User Rating: 8 | Virtua Tennis GBA
Virtua Tennis is the perfect game for the GBA as it can be played for just a few minutes at a time or for hours on end. It features a top-notch world circuit that should keep anybody busy for a good amount of time, as well as exhibition and tournament modes. However, it's the world circuit where I spent most of my time so I'll focus on that for the remainder of this review. The would tour will be instantly familiar to anybody who's played Virtua Tennis in the past. Very little if anything has changed, including the minigames. The minigames serve a double purpose as they're not only a nice break from the grind of tennis matches, but also provide a means for leveling up your character. A certain game might help increase your speed on the court, while another will increase the power of your serve or increase the accuracy of your backhand. The Gamespot reviewer refers to these minigames as "wicked fun", but after playing each one countless times to level up, it got to the point where I dreaded having to go back and play them again. The gameplay in general is excellent, so good in fact that I repeatedly found myself comparing it to the Dreamcast port of Virtua Tennis and my favorite tennis game of all time, being Super Tennis for the Super Nintendo. The gameplay stacks up fairly well against these two, though my major complaint against the GBA port is that the players seem to be a bit too big. This is probably more the fault of the small GBA screen, but nevertheless it hurts the gameplay. The player's size combined with their incredible speed after a few level-ups, makes very difficult and even impossible shots routine affairs. Another problem with the gameplay is that it's incredibly easy to hit service aces. There's a very simple timing trick to serving an ace everytime, which takes much of the fun away from the game. And if you're unfortunate enough to mess up the timing, you may be faced with what is the main shortcoming of the game, being the tediously long volley. Volleys are probably the weakest point of the game. They can often be ridiculously long, since the characters are big enough and fast enough to play a ball hit anywhere on the court. Strangely enough, there seem to be longer volleys in the men's matches than the women's, which is opposite from what you'd expect from a real-life tennis match. This is because the men are naturally faster on their feet, though the speed of their shots varies very little from the speed of the women's shots. It would have been nice if we were forced to implement a different strategy depending on the sex of the character, but unfortunately this isn't the case. Despite my complaints and perceived shortcomings, the game does do a lot of things right. The graphics are excellent. The sound is as good as I've heard in a GBA game. The control is tight, allowing you to implement pinpoint strategies on court. The Gamespot reviewer goes into great detail concerning these matters, and I'd advise you to read Frank Provo's thorough review if interested. The bottom line is that even though the players are both a bit too big and a bit too fast, you can still find a lot of fun in Virtua Tennis. Especially in multiplayer mode.
