Genesis ~ ATP Tour Tennis Review

Overview

0- ATP Tour Tennis is the official game of the ATP Tour on the Sega Genesis. With it's ATP Tennis Inc licence, it doesn't fail to deliver the goods unlike it's predecessor Wimbledon.

Gameplay

Tennis on the Sega Genesis just doesn't get much better than this! Unlike Wimbledon's slow gameplay, Sega have added SPEED. Not only that, but having the option of changing it the way you see fit. And now the game plays more realistically. Meaning more of the fun and excitement that you'd expect to see and play in real life tennis. The game is extremely easy to pick up and play, and is highly addictive in 2-player mode.

10 out of 10

Graphics

The ingame graphics and animations look near identical to Wimbledon, which is a bit disappointing. However, with the increase in the game's speed, the game now runs real smooth. The graphics outside of the game are a big improvement. The menus have the ATP logo scrolling along the background looking very nice indeed. Because we have real players now, we have real photographs of them. Even if they are black and white, and highly pixelated, they are still alot better than drawn up pictures of them.

4 out of 5

Sound and Music

The moment you first hear the music at the intro screen, it just makes you want to keep on listening to it. It just sounds so heart-warming, and lets you think about those glory moments of tennis! The rest of the music sounds very good, but not exactly spot on with tennis in mind. Some sound effects sound very poor. The ball bouncing on the court sound more like bouncing a rock on concrete and the umpire sounds more like a boring robot. A touch of humour is added at the end of games, when you can make your players yell out many funny complaints like "C"MON!" and "That was on the line!".

4 out of 5

Playability and Versatility

The major improvement over Wimbledon is how you can now dive for the ball when you're too far away from it! This certainly takes away those frustrations of limited reach. Big overhead slams are perhaps a bit to hard to connect, now with the increase in speed.

The AI of the computer can be predictable at times. Sometimes when they return your hit close to a side of the court, you will get a nice big gap on the other side to hit into. Still, this doesn't mean the game is easy. Depending on who you play, they can provide you with a decent or stern challenge.

4.5 out of 5

Options

Having real players in this game really boosts it's authority of being an ATP Tour game. We have many good players on the ATP Tour, such as Michael Chang and Pete Sampras. We also have the former greats of tennis, such as Rod Laver and Ken Rosewell. All the game modes you'd expect are here. Exhibition matches include singles or doubles, in one or two player. The main feature of the game of course is the ATP Tour. Here is where you get to create your own character, and get to take him on a world-wide tour of various tennis tournaments, earning prize money. Whenever you win a tournament, you get the reward of improving your player's skill points. This may sound good and all, but there are a couple of flaws. If you beat a good player like Thomas Muster in the first round of a tournament, he will drop rankings and play worse from then on. The entire ATP tour takes too long to complete, there should have been an option where you can play one set matches to complete it alot faster. And if you do complete the ATP Tour, you have to play the same tournaments all over again. Plus there are no grand slams. Personally, I think one round of the ATP is enough.

The Senior ATP Tournament is a nice bonus to the game, where you get to use one of the senior players and play a short tournament with the other tennis greats.

4.5 out of 5

For: fun and exciting, real players, pictures of the players, very good music, ATP Tour, good challenge.

Against: some poor sound effects and ingame graphics, some flaws with the ATP Tour, overhead slams quite difficult to connect with.

This is a fine effort from Sega.

They have managed to improve on nearly all aspects of Wimbledon and throw in a few extras. We have a winner here.

This is undoubtedly one of the best 16-bit tennis games. -0

Platform: Sega Genesis

Genre: Sports, Tennis

Producer: Sega Sports

Year: 1994

Runs on: Genecyst, Kgen, Gens, Dgen

Scoring Summary

Gameplay: 10 out of 10

Graphics: 4 out of 5

Sound and Music:

4 out of 5

Playability and Versatility: 4.5 out of 5

Options: 4.5 out of 5

Total: 27 out of 30

Overall:

90%

Platinum Award!

~Reviewed by Twirl