by Stuart Le Grice

Created on: May 21, 2009

Tennis; not a sport I particularly enjoy watching, and certainly not a sport I've ever considered donning my finest Fred Perry and participating in, so any console game based on the racket sport was always going to face an uphill task trying to engage me. Sega Superstar Tennis nearly didn't deliver; I first played it last year, but getting beaten twice in quick succession and not being bothered to read the instructions and learn the controls meant I tossed it aside after half an hour of random joypad jiggery. Luckily, somebody I know started to extol its virtues as a good, fun and engaging game so I thought I'd better slip it back into the Xbox 360's disk drive for a second outing. And I have to say I'm glad I did; five minutes browsing the instruction booklet and familiarizing myself with the games controls and I was away, lobbing and volleying like a modern day McEnroe in graphic form.

So what's the game all about then?

In its purest sense this is a tennis game, no surprise there then. But to lump this game in with other sport simulations would be to do it a disservice. You see, there are myriad of mini games that move this from a pure sports game to a fun and entertaining party game for all the family, young and old. To start, you play on the Sonic the hedgehog themed court, playing games either singularly or doubles as well as completing mini games relevant to the theme. As you progress through the games you unlock further missions within the sonic section by scoring an A mark - doing exceptionally well in any one game gives you a triple A mark which unlocks music tracks all pertinent to the section in question. For example, in the Outrun section you get to unlock the music you may have enjoyed while driving your Ferrari at high speeds in some dingy arcade in the eighties. When you complete a mission you unlock another theme as well as the character from the section you have just completed so you can play as that character in other sections. The goal is to complete all sections and unlock all of the sixteen characters to play with.

Each character has its own strengths and weaknesses; some are better chosen for their speed while other are slower, but pack much more power into their tennis strokes. Part of the game it determining which characters are best suited to any particular mini game or tournament and using their strengths accordingly. Characters also have super powers in keeping with their original games, for example AiAi from the Super Monkey

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