Imagine this: you're the head of Sega, and you've got this great back catalogue of games, but the problem is you're not making any money off them. You've tried remaking the games and releasing them in a collection (see the woeful Sega Classics Collection) and attempted to revive old series with new games (Alien Syndrome, Altered Beast and After Burner), but it didn't work. You remember that you've got this pretty good tennis engine lying around that was used in Virtua Tennis 3 – why not put tennis rackets into the hands of a few Sega characters and see how it works out; after all, it did work for Nintendo. It's perfectly sound logic to make the most of an extensive back catalogue and try to bring back some characters the company hasn't used for a while, but Sega Superstars Tennis just doesn't seem to make the most of the opportunity.

Sumo Digital just doesn't seem to delve deep enough into the Sega back catalogue for inspiration. Most of the player roster is made up from characters from the Sonic the Hedgehog series, with other characters from more recent Sega efforts like NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams, Jet Set Radio and Space Channel 5 making appearances. The only characters revived from obscurity for the game are Alex Kidd and Gillius Thunderhead (the dwarf from Golden Axe). There are several stages based on games like House of the Dead, Outrun, Space Harrier and Virtua Cop, but no characters from these games make an appearance. Sumo seems to have forgotten about popular Sega series like Phantasy Star, Streets of Rage, Virtua Fighter, Shining Force and Panzer Dragoon to name a few – they really could have done a lot more. I know I'd have been amused by seeing Ecco the Dolphin bouncing around on his tail, holding a racquet in his mouth, or people playing tennis while driving the OutRun Ferrari around the court.

Let's put the Sega fan grievances aside for a second, and look at what actually is here. The best way to really sum up Sega Superstars Tennis is that it's Sega's equivalent of Mario Tennis, running on the Virtua Tennis 3 tech. It's got sixteen of Sega's most popular characters, such as Sonic, Tails, Shadow, Amy and Dr Eggman from the Sonic series, AiAi and MeeMee from Super Monkey Ball, Ulala from Space Channel 5 and Beat and Gum from Jet Set Radio to name a few. Each court in the game has a distinct theme based on a Sega game; including each of the games which starred the selectable characters, as well as some other Sega favourites like Outrun and After Burner. Sega Superstar Tennis is fairly solid from a visual perspective, with most of the player models looking as though they've been adapted from their most recent efforts, with the obvious exception of Alex Kidd and Gillius Thunderhead; these two characters look a little bit simplistic compared to the other characters in the game. Each of the courts has been expertly polished, generally capturing the spirit of the games they're intended to represent.

Sega Superstars Tennis offers the usual trimmings you'd expect in a mascot-driven sports title – exhibition play with singles and doubles, the major solo play mode in the form of Planet Superstars, a selection of mini-games for solo and multiplayer play, and online play. Most of your time initially will be spent in the Planet Superstars mode, which consists of a number of planets with themes based around a particular Sega title. Each planet contains a number of challenges which consist of singles or doubles matches, singles or doubles tournaments, or objective based mini-games with a theme related to the game the planet is named after.

You pretty much have to slog through Planet Superstars for eight hours if you want to unlock the other half of the characters and courts, and all of the mini-games, but there are some entertaining parts to the game. Tournaments and regular matches are boring, par for the course kind of stuff, but it's when you get to planets like Virtua Cop, Space Harrier and Puyo Pop that the game really shines. This is because Sumo Digital has attempted to work tennis into the concept of these games – Virtua Cop and Space Harrier play like the arcade games, but use tennis balls instead of bullets, while Puyo Pop plays like your usual wall-style training game, with the trick being to knock out the matching Puyos. Not all of the mini-games are good though; of particular note is the Jet Set Radio graffiti game, where players need to spray a tag by collecting the correct colour of spray can and hitting the corresponding part of the tag - which is often damn near impossible to do due to the perfect standard the game requires.

The tennis mechanics are arguably the weakest part of Sega Superstars Tennis, which may surprise some given that it shares the game engine used by Virtua Tennis 3. The big difference between the two games is the level of complexity; Sega Superstars Tennis has none. I can understand that Sumo Digital has opted to go for the "easy to learn, hard to master" style of gameplay, given that it's meant to be an easily accessible, party-style game, but the problem is that Sega Superstar Tennis isn't hard to master – you'll have mastered the game by the end of the first match. The AI offers little challenge; I didn't drop a game in the Superstars mode. In fact, the game is so easy you'd have to be a retarded leper to ever lose a match. That's not really an issue with two people – because of the relatively easy play mechanics, it generally comes down to either who has the better understanding of tennis tactics, or who fills their silly power-up meter first. Anyone who played Mario Power Tennis on the GameCube can tell you how these stupid super powered shots destroy any sort of game balance and disturb the flow of play. Fortunately, most parts of the game allow you to turn them off.

Online options exist for those who've exhausted solo play and are looking for a human to offer up something of a reasonable challenge. Finding a match can prove difficult – I did my play-testing on the first weekend of release and only managed to get half a dozen ranked matches over the course of three days. Ranked online matches force you to play with the super shots turned on, which is an obvious annoyance. On a more positive note, the latency is much improved when compared to Virtua Tennis 3 on the Xbox 360 – I seldom ever had any major lag trouble, even while playing with Americans. Sega Superstars Tennis also offers up a good assortment of achievements – some are based around beating certain things in the single player modes, while others are generally more skill based.


In spite of its less-than-stellar representation of the Sega franchise base and ridiculously easy play mechanics, Sega Superstars Tennis manages to be an entertaining game. It's not something you really want to spend a hundred bucks on, because there's only really enough here for a weekend's worth of entertainment. Sega fans should give it a rental, but everyone else should still be best served by Virtua Tennis 3, Mario Power Tennis or even Wii Sports.