Power Smash Mobile Impressions

TOKYO--Remember Super Real Tennis, the imported 3D tennis simulation from Sega? This game's lovely, console-quality graphics turned all our assumptions about mobile gaming's limitations on their heads, when we saw it at this year's E3. Later in the year, it seems that Sega's done the exact same thing again, only this time at the Tokyo Game Show. Power Smash Mobile, its latest mobile tennis game, looks like it will end up being as much of a quantum leap ahead of Super Real Tennis as that game is ahead of the rest of the competition.

Power Smash Mobile is still in development, so Sega had a short demo video on display at the NTT DoCoMo booth, in lieu of a playable version. The 30-second demo was looping on still another Fujitsu FOMA i900 series phone. The game's demo video showed two muscular male players in the middle of a spirited grass-court match. Graphically, Power Smash Mobile appears to be an improvement on Super Real Tennis (which is now a year and a half old in Japan) in every conceivable area. The player models look much more realistic, for one thing, with texture mapping that shows off their muscle tone, facial expressions, and even minute details on their clothing. For another, their range of motion has enjoyed a dramatic increase. It almost looks like Sega has doubled the number of animation frames for the players, who now move much more realistically. One particularly breathtaking sequence in the video depicted a player going up for a Sampras-style overhead smash, complete with scissor kick. Finally, the whole shebang has undergone a noticeable speed boost. Power Smash Mobile appears to run at around 25 frames per second, which is a significant increase over Super Real's high teens.

There is no word from Sega on a possible US release for Power Smash Mobile, embedded on certain handsets or otherwise--but judging from the level of technology used in the game, it could be a very long wait.

For more updates, be sure to check GameSpot's coverage of Tokyo Game Show 2004.