Following on from the excellent F-Zero thread, I thought I’d post some memories of another SNES classic – Super Tennis.
This was another title I bought at UK launch. I remember reading C+VG’s glowing review of the game (along with the Japanese screenshot that showed a player shouting ‘****’ upon missing a shot). Along with F-Zero, this was the title I was dying to play on my shiny new PAL SNES.
It didn’t look like much and made very little use of the power of the console (aside from the rotating court when you switched ends – but even this looked a bit dodgy) but long after F-Zero had been completed and Super Mario World had given up all its secrets, I was still playing Super Tennis. However it wasn’t the single player side that kept my attention for so long – it was the excellent two-player mode. I remember spending hours playing against my dad and mates. This is one of the original multiplayer classics in my eyes. No matter how many times you played it, you always seemed to get better and improve your game somehow – the depth of the game engine was amazing. You could pull off loads of different shots using a combination of the buttons and the d-pad. The only negative aspect was the fact that perspective made it harder to play at the top of the court, but this quickly became part of the game itself, with players blaming missed shots on the fact that they were at the top and players who succeeded in winning sets whilst playing ‘up top’ felt an extra glow of satisfaction. At the end of the day you couldn’t complain as both players would have to play topside at some point and to be honest once you’d put a few hours in you could play at both ends of the court.
Virtua Tennis is the only game that comes close to rivaling this awesome title, but even that lacks the extra shot buttons that Super Tennis has, and ends up feeling more ‘basic’ as a result.
IMO no other sports title comes close to beating this.
This was another title I bought at UK launch. I remember reading C+VG’s glowing review of the game (along with the Japanese screenshot that showed a player shouting ‘****’ upon missing a shot). Along with F-Zero, this was the title I was dying to play on my shiny new PAL SNES.
It didn’t look like much and made very little use of the power of the console (aside from the rotating court when you switched ends – but even this looked a bit dodgy) but long after F-Zero had been completed and Super Mario World had given up all its secrets, I was still playing Super Tennis. However it wasn’t the single player side that kept my attention for so long – it was the excellent two-player mode. I remember spending hours playing against my dad and mates. This is one of the original multiplayer classics in my eyes. No matter how many times you played it, you always seemed to get better and improve your game somehow – the depth of the game engine was amazing. You could pull off loads of different shots using a combination of the buttons and the d-pad. The only negative aspect was the fact that perspective made it harder to play at the top of the court, but this quickly became part of the game itself, with players blaming missed shots on the fact that they were at the top and players who succeeded in winning sets whilst playing ‘up top’ felt an extra glow of satisfaction. At the end of the day you couldn’t complain as both players would have to play topside at some point and to be honest once you’d put a few hours in you could play at both ends of the court.
Virtua Tennis is the only game that comes close to rivaling this awesome title, but even that lacks the extra shot buttons that Super Tennis has, and ends up feeling more ‘basic’ as a result.
IMO no other sports title comes close to beating this.
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