Review BadBoyBule 4/5 · Oct 17, 2024
SEGA's smash from the golden years
Virtua Tennis is simply fun to play. It looks great for its time, the sounds and music are awesome and the gameplay is something you can learn immediately but has enough depth for thrilling matches. The presentation in general just screams Dreamcast era SEGA with cheesy rock tracks, bright colours and the priceless arcade feel of hyping every little thing …
Virtua Tennis is simply fun to play. It looks great for its time, the sounds and music are awesome and the gameplay is something you can learn immediately but has enough depth for thrilling matches. The presentation in general just screams Dreamcast era SEGA with cheesy rock tracks, bright colours and the priceless arcade feel of hyping every little thing up.
As Virtua Tennis is an arcade game at heart, it's not the most expansive experience out there. Not that it needs to be anything else. Basically you get an arcade mode (which is a series of matches against AI like in fighting games), an exhibition mode and a World Circuit mode. World Circuit is the closest to a proper single player campaign the game has. You choose different matches and silly minigames from a world map and earn money to unlock new arenas, characters and outfits for all game modes. In theory, this is a great addition and it's fun to see goofy minigames in what is otherwise a pretty realistic-looking affair. In practice, though, the World Circuit is tough as nails and quite repetitive. For the life of me, I just couldn't complete some of the hardest challenges.
One thing I imagine is an absolute hoot in Virtua Tennis is multiplayer. Sadly I haven't been able to test this but I will try to usher someone to play this with me.
Virtua Tennis is a valuable relic from the arcade era. It reminds us that having focus is super important. You don't need wide open-worlds or huge amounts of mechanics and systems. You can have a limited scope on your game and at the same time polish and juice up the experience to be absolute joy.
