Virtua Tennis

About Virtua Tennis

Virtua Tennis (1999), Power Smash in Japan, is Sega AM3's NAOMI arcade tennis game, whose 2000 Dreamcast version added the World Circuit career mode and became one of the console's defining games.

Virtua Tennis in Depth

In the arcade mode the player has to win five matches on different surfaces and venues to take a tournament, and a strong run brings a challenge from a boss called Master. Exhibition matches can be singles or doubles for up to four human players, lasting from one game to one set, with a choice of court and opponent skill. The licensed players include Jim Courier, Tim Henman, Tommy Haas, Carlos Moyá, Yevgeny Kafelnikov, Cédric Pioline, Thomas Johansson and Mark Philippoussis.

The home versions add World Circuit, in which the player starts ranked 300th and climbs by winning matches and completing training exercises that unlock further events. The exercises were designed to be fun rather than realistic, each with three levels of difficulty, and beating the hardest with time or points to spare unlocks outfits for use in every mode.

Making Virtua Tennis

Kumagai wanted a game with broad appeal amid the one-on-one fighting games filling Japanese arcades, hoping to repeat the success of Sega AM2's Virtua Striker, and planned one that could be both casual and competitive. Even after the tennis idea was approved, many inside Sega were sceptical. Her team visited a tennis school for research and, on advice from Virtua Striker director Satoshi Mifune, simplified the controls to a joystick and buttons; location tests went well. The Dreamcast conversion took seven months, doubled the roster to sixteen players and used Japanese tennis players as references for the animation.

Game Machine listed the arcade version as Japan's third most successful arcade game of 1999. The Dreamcast version, released in Europe on 8 September 2000, topped the UK all-formats chart, sold 368,035 copies in North America by 2003 and drew universal acclaim, with a nomination for Game of the Year at the Interactive Achievement Awards. It is credited with popularising tennis games, and Microsoft's Top Spin team cited it as an inspiration.