Children are stupid – got that? They can’t speak properly until they’re fi ve, and most of them don’t know the difference between left and right. Unless they’re educated, it’s best to put them up for adoption and consider them an ideal justifi cation for contraceptives. If we lived in Bizarro World and nobody cared about ironing their shirts or feeding their pets, those exact sentences would’ve been in the Sega Superstars Tennis manual.

Sega Superstars Tennis is undernourished, sub-par Virtua Tennis for the kiddies. Unfortunately, Sega has the socalled ‘kiddies’ down as dim-witted, Bakers Complete-munching individuals who have a penchant for stupidity. This is Virtua Tennis at its most basic, with only a mechanicthreatening special system to add a layer of interest. Hitting X from side to side comprises most of the gameplay, while the characters aren’t very imaginative either.

Sega Superstars Tennis is undernourished, sub-par Virtua Tennis for the kiddies. Unfortunately, Sega has the socalled ‘kiddies’ down as dim-witted, Bakers Complete-munching individuals who have a penchant for stupidity. This is Virtua Tennis at its most basic, with only a mechanicthreatening special system to add a layer of interest. Hitting X from side to side comprises most of the gameplay, while the characters aren’t very imaginative either.

The Sega theme is questionably adapted, too. How, for example, was OutRun ever meant to work as a static arena for a sports game? Okay, having the theme tune is nice, but there’s very little to differentiate it from a generic ‘street’ level from any number of throwaway sports games.

The bulk of the game is a mode called Superstars, which is a poor man’s version of the traditional career mode. In this, there’s the option to conquer sets of levels, based on the particular theme of that game. Unfortunately, this is another way of repackaging the tournaments and single matches from the main game, but there are a few novel additions. The House Of The Dead theme is made up of zombie-hitting levels that can be quite exciting – at fi rst.

Sega Superstars Tennis is just too repetitive. The mini-games are fl accid, and there’s nothing here to sustain the experience beyond a few boring hours. The Sega link is rather tenuous, while the tennis has barely evolved beyond a simplistic, Pong-esque concept. Even for the most ardent Sega fans, this is a strained sports title that struggles to grasp the nuances of accessibility, or the importance of longevity. As such, we believe that everyone should stick with the Virtua Tennis series, if only to maintain some self-respect.

Samuel Roberts