reviews

Game – Sega Superstars Tennis
Genre – Sports - Tennis
Platforms – PS2, PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, DS (Reviewed on Xbox 360)

For quite a while now, Sega has been known as the go-to publisher for quality tennis games.  Since the days of the Dreamcast, their Virtua Tennis series has become the gold standard for the sport.  Sega now looks to expand their coverage of tennis from the realistic to the cartoonish with Sega Superstars Tennis.

Inspired by character-compilation games like Super Smash Bros. Melee, Sega Superstars Tennis takes the most popular characters from Sega’s game library and pits them against one another in various tennis games.  All the big stars, like Sonic, Tails, and Dr. Eggman are here, as well as some B-list characters like Ulala from Space Channel 5, Nights from Nights into Dreams, and Ai-Ai from Super Monkey Ball.  After these characters, though, the list gets more and more obscure, with players like Beat from Jet Set Radio, and Sonic’s love interest, Amy Rose filling out the remaining slots.  There are unlockable characters as well, and while most of them are alternate characters from Sonic, Super Monkey Ball and Nights, there are a couple of nice surprises in the forms of Gilius Thunderhead, the dwarf from Golden Axe, and Alex Kidd, making his first appearance as a playable character in 18 years.  Sadly, there’s no sight of Sega favorites like Ristar, Kid Chameleon or Vectorman.  Guess they’ll need someone to fill up the sequel’s roster.  While the lineup is nowhere near as strong as Super Smash Bros’, it’s still a nice group of classic characters that should give Sega fans their requisite fix of nostalgia.  

Characters are broken down into speed, control power, spin or all-around players, and each has a distinctive play style.  While the play styles don’t make much difference in gameplay, little touches like Sonic doing his trademark spin to dive for balls, and Ulala dancing the entire match add a certain charm and individuality to the characters.  In addition, each character has their own “Superstar Ability” that can be activated for a short time.  For example, Ai-Ai’s shots are accompanied by a bunch of distracting bananas, and Dr. Eggman fires exploding mines at his opponent.  These abilities are a nice touch, and are well balanced, but are so rarely and briefly used that they won’t have much influence on who you choose to play with.  

The main mode of play is Superstars Mode, which gives you 14 different worlds in which to complete challenges; six are available from the get-go and another 8 can be unlocked.  The game worlds are all based on Sega games like House of the Dead, Virtua Squad, Puyo Pop Fever, Chu Chu Rocket and Outrun, as well as the home worlds of the game’s characters.  Each level is rendered beautifully, and is faithful to the source material.  Certain courts, like Sonic’s Green hill Zone and Ulala’s space station are particularly nice looking, giving you the old-school aesthetics of the games in glorious high-def.  Each level has appropriate music, and there are even unlockable tracks from each court.

The great-looking courts aren’t the only visual treats in the title.  Character models are crisp and colorful, and each is animated well.  Everyone looks and moves exactly how you want them to, and while there’s not much to speak of as far as technical tricks like lighting effects, the whole affair is just dripping with Sega “Blue Sky” goodness.  Despite not being a graphical powerhouse, there are some extended load times that will annoy players.  

Sadly, the game’s audio is not nearly as strong as its visuals.  All the classic Sega themes are here, and they sound fine, but there is zero crowd noise or ambient sounds while playing.  Players have one or two lines of dialogue each, and they repeat ad nauseum throughout the game.  By the fiftieth time you hear Ulala say “All right!” after winning a point, you’ll be tempted to mute your TV.

If you’ve played any of the Virtua Tennis games, the controls for Sega Superstar Tennis will be instantly recognizable.  The A button hits a standard ground shot and the X button is or a faster slice shot.  There are also lobs and drop shots that rely on a combination of the two buttons, but neither is particularly effective.  Instead of relying on trick shots, your best strategy in standard matches is to hit shots from the baseline, sending your opponent back and forth until they miss a shot.  Against the computer AI, this shouldn’t take long because the game offers little challenge in single player mode.  The gameplay is tight, but not nearly as deep as it is in Virtua Tennis 3, and probably not deep enough for extensive online play.

While the lack of depth hurts the standard matches, the minigames do not suffer from it at all.  There are over a hundred mini games to choose from, from zombie blasting at Curien’s Mansion to ring collecting in Green Hill Zone.  Many of them are fun and addictive, and are the main reason to play the game.  Sadly, they are somewhat unbalanced.  For every addictively fun game, like clearing Monkey Balls off the court, there is a tedious, irrelevant or frustrating event, like the Jet Grind Radio police evasion game, which has absolutely nothing to do with tennis.  It’s unfortunate that there isn’t a better balance to the mini-games, as many of them are a blast, especially with 2 or more players on court at the same time.

Overall, Sega Superstars Tennis is not a great tennis game, but it’s certainly not a bad one, either.  It looks pretty, plays well (if simply) and runs great.  It also has 16 of Sega’s best characters, though, in practice, the game doesn’t have that cartoonish, wild-and-wacky feel that other animated sports games (namely, Mario Strikers) have.  It’s basically Virtua Tennis, except that character building and real players have been replaced by a healthy dose of nostalgic fun.  Worthwhile for a weekend, to be sure, but unless you're a die-hard Sega fanatic, there's not much long term fun to be had.

 

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