Sega Superstars Tennis

"Sonic beat Mario at his own game!"

I have never been much of a sports fan, especially with Tennis. However when I played Mario Tennis on Gameboy Color and N64, I was hooked. The N64 possessed an impressive roster of Mario characters, even going as far as to include Boo and Birdo. So imagine how surprised I was to see an ad for Sega Superstars Tennis on the Wii BEFORE Mario Tennis could make it to the Wii! That's right, Sonic beat Mario to it. Then I saw it for DS, and I ended up with both versions. So how does the DS version compare to the Wii version? Did Sonic REALLY outdo Mario this time? In a way, yes. Both versions will be great ways to occupy our little claws and minds until the real deal (Mario Tennis DS or Wii) arrive.

One gripe I had with Mario Tennis on GBA was that there was a story... A story having little to do with Mario or the Mario cast. Instead it revolved around a bunch of bratty tennis kids. This infuriated me, as I bought MARIO Tennis. They could have just as easily called it Midget Tennis or something. I didn't even take the time to finish the game. Once I realized what I was playing, I ditched it. Thankfully, no such problems here, seeing as how there is no storyline to speak of in Superstars Tennis. Some may complain, but honestly, DO WE NEED A STORY??? All that needs to be known is that a bunch of Sega characters are playing Tennis. A Story Mode would have just ruined it.

No story mode is well enough since the graphics are.... Well, they're typical 3D DS graphics really. Certainly a far cry from the well detailed Wii version, which sports superior all around visuals. Even the courts themselves look better. The Wii version even has special cameo appearances that simply aren't on the DS. Or if they ARE there, I can't see them due to the much smaller screen of the DS. Ironically the sound between the 2 versions doesn't differ all that much. The music is catchy enough to be enjoyable. I despise the music that plays on Jet Sets Court though. Just a bunch of chipmunk vocals saying stupid crap. Reminds me of Sonic Rush actually... Having more than 1 song for each court (ala Smash Bros. Brawl) would have helped remedy things like that maybe.

The same can be said for the sound effects. More variety could have been a huge help here. The sound effect when a ball is struck is great and is a distinctive "POP". I love that sound actually. But the sounds made by the characters is probably gonna annoy you... A lot. Each character makes 3 sounds when they hit the ball. Yeah that's it. 3. And you're only gonna hear the 3rd when they do a dive to hit the ball. The rest of the time you'll hear the first 2. This is especially bad with an unlockable character named Pudding, who feels the need to wail out "AAAAIIIIIIII!!!!!!" when she hits the ball. Needless to say, I never play against or use her. It's that bad. No one else really stands out as much as her thankfully. The same problem exists with win quotes and pre-match quotes. I think they only say 1 thing when they begin or end a match, which is annoying sometimes with some characters... And they say about 2 when they score or lose points. Overall, this area needed a lot more variety. A LOT MORE!!

Not much is done to put the DS to good use either. The 2 screens serve little purpose, and the touch screen isn't really used either. I don't suppose you can do much with a Tennis game, and at least they don't force the touch screen on you like Mario Hoops did. Damn Nintendo.

The modes that ARE there serve their job well enough. They're all fun to play. Quick Play is decent enough, Characters are selected randomly and you duke it out. Nothing much else to do there. In Single player however you will see 3 new match types. One of which is your generic Vs. Type of mode that lets you duke it out however you want. Good for trying out new characters or just for cool match ups like Sonic and Amy (or Tails, more or less the same really...) vs. Shadow and Eggman. The 2 most important modes however are Tournament and Mission. These 2 pretty much make up the backbone of the game. Tournament has Doubles and Singles, with a set of cups for each. You do several matches straight, you CANNOT save during them, so make sure you have 30 minutes or more to spare. Otherwise you'll have to close the DS and let it sleep while you take care of other things.

