Tennis

"Bog-Standard Tennis for Mono-GB users, Yay! ¬_¬"

It's Tennis. It's GameBoy-Mono. It's fun, fun, fun, for all the family!....for 5 minutes. ::sigh::

This version of Tennis was good in it's day (1990's) but just looks silly compared to some of the titles seen nowadays, such as Mario Tennis and many more.

I can't think of anything more to write here so maybe I'll knuckle down into the game's review now...

Gameplay 2/10
Well...it's Tennis isn't it? It's just the usual moves... lob; slice; volley; smash. Four moves, pretty OK usage. Then of course you can't choose a character, so you can't get any better such as increased smash ability, etc. However you can choose the level of difficulty for your opponent, so really all the skill is down to you at the end, and not some fancy stat screen that lets you rip holes in the opponents racquet or anything.
Quite a hard difficulty setting if you turn it up...I could never beat the opponent if it was any higher than Level 1. Mind you, I'm a bad tennis player by nature, so it just goes to show.

Story ?/10
Mario has some temporary head defect and needs to move his head from side to side constantly. An easy way to make him do this is to play tennis in front of him, whilst he acts as an umpire. No, actually, because it's tennis, the story is non-existent, so there's no way you can pry a story out of this one.

Audio/Music 1/10
If you plugged your GB into very big speakers you'd get exactly the same sound experience from this. Simply put...there is NO music (as far as I can remember). The only sound comes out of little beeps and bloops which play when your ball hits something, apart from that the crowd cheers now and again, sounding like someone sanding down wood.

Graphics 3/10
The people look quite cute, and the Mario umpire is a nice addition. But, apart from that, the tennis courts and menu screens will be the only thing you'll be looking at.

Replay Value 1/10
Nah...I wouldn't bother, once you've won once, you've won them all in this game. Tennis-o-holics might play it alot, but not me...and not your average Joe.

To Buy or To Rent
To Buy or not to Buy, that is the question. And in this case, I'd say that you really shouldn't buy this, something else is more deserving of your cash. Maybe rent it if you are high on something. Should you have bought this out of sheer stupidity or some Auntie has picked it up for you out of a bargain bin, perhaps should you break open the case, you can steal the various chips inside and use this to prop up wobbly tables, etc.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 07/26/01, Updated 04/21/03