Original Release: Nintendo, 1991, SNES
Other Releases: Switch (2019)
This launch title ended up being one of the most technically sound tennis games made in 2D, at the cost of user-friendliness and limited modes of play
Super Tennis (SNES, Nintendo, 1991)
Where to Buy: Amazon
How to Emulate: SNES Emulation Guide
Review by: C. M0use
One of the launch titles for the SNES, Super Tennis initially appears to be a pretty basic update of Nintendo’s NES Tennis that adds some simple tournament and multiplayer modes and tries to catch the eye with the occasional “wow Mode 7 pseudo-3D” visual that isn’t actually essential to the gameplay.
If you put the time in, however, you find it’s actually one of the most refined tennis titles of the 16 bit era, in terms of basic gameplay. The trouble is getting to that point. When you first play it it just feels “off” and too demanding, like the ball speed isn’t balanced properly given the somewhat squishy length of the court and the need to pick your swing type from four options with every return. And if you’re not all that familiar with tennis, it takes a lot of playing around to get a feel for when each shot type is appropriate.
This being a 1991 title, not only is there no “training” help to ease into this, but all the AI partners you can pick for a one-off practice game will also be SNK Merciless on you. Multiplayer with a partner at the same skill level was the intended way to go when first starting out, I guess; you can play doubles in two-player as well, though this is well before the Multitap so it’s still only two players max.
Super Tennis turns out to be a technically impressive tennis title that will be hard to appreciate if you aren’t super into tennis (or maybe even if you are) due to a very steep and demanding learning curve. Another bit of annoyance is that it didn’t ship with a battery, so if you want to play the World Tour mode outside of an emulator, you’re looking at some insanely long passwords after every match!
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