RadioSEGA Review: Sega Superstars Tennis (Xbox 360)

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Option
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RadioSEGA Review: Sega Superstars Tennis (Xbox 360)

Post by Option »

Hi everyone, this is my first review for RadioSEGA.

I will be reviewing Sega Superstars Tennis (abbreviated as SST from now on) for the 360, a spin-off game with a similar mindset like Sega Allstars Racing.

The game was released in early 2008 on a whole plethora of platforms aside from the 360, namely the Nintendo DS and Wii and the Sony Playstation 2 and 3, and developed by Sumo Digital, who also worked on several Virtua Tennis games (which is the most important thing for this review, heh).

Details aside, let's talk about the actual game at hand. SST is your standard sports game spin-off like Mario Tennis. In fact, this game pretty much plays like Mario Tennis just with a SEGA-themed skin on characters and courts. Not saying that this deja-vu feeling is particularly bad, but I just can't get around it.

For those who are not familiar with Mario Tennis (specifically the later parts), SST is essentially a standard tennis game with a little twist. You play one of many SEGA characters, and every character is capable of performing a sort of special attack (called Superstar Mode). You obviously can't use it all the time, but you slowly power it up by hitting balls and scoring points. It's indicated by the star shape below the character, the fuller the star gets, the further you are to being able to use the attack, and when it's sparkling you can set it off. Every character can do different attacks, Eggman for example throws bombs onto the other side of the court, and Ulala summons little aliens that cause the other player to dance and thus get stunned.

You can imagine that this gameplay is not specifically interesting, and without other people to play with, it actually really isn't. It's a pretty standard tennis game and the special attacks don't really spice it up that much.

The game offers a little bit variation by offering online play (only available on the 360 and PS3 versions, but believe me, not one soul is to be found online ever) and the single player "campaign", called, you guess it's name...
Right, Superstar Mode. Why the hell they named the main single player mode after the special attack powers - don't look at me, it's their idea.

Essentially, you use this mode to unlock new courts, characters and music. You accomplish this by either playing through standard tournament modes, or by playing minigames. Luckily for SEGA, this game's minigames are tennis-related. So in the Curien Mansion stage you try to kill zombies, in the Puyo levels you play Squash against walls filled with the blobs, trying to clear them, and in the Jet Set Radio stage, you shoot colored balls onto the ground to color out graffiti. Latter one is especially tedious, by the way.
Some of the stages unfortunately don't have any relation to their original game whatsoever, such as Golden Axe.

By the way, unfortunately, the characters don't seem to control that much differently, especially inside of their "classes". Every character is put to a class, such as Allrounder, Speed, Power, and so on. The difference feels extremely minor in between the classes, and every character of the same class plays exactly the same (aside from their special attack). Mario Tennis had a far better solution for this by making every character even inside their classes different.

In terms of difficulty, the game is okay. The harder CPUs can be quite challenging, and some of the levels in Superstar Mode are downright sadistic. On the other hand, the easy CPU players and the early stages in the single player mode are rather simple.

One compliment I have to give is the game being rather tight in terms of controls. It never feels like the controls are bad, unresponsive or wonky, but then again, it's really straight-forward gameplay, so it should be hard to screw that one up. But I have played tennis games with awful controls, so... yea. =P

Anyway, graphically, the game is pretty ugly. I'm not even exaggerating here. You can see that the game is made for the Wii and only was ported, but even for Wii graphics it's pretty bad. The only pretty thing is some of the stages (the Space Channel 5 one in particular), but most of them are really plain. The models are... okay, I guess. They are not really ugly, but they kinda look wonky at times, especially in some of their animations. I specifically remember the "idle" animations after choosing a character in the menus being awful. They should've done something with that. D=

Oh well. Onto the sound. The voice acting of the characters is almost entirely only grunting, but some of the lines are hilariously cheesy. Gilius, the dwarf from Golden Axe, for instance, talks with a British accent and asks if "You call that a challenge?" after scoring a point. Some of the things are pretty annoying though, I'm looking at YOU, Super Monkey Ball characters. >:[
The music is pretty good, with every stage being provided with some great remixes and original music from its game, done by Richard Jacques.

In conclusion, Sega Superstars Tennis is an alright clone to its Nintendo equivalent starring the infamous plumber. Some of the characters are blasts from the past I really enjoyed to see revived (Gilius being my personal favorite), but the game wasted a lot of potential by having so little new to offer, especially with the other versions aside from this and the PS3 ones which have no online mode.

If you like Mario Tennis, it is worth a try, tough, and overall it's not a bad game. It's just not... outstanding in any possible way.

3/5
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KC
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Post by KC »

Nice review.
I love this game but being downright fair, 3/5 is the right rating for it.
Only buy it if you're an hardcore SEGA fan or haven't played Mario Tennis or are a huge fan of this kind of games.
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Post by crippenstation »

If you like both Mario Tennis and Virtua Tennis (and I do), then you will like this game. It does kind of have a nice charm in it with all the SEGA characters and environments in the game. I agree with everything except the differences between the characters part. I find a big difference playing as a power character (i.e. Dr. Eggman) as opposed to a speed character (i.e. Beat). Try serving as both characters in back-to-back matches and see what I mean. That and I thought the Green Hill Zone, NiGHTS, and Jet Set Radio courts were nice to look at.

You should have mentioned how addictive the Puyo Pop Fever mini-game is! Especially with the Taisen 4 music going in the background!
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Post by Tru »

Great review Option! I do like Superstars Tennis, but once you've seen all it has to offer, there isn't that much to bring you back, and the gameplay just doesn't feel as much fun as say, All-Stars Racing.

I disagree about the levels though, playing in Sega themed areas was probably the main highlight for me, that and the music is a real nostalgic thrill. I especially loved being able to play as NiGHTS within the Journey of Dreams stage.
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Post by Option »

When mentioning the stages, I was talking about them graphically, and aside from the pretty colorful Space Channel 5 stage being pretty, nothing really sticked in my mind. I do remember the Curien Mansion one as well but that was because I found the idea hilarious.

But graphically, you have to admit, the stages are pretty plain. :P
"The sub-structure of the universe regresses infinitely towards smaller and smaller components. Behind atoms we find electrons - and behind electrons, quarks. Each layer unravelled reveals new secrets, but also new mysteries."
- Academician Prokhor Zakharov, For I Have Tasted The Fruit
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Post by Retrix »

Good review Option.

In itself the game is not spectacular. The single player mode is very short, possibly not a bad thing as some of the stages are a bit tedious, and the tennis seems a bit shoehorned into them: Space Harrier and Virtua Cop are essentially firing a gun with a time delay.
The regular gameplay is simple and colourful. It is very similar to Mario Tennis. I'm not a fan of the special moves though.
But it's a good game for a quick knockabout and the SEGA franchises on show are a plus point. I mean, there aren't a lot of games you can play as NiGHTS in!
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