Game. Set. Match. Mr Thunderhead

Courtesy of Shinobi from the Retro Gamer forums I've decided today I'm going to head back to gaming for a while and a look at Sega Superstars Tennis. This to me was partly a game released 10 years too late. Growing up in primary school the big debate was always Sega Vs Nintendo a war which ultimately with the arrival of a third party Sony led to a resounding defeat for Sega withdrawing them from hardware and only focussing on software. Nintendo for their sins had became experts at prostituting their intellectual properties and while Sega made good games right up to the Dreamcast era Nintendo essentially could rely on sales of self developed franchises like Zelda and Mario, the latter of which starred in spin-off games of a variety of types, most successful being the Mario Kart series (many a gap between scenes has been killed playing wirelessly on the DS version to this day!) although the little plumber has also enjoyed stints on the golf course, football pitch, medical profession and tennis court.

Sega have finally caught on and now unleashed the Superstars series first with a substandard mocap game using the eyetoy for PS2. Released now with the rise of these kind of mini-game fests maybe it would've been a bigger success. This was the follow up taking Sega superstars onto the tennis court. As a game it does exactly what you would expect from it. Lots of cartoony graphics played out in game themed locales for a quick game of tennis - on default settings a match can be over in under a minute - with a selection of mini-games for longevity.

As far as playing it goes, the control system was over elaborate. Move by using the left stick with X for a standard shot, and [] for a slice. However lobs and dropshots are played by using a quick combo of the two others leaving the two other buttons unused while your superstars special ability unlocked with the top shoulder buttons. I can't work out why it was done this way, I suspect it was essentially laziness in programming a slightly different control scheme compared to the Wii version over the other consoles. It's not a major problem and I'm sure you could change the controller settings if you wanted, it's just a strange design choice.

Being tennis though it's straight forward to play with you hitting it back and forth against an opponent until one of you misses it for a point, yadayadayada. Also included are mini games though, my favourite of which based on House of the Dead (named Curiens mansion due to a ban in Germany!) involving knocking waves of zombies unconscious with tennis balls, it might sound childish but hitting them in the midsection and hearing a groan is good for a giggle akin to hitting bystanders on a Tiger Woods game and watching them hop in frustration. The mini-games add to longevity alongside Superstars mode which combines standard matches and mini-games into unlock various other stages and courts. Though like a lot of sport games, its best played multiplayer, it keeps her indoors quiet as Amy the Hedgehog from Sonic smashes a serve straight past the awesome Gilius Thunderhead from Golden Axe.

Thing is, I think Sega in typical fashion missed a current generation trick. Downloadable content. Out of the box there are 16 characters on 10 courts yet these don't really mix too well, for example you have Alex Kidd and the almighty Gilius (notice who my fave character would be...) as playable players but no court for them and courts for House of the Dead or Outrun but no characters to play on them, while Sonic is typically represented by two courts and 5 characters. In my view a DLC pack of a doubles team (e.g. Ax Battler and Tyris Flare from Golden Axe) with a court (and associated music) tied in wouldn't be a bad idea (price dependent) and since their are so many franchises untouched they could have a supply that depending on content prices would keep a steady group of fans content and add longevity. I challenge thee to find someone who could resist the chance to smash tennis balls at Toejam and Earl?

Ultimately it's a solid game and worth around 7/10. Playing on your own you won't get masses of playtime but with mates round it'll be a nice little game to play alongside drunken FIFA battles. Shame there were some missed opportunities with regards to adding a little more for fans. That said I'd have loved more DLC for Ultimate Mega Drive Collection too, more modern retro goodness please!