I actually played the original Game Boy Tennis until I could beat the highest level.
Man that original batch of Game Boy games (Golf, Tennis, Mario Land etc) were really solid little arcade classics.
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Got to play World Court Tennis, very nice. And also Final Match Tennis on TG16 - possibly my new favourite!
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Top Ranking Tennis on Gameboy and Virtua Tennis 2 on Dreamcast were my go to choices for Tennis Games.
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Virtua Tennis 2 on Dreamcast was just an amazing game and so too VT4 on XB360.
Iām guessing the demand has dwindled since Sega isnāt planning on making anymore tennis games
I still have World Court Tennis in my collection itās one of the very first tennis games and having a multi tap being a necessity for the multiplayer so I have fond memories of it and also those simplistic chibi sprite are endearing.
Final Match Tennis is just so on point and tight gameplay, one of the best Tennis games.
Nerdy and in a sad way I was in that area during Wimbledon and decided to do a few shoots there during the summer of this year
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Reading this made me think why the heck isnāt there a Tennis game on the Neogeo MVS/AES?
I guess there is that pocket title.
I think Sega would be too cheap today to acquire the licenses necessary for a modern take on the game. Do they even make sports games these days?
Mario Tennis on N64 is the game that got me into the tennis subgenre in video games, still a really good arcade version of the sport.
Everybodyās Tennis on PSP I remember enjoying quite a lot, though I only played through the single player story mode - itās a bit like the Camelot portable games.
Did Virtua Tennis 4 sell significantly below expectation I wonder? If it werenāt for the success of Yakuza I wonder what ābigā games Sega would even have in the console space. I donāt remember Team Sonic Racing making much of an impact (with good reason).
Final Match Tennis is pretty toughā¦
Been having so much fun with it though, every point has to be earned, and thereās still so much to learn.
Had to look up the former, didnāt realise it was a rebranded Pro Tennis: World Court, which came with my PC Engine earlier this month!
Going to give it a go nowā¦
Edit: Happy 30th anniversary to Final Match Tennis! Not sure if Iāll ever clear the game in my lifetime but Iām still coming back for more, it just plays so well. The high difficulty of world tour mode is completely justified.
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Pardon the bump, but I recently got a cheap Top Rank Tennis (USA) cart and itās really dang good!!! Like Tennis on Game Boy is good but this feels like a huge and solid upgrade. Glad to see it in the thread already.
I donāt see a ton of love for it online, especially for being published by Nintendo.
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Glad you enjoyed it. Itās such a treat for any tennis fan looking for a Gameboy title to play. Just wished there was a color version
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Top Rank(ing) Tennis really is incredible and makes you realise how much is automated in other Tennis games, that doesnāt need to be automated.
Finally got round to giving it a proper go in late 2023 and had a blast - though never did make it to that top rank. Will have to boot up my copy and see where I did eventually rank. Every victory felt earned, which is important.
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Snoopyās Tennis on the GBC is a really good game. If Mario Tennis is the 100 Snoopy is the 85.
The GBA version of Virtua Tennis is a great version as well.
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Tennis game news
Iāve got Virtua Tennis 1,3 and 4 (ps3 and vita) and so hoping to find 2 on DC one of these days, but recently discovered PSP VT World Tour was kind of a port of 2? So i um procured it and been playing a bit.
I really love the feel of VT but man is it just me or is the arcade origins just brutal with the difficulty? Even on easy it took me about 10 attempts to beat the last match of singles tournament. I say beat but what I think happened is the CPU decided to let me win lol.
It so blatantly knows the direction youāre moving and aiming. The difficulty feels like it increments just by what % of shots it lets through.
I also played a bit of the world tour modeā¦ but I dont much like it. It seems like the way to play is to fail the training modes endlessly until your stats improve enough to actually beat some of them. I remember it wasnt quite as bad on the Vita version.
Virtua Tennis 2 is one of my favourite games ever!
Multiplayer is incredible and one of the main reasons I still have a Dreamcast to this day.
Like many arcade games from that era, single-player isnāt overly sophisticated in terms of difficulty, but it suffices for practice.
So I bought Mario Tennis Fever. Being well aware of the gameās shortcomings from reviews, I deliberated over it for quite a while! Going so far as playing the 64 and Gamecube versions with my daughter for a bit, to see if she liked those first. Honestly, theyāre still so good (and frankly pretty similar playing) that I probably could have just left it at that and kept playing thoseā¦ but laziness prevailed since I donāt have them setup in our living room!
I was thinking any single player shortcomings would be insignificant if we enjoyed local multiplayer, and that turned out to be the case. Within a few matches we were going at it like crazy, trying out all the characters and racket combinations. Thereās so many that just getting a feel for which ones you like will take a good amount of time. Playing without Fever Rackets is also just as fun, it just feels really good to play, the shots are all distinct/readable and getting in the zone with which ones you should be using becomes second nature quickly.
I played through all the storyā¦ which yeah, was a bit of a tedious slog with hardly any challenge. My Switch 2 is one that can only play the games in Japanese, so at least I was spared having to read anything.
Iāve finished the singles tournaments and was reminded how infuriating sports game AI can be with the input reading/inhuman reactions. It was mostly a breeze until the final match, so I feel like they could have done a more natural difficulty curve before sliding all the bullshit to max! Itās worse when the opponent is someone like Baby Peach, you just feel rotten getting beaten by a baby girl lol.
Iāve also finished the 3 trial towers and 100 extra trials (but only about 1/3 of them 3 starred so far). This mode was pretty good though itās also fairly simple, and there are a few too many āgroupsā of similar trials where it can get a bit tedious. I feel like they could have just done a random match generator instead, since thereās so many possible combinations.
I havenāt played online, I donāt think I have the temper for that lol.
All in all though I think it was a good purchase. I paid a little below retail (6000y), personally I think local multiplayer alone makes it worth it for me, but that may also be in part due to not having bought Aces or any other recent tennis game really. I donāt really think you need many versions of a single sports series past a certain pointā¦ as enjoyable as iām finding this, I doubt iāll be interested in whatever the next version is. Golf howeverā¦
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