Skip to main content

NES Tennis: Yet another sports title

Tennis is the last sports launch title I'll be playing (sorry, 10-Yard Fight, no one likes you), and it's not awful. As with Soccer, I had such low expectations that I was not disappointed.

Bits of Tennis are found in the game NES Remix, so I knew what to expect. I mean, it's tennis, so you're bouncing a ball back and forth across a net. The action is fast paced and challenging, which is why it's still somewhat enjoyable.

Tennis mostly does what you'd expect: you control a player, who runs around hitting a ball back and forth over a net against a computer-controlled player. If you're quick enough, you can volley (hit the ball back without letting it bounce), but I found this usually resulted in the computer scoring against me. Eventually, either you or the computer will miss, and it's on to the next serve. I struggled to figure out how to get the ball to go where I wanted, so the whole experience felt random.

You can choose the difficulty level but not the length. You have to play a full match of tennis, which is long! A match is the best of three sets. To win a set, you must win six games and be at least two games ahead of your opponent. A game would typically last a couple minutes, so the whole match lasted about half an hour. I stopped playing after my first match (which I lost), because I had no desire to play again. That match was fun enough, but what would be the point of playing again? I'd rather play Super Mario Bros.

One big downside of Tennis is that the two-player mode is cooperative (doubles). They had to do it this way because the opponent's side of the court is in the background and therefore appears much smaller. I'm not sure why they didn't do it left and right like in Soccer. The frontal perspective is kind of nice, but probably not worth losing competitive two-player.

I wouldn't recommend NES Tennis, but it's all right. I liked it better than Baseball.

Grade: D

Linked Reviews
"Tennis is playable, but considering that stands as one of its primary advantages, it's a backhanded compliment."
— Stephen Kelly, Nintendo Life, 4/10

"Tennis isn't bad by any stretch of the imagination, but that doesn't mean it's good, either."
— Pat Contri, Ultimate Nintendo: Guide to the NES Library, 2/5

"NES Tennis holds up well—there is, after all, only so much you can do with a real-world sport whose basic format is simple enough that it could be distilled down to serve as the topic of the world’s first video game."
— Jeremy Parish, NES Works

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Super Mario Bros. 2: The great American Mario sequel

I began my retro-video-gaming quest two and a half years ago with Super Mario Bros. To celebrate this, my 100th review, I've chosen Super Mario Bros. 2, one of my all-time favorite NES games. Super Mario Bros. 2 is a reskin of the Famicom Disk System game, Dream Factory: Heart-Pounding Panic . Howard Philips, the PR face of Nintendo of America in the early days, rejected the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2  ("The Lost Levels") for American release because it was too difficult. Mario's creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, helped develop Heart-Pounding Panic. Its creative use of both vertical and horizontal side-scrolling made it the ideal candidate for a Mario sequel. This was a stroke of genius, as it is far superior to the Lost Levels. Its deviations from the Mario formula should not be held against it, because there was no Mario formula back then! Among the many differences from the original Super Mario Bros. is the fact that, at the beginning of each stage, you choose whether ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Legend of the Mystical Ninja: A whimsical adventure in Japan

Growing up, I played The Legend of the Mystical Ninja at my best friend's house (though I was bad at it), and I had been looking forward to trying it again. It's an unusual, fun adventure game. I recently learned that in Japan Legend of the Mystical Ninja was preceded by three Famicom games and followed by three more Super Famicom games, none of which were localized for the West! The Japanese name of the series is Go for It, Goemon! It's based on a 1980 Japanese arcade game called Mr. Goemon. The emulation community put out fan translations of the Famicom games between 2009 and 2017. Surprisingly, no translations of the Super Famicom games existed until 2020, all three created by the same people . The series takes place in early-modern Japan. It has a light-hearted anime aesthetic. The titular character is a spiky-haired kid named Goemon. If a second player joins the simultaneous action (highly recommended), Goemon is assisted by an older, overweight ninja named Ebisumaru. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Super Mario Land: A short, oddball entry

Super Mario Land was a Game Boy launch title, but not the pack-in game. That honor went to Tetris. Tetris is an incredible game with perennial appeal, and it propelled the Game Boy's explosive success. Super Mario Land is not as impressive but still fun. Super Mario Land is a bit odd. It doesn't feel like other Mario games. Only four of the classic enemies appear: Bullet Bills, Piranha Plants, Goombas, and Koopa Troopas. Even the koopas behave differently: their shells can't be kicked and instead explode like bombs. Most of the enemies are assorted creatures, like spiders, robots, ghosts, and Moai heads. The Fighter Flies from the original Mario Bros. arcade game also appear. The Super Mushroom, coins, and Super Star appear, as well as question blocks. The Fire Flower, however, has been replaced by a similar flower power-up. It lets Mario throw a bouncing ball. It ricochets off walls like an old screen saver, and only one can be on screen at a time. Weird! Extra-life mushr...
Post a Comment
Read more