Virtua Tennis: what happened to it?

Virtua Tennis

What happened to them ... is a regular column that tries to bring to light those franchises that for one reason or another have fallen into oblivion, telling their story, with the hope of seeing them again sooner or later on our screens.

When it comes to tennis-themed video games, it is impossible not to mention what is probably one of the most popular and most popular titles of the genre ever, namely Virtua Tennis. The SEGA game, which for many years has inflamed arcades around the world and initially with the arrival of Dreamcast, also the homes of many fans thanks to the excellent conversions for this console that helped to increase its fame, has entered the legend, even if his fame was not enough to keep the series alive up to the present day.

Tennis according to SEGA

Since its debut in 1999 on cabinets with NAOMI card, Virtua Tennis (or Power Smash, as it is called in Japan) has always maintained an arcade game setting, with characters performing all sorts of shots simply through the use of two buttons and an eight-way joystick. This peculiarity in terms of gameplay, very easy to learn but difficult to master at best, made it a transversal game in a short time, suitable for all types of players, from the youngest to those with more experience, becoming a trademark. of the whole series. To make the title even more beautiful and convincing there was a colorful and detailed graphics that had hardly ever been seen until that moment.

Despite not having an extraordinary amount of options, Virtua Tennis in multiplayer was practically eternal, so much so that it is still found in many arcades around the world. There was the Exhibition mode, where in a single match you could change all the options to your liking for single or double challenges, up to four gamers. The duration of the match varied from a single game to a set, as did the surface of the playing field and the skill of the opponents controlled by artificial intelligence, which could be set in such a way as to make the matches always different.

More interesting is the World Circuit mode, that is a sort of "campaign" that saw the user participate in a series of matches and training exercises (also available in a separate session) to be overcome to progress in the game and unlock meetings and increasingly difficult and crazy tests. Once in the top spot, the player could challenge the two strongest tennis players in the world (of the game), Master and King. It was a triumph for critics and audiences. So, given the resounding success of the game, SEGA didn't think for a moment in designing and releasing an official sequel in record time.

Virtua Tennis 3 and the onset of decline

Virtua Tennis 2 for Dreamcast and cabinets with SEGA NAOMI cards arrived in 2001, also because in fact it was essentially the same as its predecessor: apart from a few more fields and some tweaks to the graphics, the real news consisted in the addition of some female players ( nine) and the option to play mixed doubles matches, while the general gameplay remained anchored to the stylistic features of arcade sports titles. After ceasing development of video game consoles in 2001, SEGA began making titles for all platforms. Virtua Tennis 2 was then also released on PlayStation 2 and Game Boy Advance, and with the support of the British team Sumo Digital a sort of spin-off-expansion of the same title was made on PlayStation Portable in the fall of 2005, called Virtua Tennis: World Tour.

To have a "real" new product in the series, we had to wait until 2006 and V irtua Tennis 3 for cabinet, this time based on the SEGA Lindbergh arcade system. In 2007, the game also arrived on PlayStation 3 consoles, with integrated SIXAXIS controls and for the PlayStation Move controller, and Xbox 360, with exclusive Xbox Live tournaments and online modes and support for Kinect, plus native 1080p support for both. versions, while in 2008 on the Nintendo Wii, also bringing in the homes of many fans all the fun of a title which, in spite of few innovations in general terms (compared to the arcade edition, included the World Tour and Court Games modes instead of the "challenge" that was present in the arcade version), managed to entertain as always thanks to its playability and fluidity.

But this aspect, however, seemed no longer enough for the experts, who in fact, while not rejecting it, attributed some lower evaluations compared to those of the two previous chapters. However, the following year, with the support of Sumo Digital again, SEGA released a sort of updated version of Virtua Tennis 3 titled Virtua Tennis 2009. The product included a World Tour mode and a fully integrated online ranking system, new options for creating a player and more than 40 different fields to perform on. The Nintendo Wii version also supported the Wii MotionPlus feature, used to enable more advanced gestures. The latest installment in the series was Virtua Tennis 4, first released on PC, PlayStation Vita, PlayStation and Xbox 360 in 2011, and later on SEGA RingEdge card cabinets.

Also in this case the title made a few important steps forward for the series, remaining substantially anchored to its roots, and proposing the same gameplay with the only relevant addition of the special shot and the uncertain support for the motion controller. The new "career" in single was a good one, a game in the game with a solid structure and with the right potential to be replayed several times with different players and choices. However, this was not enough to satisfy the public and critics, who in fact gave him even lower ratings than the third episode, preferring the rival Top Spin 4. In fact, if we exclude Virtua Tennis Challenge developed and published by SEGA for mobile with Android and iOS systems, Virtua Tennis 4 marked the end (hopefully not definitive) of a saga that, with the appropriate tweaks and adjustments to the tastes of today's players and taking advantage of the potential of new hardware, in our opinion it deserves at least a new chance.

Have you noticed any errors?