Mame Tennis Games

[Jacinda Saleeby]

Mypick has to be the two SNES classics; Super Tennis (as someone already mentioned, particularly the special version with the pseudo-real names and the swearing players!) and then there's the little known Super Family Tennis which only got a JAP release (I think). If you like Super Tennis (which I loved), Family Tennis was more of the same but with nicer graphics and some nice little comedy background touches on each of the courts.

Virtua Tennis 1 on Dreamcast. Simply, arcadey, amazing fun in doubles mode. Tim Henman looks like a Zombie. Mark Philapousis looks like the Wolfman. Laugh out loud commentator speech in the attract sequence.

Konami Ping Pong. Not sure how it plays today but back on the Amstrad and Speccy it was slick, fast and very satisfying. A good tennis game should have the player getting more and more tense as the rally lengthens, and the speed of Ping Pong (or at least it felt fast at the time) made that very exciting.

So I don't have access to an Amiga / St and can't really emulate well in the lounge at this point. I seem to have most of the bases covered and probably need to get my Dreamcast repaired or replaced by the sounds of things!

One final thought, had a look at the videos for Super Tennis Champs. My god, the "inspiration" from Super Tennis is shameless! The spirtes have the same poses, the ball moves in the same way, everything. They must have done a rom dump on those sprites or something...

EA's Grand Slam Tennis on the Wii is also a favourite, I suppose it's like a more advanced version of Wii Sports Tennis, you can control the player's movement and it's got motion plus- so you can slice and spin. It's also got the added bonus of John McEnroe shouting "you cannot be serious" through the Wiimote speaker!

I'd completely forgotten about Match Point, so I just looked it up on Youtube, and for once (for a Speccy game) it actually looks a lot better than i remember it - pretty good considering it was a very early Speccy game I think.

and then there's the little known Super Family Tennis which only got a JAP release (I think). If you like Super Tennis (which I loved), Family Tennis was more of the same but with nicer graphics and some nice little comedy background touches on each of the courts.

Virtua Tennis (1-3) was great up until VT2009. That one just didn't feel right and by time they brought it back in-house for VT4 it seemed like they'd forgotten what was so good about it in the first place.

Yesterday after work I did something that I haven't done in years - played tennis. Not Virtua Tennis, but real tennis where you actually sweat and everything. Barbaric! But fun.

I've read a few books on the history of video games and there have been several that have laid claim to be the "first video game". The chronological order of these games are pretty well documented so it basically boils down to the actual definition of "video game" that you want to use. Well given my tennis match from yesterday I thought I would give a respectful nod to a game that was AMONG the first - Tennis for Two. (Apologies to Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device, OXO/Noughts and Crosses, NIM on the NIMROD, etc.)

In 1958, the Brookhaven National Laboratory was having its annual Visitor's Day and the staff was putting together various exhibits for the visiting public. Physicist William Higinbotham created an interactive display using an analog computer and an oscilloscope which simulated the side view of a tennis court and allowed 2 people to each use a controller with a knob and a button to hit a ball back and forth over the net at each other at varying angles - he titled the game Tennis for Two.

It took Higinbotham about three weeks to develop the plans for the game and then it was actually built by Robert Dvorak. When the people started touring it was such a hit that reportedly there were lines out the building to check it out. Check out the video below and if you like you can read more about it on the Brookhaven National Laboratory's webpage HERE.

And then 42 years later Virtua Tennis was released on the Dreamcast.

Mario Tennis is a light-hearted and fun arcade sports game. It brings together your favorite characters from the Mario universe and puts them on the court for some wild tennis matches. The game is packed with power-ups, special moves, and a variety of courts that add extra excitement to every match.

Street Hoop, also known as Street Slam, is a street basketball arcade multiplayer game that delivers an exciting and vibrant take on the sport. It lets you experience the thrill and energy of streetball with its easy-to-master gameplay and variety of basketball moves.

Besides having Tournament Mode and Exhibition Mode from the arcade version, the home versions include a World Tour Mode and Court Games mode. These game modes replace the Challenge Mode that was present in the arcade version.

This is the main mode of the game. In this mode, the user creates a tennis player (male or female), and enters the SPT World Tour with a ranking position of 300th, and with the goal of becoming the number 1. The player needs to improve his ranking by winning matches and tournaments, as well as his abilities by successfully completing training minigames and academy exercises. This mode also allows the player to interact with the featured professional tennis players.

This mode is similar to the arcade version of the game. The user can select either a featured professional player or one of his created players (from the World Tour mode), and must win 5 matches in different surfaces and venues to win the tournament. If the player performs well enough and gets a very good rank (A), he is challenged by Duke, one of the game's bosses. However, if the player performs well in the tournament but achieves a mediocre rank (D), he is challenged by King instead.

The game received "generally favorable reviews" on all platforms according to the review aggregation website Metacritic.[1][2][3][4] In Japan, Famitsu gave the PlayStation 3 version a score of 28 out of 40.[10]

Gabe Boker of GameZone gave the Xbox 360 version a score of 8.2 out of 10, saying, "It provides solid online multiplayer, a career mode bursting with life, and addictive mini-games fans have come to expect."[32] Ronnie Hobbs gave the PS3 version 7.5 out of 10, calling it "A fast, frantic, and high-octane style of tennis. If this sounds like fun then you will feel right at home. Anyone looking for a more realistic approach will want to find another source."[33] Louis Bedigian gave the PSP version eight out of ten, calling it "a content-filled, mini-game-infused joyride that anyone can love."[34]

Created by Russian software engineer Alexey Pajitnov, the goal of Tetris is for players to fill in each line with new shapes that fit in the empty spaces. Completed lines disappear, and the player earns points for each line that is successfully filled in. The shapes which a player uses throughout the game are called tetrominoes. The game is won by completing each line successfully until the entire screen is filled in, up to the very top.

First created in 1980, the game was an instant success, and is now almost a type of 80s icon. Originating in Japan, the game was quickly released to the United States, and by the following year, Americans were playing 250 million games of Pac-Man weekly on just 100,000 Pac-Man machines.

The game of Pong had one simple premise: avoid missing the ball, just as a player would in real-world table tennis. Despite, and perhaps even because of, the simplicity of the game, its popularity soared.

The SpaceWar! video game was developed in 1962 by Steven Russell, and was designed as a space combat/action game. Originally created for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology community, it was circulated by students and faculty members to a wider audience, and gained popularity as an arcade game.

The SpaceWar! game is played with two spaceships which attempt to shoot one another in space, each controlled by a player. They have a limited amount of fuel and a limited amount of artillery, which if they deplete means sudden death. Players could maneuver their spaceships by rotating clockwise, counterclockwise, and moving forward, as well as perform actions such as firing torpedoes.

The first ever video game tournament, held in Los Altos, California in1972, featured the SpaceWar! game. Pong would emerge on the video game scene just six weeks later, presumably inspired by the events of the tournament.

Though at the time that Higinbotham created Tennis for Two, there was no true modern arcade (as we think of them today), people lined up at the Brookhaven National Laboratory for a turn at Tennis for Two. To play the game, two players used separate controllers equipped with buttons and dials to control their serve, and these controllers were hooked up to one computer.

William Higinbotham was head of the electronics division for the Manhattan Project during World War II. He was a nuclear physicist who supported nuclear nonproliferation, and was the First Chair of the Federation of American Scientists.

Resembling something of a combination between bowling and basketball, Skee-Ball players aim for one of several rings with holes by pitching a ball down an alley toward a set of rings. The goal is to get the ball in one of the top two rings, which are each worth 100 points, or one of the middle rings, which earn more points for a player than the lower ones.

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