Previous Next

In the grand scheme of things, tennis has been the videogame genre most in need of a good booster shot. For around 12 years, games like Super Tennis and Smash Court Tennis have been toasted as the finest tennis games the industry had to offer - yet when you think about it, they can never hold themselves up to the sum of the realism, depth, and all-round excellence of games like Madden or FIFA. Hence Virtua Tennis is such a breakthrough for fans of the sport, and for the industry.

It doesn't take long to realize Virtua Tennis is something special. Between points you can see the players spin and twirl their racquets as they bounce from one foot to the other, keeping themselves warmed up. You can even make out the lines-persons crouching over getting ready for the next serve. Tiny little nuances like the extra flick of a racquet during a longer wind-up or a stutter-step that occurs after scooping a shot are capable of fooling you into thinking it's the real thing.

And that's exactly what this game is all about: replicating the real thing. Everything from the video-style presentation, replays, cut-outs, and score graphics are designed to make you think you're watching live television coverage of a grand slam event. Thanks to the Dreamcast hardware that tennis programmers have finally gotten around to using, Virtua Tennis is undoubtedly the most realistic tennis game you will find anywhere.

The simple game controls have a lot to do with its appeal. The interface comprises only two buttons - one for stroke, the other for lob - and of course the D-pad for running around. Whether you volley or smash is automatically determined by your position relative to the ball. With this interface, Virtua Tennis breaks new ground by making preparation equally as important as ball placement. In other words, the better you can anticipate your opponent's next shot, the better your return will be.

Your ability to judge where the opponent will hit the ball and where that ball will land is crucial in deciding how you hit the ball. For instance, if you're in prime position, hitting the button early will give you a massive wind-up for a ripper of a passing shot. Hit it too early, and it'll be an air-swing. Hit the button before you reach the prime position, and you might reach the ball too late, hit the frame, or scoop the shot. This is the kind of depth is that makes Virtua Tennis more than just a glamorized new version of Pong, and has you thinking more like Martina Hingis and Andre Agassi.

What this Dreamcast version offers over its arcade counterpart is a doubles mode with up to four players, which of course makes it the ultimate multiplayer tennis experience.

However, while Virtua Tennis sounds like the tennis game from heaven, there are many reasons to be disappointed. As a single player game, the AI is surprisingly inconsistent. On one hand, the CPU can play a mean crosscourt game and will punish you savagely with the lob. Longer games will also see the CPU cotton on to any lax strategy on your part, which it will attack in different and unpredictable ways. On the other hand, the CPU can be about as intelligent as a soiled cabbage as it saves a shot that's clearly sailing out. Or it might run along the net in the same direction as you in a massive volley of... err... volleys, neglecting to see there's two thirds of an open court to chip the ball to.

The CPU can also be pretty slow. During doubles, for instance, if you're at the net and a mistimed volley sees you diving harmlessly into open air, then at least your partner can save you. Now, let's say if your dive has resulted in the entire right side of your court being left open. The CPU knows this. But by the time the ball comes back to them, you've already had enough time to get up and run over and cover the open spot. For some reason, the CPU doesn't realize this, and pots a sitting duck right to the sweet spot of your racquet strings.

It's even worse if your doubles partner is a CPU. Most times he'll be completely oblivious to whatever strategy you're using. There's some limited co-ordination with the trigger buttons, but nothing as complex as, say, Scissors or I-formation. Sometimes you might run in to save a shot for the CPU, or you might've dived into the ground while hitting a shot. Your partner, in most cases, won't have the sense to centre-off and cover some of the ground you've left open.

There are also numerous technical inconsistencies. Balls don't hit you. They travel right through you. Yet in World Tour mode, you can get hit by a red ball (play and you'll understand). You can't hit around the net, nor can you specially slice or topspin a shot. In doubles mode, you can serve from a spot that's technically considered a foot fault. And during certain matches, for some inexplicable reason, the umpire will say that the score is 40-40 (instead of deuce), whereupon the game is awarded to whomever wins the next point.

As an arcade conversion, Virtua Tennis is actually quite sloppy. Compared to the arcade, the character textures are lower resolution; and the crowds are likewise disappointingly flat and low-res. There are also, much to this reviewer's disbelief, some massive aliasing problems. The tape on the net is a jagged mess, and the net itself flickers horribly with Moire effect. In fact, this flickering problem is so bad that it makes the up-close Tomb Raider perspective (press the Y button) quite terrible to play as it's impossible to follow the motion of the ball. It's also a wonder that the programmers retained the motion blur for this perspective, as it seriously screws around with your ability to judge where the ball is going.

The game modes on offer are also fit to question. There's the standard Arcade Mode, and Exhibition Mode (read two extra lines of code), and a World Tour mode similar to the RPG mode of games like Soul Calibur where you unlock extra players, costumes, and stadiums. For starters, the World Tour mode is relatively pointless. The extra stadiums add precious little to the substantive gameplay, save the surfaces you play on, and the players you unlock are all entirely fictitious. Given that Virtua Tennis is selling itself as giving you control of real-life players, these fictitious characters are utterly worthless and uninspiring.

And speaking of extra characters, where are the women? Sega can sing and dance all they like about how realistic they've made Phillipoussis and Courier look (actually, with the low-res textures their faces look a little like carpet), but without Hingis, Pierce, Dokic, or Sanchez-Vicario, this game can't be described as anything but disparaging towards the spirit of the sport.

One also has to wonder why something along the lines of a Tournament Mode wasn't included - one that allowed you to play a full match instead of just a series of 'best of 3' games. Sure, a five-set match would probably show up exactly how bad the AI is in single player mode, but it's exactly what hardcore tennis fans want, especially for playing multiplayer matches. It takes about as many lines of code to implement as it does to put in the Exhibition Mode; and to be perfectly honest, an oversight like this is about as unforgivable as the lack of a Versus Mode in the Japanese release of Virtua Fighter 3tb.

In spite of all these problems, Virtua Tennis is still getting a B. Why? Well, it's not because the graphics are nice. You'd expect them to look at least this good on a system with the Dreamcast's kind of specs. It's more because the core mechanics are so well designed and immaculately executed. Were it not for the simple yet amazingly intuitive control interface, this game would have rated much, much lower. Virtua Tennis is far from perfect - that much is certain. However, it has broken so much new ground in terms of control and gameplay that it is an example for other developers to follow by.