528th played so far
Genre: Sports
Platform: SNES
Year of Release: 1991
Developer: Tokyo Shoseki
Publisher: Nintendo
It feels like there are a fair amount of tennis games on the list. I suppose it’s the standard approach – Pong started it, and even afterwards it’s a pretty simple formula to start with as a sports formula. Super Tennis is, I guess, a predecessor to the Mario Tennis series, one of the games where Nintendo’s mascot doesn’t appear yet.
Even so there are a bunch more tennis games, both older and newer, and even if Top Spin 3 has been a while, there are a bunch more coming up down the line.
Our Thoughts
Tennis games are usually cut from the same cloth. The rules of tennis don’t change that much and while you can tweak the moves a bit, most of the rules are already present in this game. You change the graphics, but even then there is a standard setup looking from the back of one player. It’s probably why it can easily show up fully in a game like Wii Sports. We see 2D sprites here, but the basic gameplay stays the same between all of these.
And yeah, I realise there are probably control differences. I’m not skilled enough to tell the differences, and don’t have the time to figure it out.
One of the small touches that worked quite well were the added voice samples. They were still rare in the era, but the limited vocabulary from the referee allows for some of it, and it adds to the atmosphere. It seemed like a nice touch.
Beyond that, the game feels nice and simple. There are simple tournament modes that work quite well and the controls are straightforward. It’s pretty good fun, really.
Final Thoughts
There’s nothing remarkable about this game, but it shows how tennis is such a good sport – better, I feel, than something like football.ย There’s nothing special, possibly, but it works well and looks good in a SNES way. Just fun.