Best Tennis Games

This is the type of thread that we used to do all the time on the NGamer Forum, but haven't done for ages. And as Wimbledon started today, here's one about Tennis: a sport that I'd say is better in computer games than it is in real life.

There really aren't any shite tennis games. The worst one I can think of - the unbelievably dull Grand Slam Tennis on Wii - still plays a decent game of tennis at it's heart. When they're good though, they're magic.

Anna Kournikova's Smash Court Tennis on the PSone and Mario Tennis on the N64 are my two favourites, as there's no arsing about with either of them; they're both very 'pure', focused strictly on the gameplay, and gimmicks are kept to a minimum. How about youse though? What are some of your favourite tennis games?

Always liked the Top Spin games on the OG Xbox.

Shout out to the obvious Wii Sports Tennis.

Nothing will ever feel as magical as that first time swinging the Wii Remote and it actually working. All of my gaming mates played endless hours of that tennis, but so did everyone else. Of course, it wasn't really because it was exactly like playing a real game of tennis. Really, it was just a game of a few very simple types of shot and the rest was timing, but Nintendo did their classic job of tricking us all into thinking it was magic.

Other than that, I've not played much beyond a spot of Mario Tennis and/ or Pong.

I was a big fan of the Mario Tennis game on Gamecube. I think the daft modes and powerups kept me interested in the game over your stuffier sims and their ilk.

Big fat dishonourable mention goes to Tennis on NES - I was suckered in as a younger lad on Virtual Console by that shite. Oh look, Mario's the umpire! Oh look, it's a shit game of tennis being played.

I don't think anything has topped the very first Virtua Tennis game on dreamcast in a long time, not even the later sequels captured that same magic for me. Also this is probably cheating but I loved the Table Tennis in wii sports resort.

Agree with Jaster - Virtua Tennis is the best tennis game I've played. I've not played 4 yet, but 2 and 3 are also exceptional tennis games with superior career modes, but the first game came at a time when four people still gathered around a CRT television. It was magical and a system seller in a way, which is mad to think for a tennis game not called Pong. Always thought it was much better than Mario Tennis.

The tennis game I've played the most may end up being the Jimmy Connors game on the SNES. It was a nice little sim-style game, if I remember rightly. As good as it was, the answer I'm going to give is Mario Tennis. In before the series started to get a little weird with its power shots, it just played a good game of tennis. Mario Tennis Open was a great little game, too.

I wish I'd played Super Tennis.

Wii Sports tennis is probably the most fun I've had in a tennis game; Tennis, on the Gameboy with Mario as the umpire was probably the tennis game I've spent the most time playing. That was a belter until I worked out how to exploit the AI.

Other than those I'm out, though not through lack of trying. I think I had a Virtua Tennis game which was ok, and about once per console gen I look up tennis games, but they normally don't take my fancy and lack critical acclaim.

The stinkiest tennis-ish game I've played is some guff that was free with the PSN subscription a few months back. Can't remember it's name, but you lob a demented frizbee at another player. Handled like garbage and immediately uninstalled it.

I feel like a pure fanny for not saying anything about Wii Sports Tennis. Buskalilly’s done a good job of saying how I feel about it too – that first time swinging the Wii remote about and seeing it all play out on the TV screen is a genuine gaming highlight of mine.

Tennis on the NES, what a belter! I sort of remember somebody voting for that as one of the best games in the Mario vote thread that I ran a few years ago, and giving them pelters for it. Who was that? Anyway, I played NES Tennis for a decent bit after unlocking it in the GameCube Animal Crossing. While I think it’s fine for something that came out during the early Middle Ages, it didn’t get any better than ‘meh’. That Game Boy version Muss typed about was all right though.

Virtua Tennis is quality too. The airport in my town used to have an amusements with a load of late 90s/early 2000s SEGA cabinets, and during one school summer holiday my mate and I must have spent about thirty quid on Virtua Tennis alone. I found the learning curve of it’s gameplay and subsequently mastering it to be very satisfying. I’ve since bought the first two on the Dreamcast, the third one on PSP, the 2009 edition on 360 and the fourth game on Wii, and they’re all very good (except the last one on Wii – no MotionPlus!). It’s definitely a series that I rate highly, and it’s a shame that SEGA haven’t done anything with it in about five years.

Super Tennis is such an obvious thing to include with the SNES Mini, what with it being such a multiplayer-centric game. Does anybody know the reasons why it’s never been rereleased? I hope it’s not a similar story to Plok, where the original source code was lost years ago. Cracking game.

