Before Sega introduced Virtua Tennis, most games based on the sport were slow-paced and terribly dull takes on the sport which did nothing for the imagination. Virtua Tennis was naturally an arcade take on the sport, but became the de facto standard for all tennis games to come. Over the last ten years, they’ve added everything you could possibly ask for in a tennis game – female players, a deep world tour mode, player editor and online play. With all of that, it seems like there was nothing left to improve upon, as though they could only go backwards from there. That is unfortunately what has happened with Virtua Tennis 2009.

Sega has handed development reigns from Hitmaker to Sumo Digital for the fourth game in the series. Sumo Digital has had plenty of experience with the series before, having previously handled the Xbox 360 and PSP versions of Virtua Tennis 3, and using the technology to produce Sega’s mascot tennis game Sega Superstars Tennis. It all sounds good on paper too; Virtua Tennis 2009 adds new pro players and a few legends, increases the collection of mini-games and number of courts, and expands the online play modes. Beyond this bunch of iterative improvements, Virtua Tennis 2009 really doesn’t change anything.


On the court, Virtua Tennis 2009 plays virtually identically to its 2007 predecessor. Changes will only be noticeable to veteran players – shot angles aren’t as wide, shot placement is a little more difficult and the diving animations have been replaced with a new player stumble as an attempt to put an end to those dreaded infinite rallies. The game has always been best enjoyed with human opponents, but Virtua Tennis 2009 takes brain dead AI to a new level. The vast majority of opponents will go down with love scores, and the ones that don’t (which is basically only the top ranked pros and the secret characters Duke, King and the legends) will utterly destroy you. There’s no happy medium, and it’s painfully annoying.

If you’re playing alone, you’ll spend the majority of your time in the World Tour mode, which has been one of Virtua Tennis’ most celebrated features since the second game. The basic concept remains the same for Virtua Tennis 2009, but the structure has been changed a bit. Players don’t start off in the Sega Professional Tour straight away, they have to play through the amateur rankings first. It’s exactly the same, except that your opponents are talentless gits and it takes forever to get through the ranks. Increasing your rank requires you to win tournaments, an astronomically easy task given that you can win with your eyes closed while playing with your toes. Unfortunately, winning tournaments gives you such a pitiful ranking boost that you need to push through about 20 – with singles and doubles titles – before you’re close to making the professional leagues. Then you get to do it all over again. They’ve somehow made what was once the best mode in the game into a hollow and repetitive snoozefest.

Since you start off with the equivalent skill level of a goose, you’ll have to spend some time building your attributes. Virtua Tennis 2009 has significantly trimmed the number of trainable attributes – there are now just three areas to be trained (ground techniques, footwork and serve/volley). One of the new ways you can build these up through practice games with your doubles partner, which helps further build a rapport with them. Over time, you’ll become friends with other players and have a wider variety of guys to player doubles and train with.


The other way to develop your abilities is through court games. These tennis-based mini-games have long been a key component of the series, and Virtua Tennis 2009 packs in a dozen of them. Only five of them are new, but the rest have seen varying degrees of cosmetic surgery to at least make them seem different. Each game focuses on working various aspects of your tennis game, for example Alien Invaders tests the accuracy of your ground strokes, 9-Ball works your serve, and the Pirate Ship game works on your footwork and volley skills. It’s all in good fun, and you can even take on friends in multiplayer versions of each game.

Speaking of multiplayer, the whole online aspect of the game has been completely reworked. It sounds pretty promising on the back of the box – full online World Tour mode, complete with tournaments, one off matches and court games. The reality isn’t quite as nifty, however; the game doesn’t let you play with any of the standard pro players when playing ranked matches, so you’ve got to use your World Tour character. That means you’ve got to grind for a heck of a lot of time offline before you stand a chance offline, which is a real drag. The online code is on roughly the same level as Sega Superstars Tennis; perfectly playable, but with very occasional physics-defying lag bursts.

Outside of the World Tour, players can participate in exhibition matches and the arcade mode, which replicated the five match play-through from the earlier arcade versions of the series. Here you can use any of the game’s professional players including the god-like Roger Federer, wunderkind Rafa Nadal, the laid back Brit Andy Murray, the lovely Maria Sharapova and the talented Williams sisters. No Australians to be seen this year, however, which is a bit of a shame, but indicative of how our local players have fallen out of form. A good performance in the arcade tournament will earn you a meeting with the hidden character, including the old favourites Duke and King, and legendary players like Boris Becker.


Sega has always brought the goods when it comes to Virtua Tennis’ visual presentation, with the arcade appearance of the game necessitating high quality visuals and a breakneck frame rate. This isn’t the case for Virtua Tennis 2009 – it actually looks somewhat worse than Virtual Tennis 3. There are many possible explanations for this, like the fact it’s not being released in the arcades, or that Sumo Digital focused on the more marketable Wii release that’s hitting in June. It’s particularly noticeable when it comes to created players, who lack the more realistic features used in the 2007 game. Many assets are recycled from Virtua Tennis 3, which gives it that iterative feeling. The game still brings tennis action at a smooth 60 frames per second; any less would be unforgiveable.

Virtua Tennis 2009 provides a decidedly fun rendition of one of the world’s most popular sports, but fans of the series can’t help but be disappointed with some of the alleged improvements. It’s nice that Sumo Digital sought to correct the diving shots and fill out the online component, but at the same time, they’ve wrecked other parts of the game. The AI is terrible, and the previously fun World Tour is now a straight out grind. There are some stupid design decisions in there too, like the fact you can only use your World Tour character in ranked online play. The game doesn’t seem as visually impressive as its predecessor, despite the fact that it came out more than 2 years ago. Virtua Tennis 2009 is still good, but not as good as its predecessors.