In Games

This week's pick is a very simple and basic, yet very funny game: Tennis.

Tennis is a video game released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985. The concept of the game is very basic in that the player controls one person faced against an opponent CPU player. This game uses the same scoring system as "real-life" Tennis. The game also features a doubles (2-player) option. The opponent CPU player can be set at 5 difficulties.
The player has only two choice of hitting the ball: a normal stroke (button A), or a lob (button B). The direction of the ball depends on the timing of the stroke, e.g. if the (right-handed) player hits a forehand early, the ball goes wide to the right, and if he hits it late, then the ball Hooks to the left. If the player can reach a lob from the opponent, he can smash it. At higher difficulties, it is almost impossible to win the point except with a smash.



I easily spent hours on this game, because it's fun. I don't know if one can say more about this, but let us know what you think about it.
Pop the cart in your NES or load up the emulator of your choice for a couple of games. I will do. And after that I'll play Tennis on the Wii.

And here's Japanese and US boxart. Enjoy.





Which one is your favourite?

I enjoyed this title alot. You can buy this game on the VC now. It's funny to see the odd jobs Mario has done.

I didn't know it was on VC already. But it's 500 points, right?
A bit steep for such a simple game IMHO. 100 points would have been more that enough I guess...

I tried this one out on an emulator a while back, and was impressed. It’s probably not true for the newer generations of gamers, that have grown up with N64 and beyond, but it’s funny how the old ‘simple’ sports games keep drawing people back that grew up with the NES. Being a Tennis player, I have tried several different Tennis games (game boy Tennis, super Tennis, Mario Tennis 64). Although I decided against purchasing this one, since I am content with owning the other Tennis games, I did enjoy the learning curve to the game. If I recall correctly, I believe I had to work my way up through the difficulty levels (the highest difficulty was too tough when I tried it initially).

Out of those original "Sports Series" games I think Tennis was the best, but then the others are pretty crappy (Golf is alright though). Tennis is an okay game, I haven't played it much but got a bit of fun out of it.

I've never benn into sport games, but I found this OK. This is the kind of game I can play when I've got nothing in particular to do on a rainy day.