Next is Mission Mode. Here you do various things such as collecting rings, playing Puyo Puyo, (with your tennis racket and tennis balls) or even using the zombies from House of the Dead as target practice. Clever move throwing House of the Dead in, what with House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return recently making it to the Wii and all. This is a great way to take a break from the tennis matches, which can be rather long on higher difficulties. There is even a Space Harrier mission where you're apparently IN THE GAME! You "shoot" by whacking a Tennis ball. However it's flawed. For one thing you can't really aim your shots, there’s a sort of Auto Aim in place. This is fine except it's awkward to need to be directly in front of something to hit it, and sometimes the auto aim just doesn't seem to kick in. Mushrooms also line the ground as obstacles, but I've yet to be able to shoot one of these things so I assume you can't. The ball goes over or through them. Another annoyance is a mission where you have to survive till the end, fighting the classic dragon monster from the first stage of Space Harrier, but you need to have at least 3 lives to have a passing grade. First of all, why the hell do I need 3 Lives to pass? It shouldn't make a damn how many I have left as long as I make it. 1 Life should be acceptable. More so, if I have to have 3 lives to pass, WHY GIVE ME 5???? If I die 3 times and only have 2 lives, I'm not gonna pass SO WHATS THE POINT??? WHY GIVE US 5 LIVES??? It's misleading and pointless. Just give us 3 lives damn it!! There's also a Score Attack mode, which is basically a classic "play until you lose" type of game. It's unique for each court. Honestly, this is one mode you could have done without. I'd be happy to sacrifice Score Attack for another mode, since it's basically the same thing as the last mission of it's respective court... I also felt that the Ring collecting of the Sonic court was a little much. You'd think rings are all that was in Sonic games. what about Chaos Emeralds? Chao? ring collecting for 4 missions is enough, after that, they should have came up with better stuff. Instead it's just more ring collecting and bomb dodging. Don't get me wrong, it was fun... For the first 4 missions. Then it got old. I'd have liked to have seen more variety.

So why do matches take longer against more skilled AI? Because the gameplay is super simple. There are advanced techniques like Drop Shots and such but they're never necessary, and they won't really speed anything up. You mostly just whack the ball until someone misses. You can aim your shot of course, and you can also perform a Smash by swinging when the ball is above you, which results in an instant point. There's also Superstar transformations, which change your characters appearance and grant him/her a special move. Sonic for example becomes Super Sonic and causes the ball to zoom across the court and ricochet around a bit, while Eggman makes the ball go super high. Funnily enough, I've noticed some characters Superstars actually make it easier for me to do a smash shot on them. Most people agree that they don't add much to the gameplay, and some say that they only interrupt the game, but I think they add a nice bit of variety to the game. During a transformation you get a short animation and a small tune plays. For example Eggmans theme from Sonic Adventure 2 plays during his, while Amy's Theme (from the same game) plays during hers. I like how simple matches are myself, even if they do make things take a little longer. Bear in mind while the better AI opponents do make for longer matches, the matches are more challenging and for most players that means more entertaining. Doubles are the biggest offender in the time department of course.

Speaking of AI, the AI in this game is actually pretty decent. Opponents will put up a good enough fight, and your AI partner on Doubles do well enough. Once in awhile they screw up and miss an easy shot though, so don't be surprised if they stand there while a ball goes right by them. The AI when serving has an annoying habit of stalling during the serve though. I actually had to wait while Nights made 5 serve attempts. I'm not kidding, 5! He just kept throwing the ball up into the air and catching it while I sat there screaming profanity at the screen. I suspect he was trolling me...

The Roster however could have been a lot better. Gamespot said they were "D Listers" and for once I agree. Sega acted as if they didn't have many characters to use or something. Of all the potential characters they COULD have used, they chose 5 Sonic characters, (yes, 5!) 2 from Nights, 2 from Space Channel 5, 2 from Jet Set Radio, and 2 from Super Monkey Ball. I'm not even naming the whole roster. Most players probably don't even know who half the roster is.

There are some issues with the control. For the most part, control is simple and very easy to use. However there seems to be some mysterious sort of lag that occurs almost randomly. Sometimes, for unexplainable reasons, my character will not react when I try to swing. From what I have read... This is supposedly the games way of punishing you for getting to the ball late, but sometimes it happens when I am RIGHT THERE AT THE BALL! Nothing is more irritating than having a weird handicap like that. As if that wasn't enough, you can go out of bounds with the ball. How am I supposed to control that?? In real Tennis yeah sure I'd have some control over that, but in Sega Superstars the simple controls don't really allow for any serious control over the ball. You mostly hold the Dpad in a certain direction and give the ball a whack. This out of bounds crap gets especially annoying in Singles when you're just trying to score a point by shooting to the left when the opponent is to the right. This happens the most with power types like Eggman. I actually lost the infamous Special Stage match with Eggman because of these 2 annoying factors. I was way in the lead, managing to score 40 to Eggmans 0, then all of a sudden the mystery lag starts kicking in, along with infuriating amounts of Outs. Hey Sega, from now on, instead of forcing some invisible handicap (which could be a glitch for all I know) on players, how about next time just making the AI more challenging or something? Anything would be better than the bouts of unresponsiveness that occurs.

For all it's pros and cons, the most important thing you need to know about this game is that it's fun. It isn't deep or complex, it's just good fun. Both versions are fun to play, and the main differences are the graphics. Whether you want a visually inferior version that is portable, or a graphically superior version that isn't is up to you. The Wii controls add little to the Wii version though. I would recommend this to any Sega fan, or maybe even just Tennis fans in general. As long as you don't expect too much, you'll get enough enjoyment out of it.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 04/02/08

Game Release: Sega Superstars Tennis (US, 03/18/08)