After playing Sumo’s two Sega crossover racing games, I decided to check out their earlier entry in the larger “Sega Superstars” series, despite having had negative feelings about tennis games in the past. As it turns out, playing tennis matches is my least favourite part of this game.
I don’t know why it is I can’t get the hang of it. There’s four shot types mapped to two buttons, but I just couldn’t grok in which situations each shot would be useful. It’s easy to Pong your way past an opponent early in the game, but as it progresses the computer will just play you instead, and I didn’t understand how to improve apart from finding exploits for the AI. Super moves are pretty fun, well implemented and representative of the character, and I appreciate that they’re not usually an automatic win button but add a bit of wackiness.
I just didn’t find the matches fun, though. I really liked the minigames and silly missions in the “Superstars” mode, but unfortunately playing matches and tournaments were integrated into this mode. The DS version separates them out from the minigames, while tying all character unlocks to the tournament mode. I didn’t unlock all characters in any version of the game due to the ramping difficulty of these matches.
In terms of being a celebration of Sega mascots, it’s quite good. There’s a bit too much doubling up on characters from certain franchises, but others get their due either through themed courts with some fun background details, or in the mission mode (Virtua Cop/Squad, Puyo Puyo, and Space Harrier get very nifty minigames for example). Of course I was on the lookout for Jet Set Radio representation, and the Shibuya Terminal court is very pleasing. Its missions involve hitting balls into graffiti spots to paint them in, complete with new tags for the various characters in this game. Beat and Gum are playable, and characters like DJ Professor K, Piranha, and Corn appear on the sideline while Combo provides you paint cans for missions. It’s all themed after the first game (not preferred)… except for the graffiti tags that serve as court decoration, which appear to be drawn from Future.
Anyway! Let’s talk about the different versions, since I spent money on them. The PS3 one is of course in HD, but it was released before the implementation of trophies on the system. It looks good and plays well. On Wii you have more control options but it can get confusing; the Classic Controller is supported but in-game prompts do not reflect this. Motion controls are available, but not in certain minigames for some reason. Visually, aurally, structurally, it’s the same game, but in 480p of course. I’m pretty sure some missions are subtly different, but the biggest change is that the ball’s trail is different depending on your shot type; it seems like an oversight that the HD version doesn’t have this feature.
On DS it also has the trail colours, and of course graphically it’s much cut back. It has all the same features though, apart from most of the super shots having simpler mechanical effects. The missions are of course different but mostly the same concepts; I prefer the scrolling Space Harrier stages in this version which reuse sprites from the source game (although remaking these assets in 3D on the other versions is cool too). The Jet Set Radio graffiti missions on DS also have pictorial tags as opposed to the consoles’ being mainly character names.
So I had fun with the game, but not because of the core tennis playing. More from appreciating Sumo’s attention to detail and love for Sega franchises expressed through their assets and the minigame modes. Using the tennis mechanics to knock down zombies or bump around monkey balls was novel and basically I’m a sucker for Jet Set Radio!
