Question Of The Week [August 20th 2025]

Q: What Is A Game That You Bonded With A Sibling Over?

A: My sister is several years younger than me, so we never really played games together, and we certainly didn’t get along most of the time either. She was a girl, and back then girl games were mostly just barbie or edutainment games designed for very young kids, like Freddy Fish or Fatty Bear. However there were a couple games that I ended up somehow getting my sister into once she became a bit older, one of those games was Mario Tennis… for the GameBoy Color.

From what I remember, we somehow went half-sise in on buying a GameBoy Color together or maybe it was a birthday gift thing that we both shared. Maybe I somehow convinced her to spend some allowance money on it, or whatever, I really don’t remember the specific details, but it was technically both of ours. So we would spend one week using it, then trade with the other and swap back and forth. I ended up grabbing Mario Tennis for it. I liked the Nintendo 64 title, but somehow was more drawn into the game developed by Camelot for the handheld system.

It’s interesting, because while I’m not a JRPG fan, Mario Tennis basically is a very similar setup to not only JRPGs, but the Pokemon games from that time period too. You get to name your generic boy/girl character, and sign up for the local gym/tennis courts. At the courts you learn how to play, meet some friendly and not so friendly rivals, and enroll in some tournaments. Squaring off against those rivals in singles and team matches.

The gameplay often really does a great job of hooking you into the basics of back and forth play, like the original Pong video game, but obviously adds new powerups and ways to psych your opponents out. This core mechanic kept me coming back for more, even after I got my butt handed to me by the elite tennis champs, but I somehow ended up playing through it all and loving every moment of it.

The best part really though, came from the fact my sister actually liked it, she would ask me questions about it when we’d be in the car together or at family dinners, and when she ended up playing it, some of those matches were so difficult for her, so she’d pass off the system to me, to ask me to beat it for her. Looking back at it now, I got to be the big brother hero, and that brings a smile to my face.

Gaming was mostly a very solo adventure for me growing up. My friends lived far enough away that it wasn’t an everyday thing for me to play games with others, it was once or maybe twice a week at most. And again, my sister really wasn’t into them at all. So being able to bond over and love the same game at the same time and trade off our shared system, along with me being able to fulfill that Big Brother role that I didn’t get to enact very often was a really cool thing. Mario Tennis, it’s not just a “hidden gem” on the GameBoy Color… It's also a game that helped me bond with my sister and create lifelong memories.