a GBC character that can be even worse than non-Star Mario characters.
I will be leaving more gameplay of Alex (All-Around) and Nina (Tricky) vs MAX Difficulty. They do not have perfect stats, but as long as I tested both they seem to perform very well for standard and Star character gameplay.
Stat Distribution: 23/25/27/23 (All-Around) - Held Items: Gold Racket, Light Shoes
Comments: Above average power for an All-Around type. 126mph Nice Serve is not to be taken lightly. Above average speed. Above average accuracy. This dude is on steroids for his small size.
Stat Distribution: 27/24/24/23 (Tricky) - Held Items: Gold Racket, Light Shoes
Comments: Finally a grounded Tricky type that is NOT doesn't have gimmicky aerial movement and get consistent shots after returning a Nice serve. Don't get me wrong Star Paratroopa is still faster and hits harder but she 100% outclasses Boo as a Tricky type.
I might speedrun this game someday.
We really do not need extra barriers to people getting into the game. It's not as though the game is brimming with players grinding away right now. I'm not sure the idea of people needing to take the time out to level characters from another game to import is the best idea in the world.
As far as their viability is from my albeit limited experience from years ago, they always felt somewhat nerfed to me compared to their GBC versions. I could try them out again, but the reason Baby Mario would be above them for me is just the way the game works in a speedrun sense. BM's height and stats generally allow for him to take on more balls than others with a greater margin for error.
The VC WR uses Wario anyway but it remains to be seen if they can replicate that on N64 or not. But imo I just don't see a good reason for allowing the GBC characters in. The time consumption for new players to get them up to playable standards, the fact VC won't even have access to it at all, I don't see much upside to that avenue at all personally.
As far as giving people save files to negate the grind that still would not help anyone who is running the game on original hardware and not an everdrive. You'd be best off asking the mods on their opinion but I would think and hope that they're on a similar page to me on this one.
Hey all; I appreciate this idea being brought to light and I have some thoughts which I've mirrored in the MT64 discord:
VC/Emu and OG hardware are different categories so VC/Emu is unaffected by this, which have their own advantages as it is (load times, no lag, etc).
People have set fantastic times without the GBC characters - I don't see it as any type of hurdle for playing the game at a high level. Eventually, if they're as good as they're being made out to be, then at a top level you'd eventually need to play them anyway. It's simply natural progression for speedrunning.
That's the cost of competition, imo.
If you want to be great at something, you put time and money into that something. Being able to play any of the default characters does not currently put you in a massive disadvantage, as far as current knowledge and lack of extensive testing goes.
All of the time, effort, and money to grind GBC character stats comes with higher-end diminishing returns. It doesn't make the game an entirely new type of game for you at that point
We have a sub 11min Tournament Cups time on OG hardware Not even players with emu or VC have cracked the 11min barrier yet. If newer players want to get to the height of competition, I'd pitch the idea that if they want to grab a transfer pack, MT GBC, and grind stats for a character, then that's their option - there's no cheating, exploiting, glitches, nor inhuman advantage in doing so.
If we start banning/sub-categorizing things so much, therein reduces competitiveness in the game and spreads out the competition very thin over time. That's not optimal, imo.
*********** All of this being said, I opt that we ban the usage of Everdrive/ROM drives/Converters for usage on the leaderboards. Usage for savestates and practice is a-okay, so long as you aren't using it to boost character stats or use at all in direct connection with submitted runs. If a run is found to have been recorded with one of these, then it would be removed. Anything up to this point (2025-FEB-02) would be grandfathered in.***************
***EDIT: Everdrives, ROMs, Converters etc are already banned! Disregard the above.
***EDIT EDIT: apologies for not ever seeing this thread, years ago. The game, being low-activity, has such disadvantages. I'll personally endeavour to maintain some more attachment in this space in the future. :)
Hi all, another mod here. Just to copy some thoughts of mine from Discord, since they lean towards the opposite side: I'm open to either option, but considering it seems like not only do you need transfer pack + gbc cart, but also you need to grind their stats heavily before the run begins (and the fact that micromanaging stats like this of course does not apply to any of the normal characters and as such is not an element of the speedrun currently), I would lean towards having them be a different category.
Totally see the argument for them being allowed in the standard TC category though, not sure what I think should be done.
Lastly, would recommend this discussion continue in the Mario Tennis discord if that would be alright; more folks are likely to see it there as opposed to these forums.
Banning Everdrive, ROMs and Converter should mean that the GBC characters will take time to grind to get them in the console, thus effectively shadow-banning them due to the fact that it won't be allowed to use an Everdrive to help with speeding the Level-Up process. Using your own save from Project64 with legit GBC characters is in no way cheating because either way you HAVE to spend time leveling them up and setting the stuff you need. I don't think copy-pasting Project64 saves with tons of exp farmed for the GBC characters which is optimally better than leveling up them manually should count as cheating or unfair, again I clarify that I didn't use any AR or GS codes, and in case you want to check my savefiles legitimacy just have a look at them here: https://www.mediafire.com/file/q18fhor55gr0hg2/mariotennis-GBC-characters-in-64.zip/file
On the other hand I think they should be okay if they are allowed for Emulated runs, since you can legally grind them there without cheats/savestates, so you can have multiple savefiles in case you want to try different character stats which isn't something feasible on original hardware.
As of my testing with the GBC characters, I can confirm that you can just create a Baby Mario with a stronger serve which is always good but with the same strength in his other hits so you don't have to relearn a new character. If this can be done with the Power stat, im 100% sure you can achieve the same results with the other stats, either by getting them at a Level you're comfortable with (like Baby Mario), or by simply overpowering them and getting a better character. From my experience, having a GBC character with perfect Speed feels faster than any Speed character with a Star. I do think having Perfect Power in Stroke is bad for speedrunning because you can't just play the game normally and be careful with doing charged shots but every other stat feels better when maxed. Alas I do not speedrun this game but I just wanted to give my input on this since I would like to see actual speedruns with GBC characters.
Regarding height, Alex and Nina are the smaller characters, but they are still taller than Baby Mario. Other than that the difference is minimal and should not impact that much in gameplay.
Also I want to remind you that even a Level 99 GBC character with MAX Power (10/10/10) won't have a Serve that is equal to Star Bowser's, since he reaches 130mph on his best Serve, while a MAX Power GBC Character only reaches 126mph, this MIGHT be true for the other Stats as well, where a MAX Speed or Control or GBC isn't necessarily better than a Star Speed or Star Technique character, you have to account for this if you think a GBC character can overpower the Star Characters in their best categories.