Muss wrote:

The stinkiest tennis-ish game I've played is some guff that was free with the PSN subscription a few months back. Can't remember it's name, but you lob a demented frizbee at another player. Handled like garbage and immediately uninstalled it.

Disc Jam. Oh my lord, you hit the nail on the head. A decent concept but it played horribly. I wish there was a good squash game come to think of it, there was Cosmic Smash on the Dreamcast that used the Virtua Tennis engine but it was only released in Japan. Used to enjoy the painting mini-game in Mario Power Tennis which is as close to squash as I can think of.

Mario Tennis is in my top three Mario franchise games, it's so good. The right mixture of being more fantastical than real tennis, and simultaneously playing a solid game of tennis that didn't drown itself in pointless additions. Oh, and having enough content to reward longplay (looking at you Open). Mario Power Tennis was similar once you turned the daft power shots off. And I quite enjoyed the tennis in Super Monkey Ball 2, but as a fun curio, leagues below those two.

Drunkalilly wrote:

Shout out to the obvious Wii Sports Tennis.

No Andy in the thread yet, so I'm going to have to urinate on the altar on this occasion: Wii Sports Tennis is overrated in my opinion. I completely accept that this might have been because I played it with family, and so obviously there wasn't the gay abandon invested, whereas I played Mario Tennis with mates. Whatever: the auto-run, the atmosphere-less silent courts, the silent Miis, the fact that it was all in timing and barely cleverer than that while pretending it was... It ranks below Mario Tennis Open and its sequel's table tennis for me.

Cleaning the urine off the altar (!) and putting some flowers there instead: Wii Sports Tennis is the best tech demo of all time. I also experienced the joy that some o'y'all described the first time you used the Wii Remote to let you play tennis on your telly roughly like you'd play tennis in real life. We all know the story: it made gamers of people who'd not picked up a joypad in years, if ever.

I'm a bit late, and am mostly here to agree on Mario Tennis on the N64 / GameCube, and actually once you turn all shit off, the WiiU version's great for multiplayer.

I'm caught in two minds about Wii Sports: It felt like, when I could smash the ball well away from the oppoents' reach, I was really being a good tennis guy. But for extreme hardcore gamers (TM), not being able to move manually was a big problem. My sister (who was also one half of an unstoppable Yoshi/Bowser Mario Tennis combo) stopped playing after about 3 goes.

Also, as some of you already have done, a big shout out to Super Tennis; I would say that, what Mario Tennis is praised for, Super Tennis had already got right. At the very least, the characters should have been Miis in Wii Sports...

ZeroJones wrote:

Cleaning the urine off the altar (!) and putting some flowers there instead: Wii Sports Tennis is the best tech demo of all time. I also experienced the joy that some o'y'all described the first time you used the Wii Remote to let you play tennis on your telly roughly like you'd play tennis in real life. We all know the story: it made gamers of people who'd not picked up a joypad in years, if ever.

Obviously personal opinions, and it depends how you define 'best tech demo'. Got the most people into gaming? (Although how many actually stayed into it past Wii Fit bar Cappa?) Got into the most hands? Captured the most imaginations? Fine, I agree. Best tech. on show, though; or best game? I'd still say Wii Sports Resort beats both.

Even by your standards, Balla, you are spectacularly wrong.

To really understand the beauty of Wii Sports, ask yourself this: why did nobody other than Nintendo ever get it so right again? The fact is, the data collected by a Wii Remote is both too complex and not complex enough. It's a mad collection of numbers and factors, but it definitely isn't the exact location and movement of a player's hand.

Nintendo were able to smartly collate and interpret what people would be going for, and build a playable and fun game around the inputs it could consistently read. It wasn't the most involved game of tennis, but the difference between the first time playing and the hundredth was profound. More crucially, it was fun for all of those games and beyond. I spent a whole summer holiday playing Wii Sports when I was 16, and it continued to be a popular multiplayer pick for a long time after. I learned to kite opponents around the court then catch them unawares, to aim, to go slow or fast as the need arose . . . it was a Nintendo game.

Wii Sports Resort is definitely a better game, but I would argue that it's a worse experience. One of the joys of Wii Sports was its simplicity, and I think WSR loses that. Plus also it couldn't recognise the way I throw a frisbee.

Apologies for distracting from your thread, Mr. Kid. I too would love to play Super Tennis but for me, it would be the first time.