I’ve heard this one before and I’m curious. Has anyone completely verified this rumor as true or false? Is there anything in the ROM to suggest such a mode?

(I wish Mario’s Tennis had some unlockables. It’s so plain, for a Mario game at least)

Definitely a false rumor. I haven’t dug into the code enough to say there’s no way to put it back in, but as the stock ROM is, I watched all accesses to the link area in memory and it certainly doesn’t use it. I also ran all the games with the link cable plugged in, and none did anything differently.

I believe the reason for the rumor is because Mario’s Tennis does have graphics for 2P. It also has another character name of “Cassarin”, which I assume was actually supposed to be “Catherine”, AKA Birdo, which didn’t make it into the game.

DogP

Say, how hard would it be to hack Mario’s Tennis to use the link cable anyway? Or Teleroboxer, or Nester’s Funky Bowling, or any other game?

A guy can dream right?

Hacking the functionality into a game that doesn’t have the functionality at all would be very difficult. But in a case where the game was already programmed for link support, but disabled at the last minute (i.e. by hiding a menu option) could be very easy to re-enable.

Not that I have any technical proof to back it up, but if I was to put odds on any game having link support, my best guess would be Virtual League Baseball. They had an ad that promoted link support, which probably means it was at least still in the plans as of a few months before release. Though being 3rd party, it’s possibly less likely that they would have gotten a link cable to develop with than a 1st party game.

DogP

I never checked if there is any multiplayer code in Faceball. Having the hidden Face2000 enemy and the arena mode menu indicates they were planning for it. I thought about trying to add one for a while but didn’t follow up because it would have been tons of work.

If I would get my hands on a link cable I would make a multiplayer game for sure.

thread ressurection.. so now that the link cable is pretty much a reality. It always seemed to me like mario tennis and panic bomber were meant to have a 2 player mode. So is adding that functionality at this point in time still next to impossible? Wouldnt Mr Anon have a pretty good idea of where to start? (seeing as how he got hyper fighting to work)

Seam wrote:
thread ressurection.. so now that the link cable is pretty much a reality. It always seemed to me like mario tennis and panic bomber were meant to have a 2 player mode. So is adding that functionality at this point in time still next to impossible? Wouldnt Mr Anon have a pretty good idea of where to start? (seeing as how he got hyper fighting to work)

has anyone looked into panic bomber

So, looking at the cable build from here, I’d suggest we look into using these to build the ends.

https://shop.hdretrovision.com/collections/accessories/products/nintendo-multiout-a-v-connector-3-pack

Those connectors are about a third of the price of the custom ones I’m building but they’re not keyed correctly.

Wyndcrosser wrote:
So, looking at the cable build from here, I’d suggest we look into using these to build the ends.

https://shop.hdretrovision.com/collections/accessories/products/nintendo-multiout-a-v-connector-3-pack