I wonder how many of you actually remember the days when a video game wasn't really that much more than a couple of dodgy blips of light reflected on to a piece of glass. I suppose if you look at a lot of stuff publishing houses crank out these days you could argue that not much has changed, but that's not what I meant. I'm talking about the beginning - the genesis days - when you were pretty much stuck with left, right and shoot to control your light blip as up and down were generally considered optional. Come to think of it, shoot was sometimes optional, as was the case with Pong and Pac-Man, although the latter at least pioneered the use of up and down.
So Pong, remember Pong anyone? It was in every sense the first tennis game and it was copied and copied and copied. Remember those unlicensed little black stand-alone consoles with paddles on that you plugged in to your black and white TV? You know, the game where you could cheat by flipping the bat size switch mid-game and make your older sister miss so she'd get really angry, slam the paddle down and storm off? Or am I really showing my age now?
The point is that tennis has been with us since video game year dot and it always will be a real crowd-pleaser. The draw was always the multi-player aspect, two players in the old days and then up to four (sometimes via a multi-tap) from the 16-bit days onwards. This makes it really right up their on your 'must have' checklist of games you need for a good games night with your mates. This list should contain the following; the best four-player FPS you can get, the best four-player footy game, the best four-way racer, a good kart game or two, a couple of solid beat 'em ups that you know a few moves to, and a tennis game. Yes, and you can guarantee that when your mates start to get a bit tired by the sheer hectic atmosphere that most multi-player games generate, someone's bound to say, "hey, fancy a bit of tennis?"
If you own a PS2, your options are limited. Until now, you only really had two viable options (Perfect Ace withstanding) namely Namco Smash Court Pro or Sega Smash Tennis (the later being the PS2 incarnation of Virtua Tennis 2). Smash Court Pro was good enough when it came out, but Sega Tennis offered a slight improvement with more intuitive game-play, which makes sense considering the Virtua Tennis pedigree, but even that could be improved on. The problem was that the original Dreamcast version of Virtua Tennis 2 had noticeably better graphics and player animations, so you have to consider the PS2 outing a poor conversion, which means the title of 'best PS2 tennis game' is still up for grabs. So the question is now obvious: Is Smash Court Pro Tournament 2 the tennis game we've all been waiting for? Well, the answer is a resounding 'sort of'.
Loading the disc for the first time, one thing is obvious; Namco are behind this and as such the presentation from start to finish is everything you could hope for. The menus are bright and easy and there's a wealth of options and modes, including Arcade, Exhibition, Pro Tour, Championship and a tutorial mode for bringing new players up to scratch, and you can of course always plug in a multi-tap and enjoy that all-important game of four-player doubles. You also have a good selection of international players to choose from including Leyton Hewitt, Andy roddick, Tim Henman, Roger Federer, Marat Safin, Richard Gasquet, Serena williams, Lindsey Davenport, Jennifer Capriati, Daniela Hantuchova and, of course, Anna Kournikova. I don't actually remember seeing much of Miss Kournikova on the tennis courts recently and she never wins anything, but it's good to have her along all the same, if you know what I mean.
Of all the modes you can play, probably the only surprise comes in the Pro Tour mode. Choosing this option you get to create, train and manage a character and play through a selection of tournaments earning experience points to improve your stats while unlocking collectible gear (like new shorts, shirts, rackets, etc) with the money you earn along the way. This concept is nothing new and the mini games you'll play to train your character feel very familiar if you've played any Sega title, although the way the tournaments play out is a little different. Rather than have to slog through every game as you would in most tennis titles, the computer plays through and simulates most of the matches for you, only stopping to let you have a go at key points in the game, known in Smash Court Pro 2 as 'turning points'. It's here that you're given a specific task to do, rather than just winning the match however you want and it's gives the Pro Tour mode more of a mission-based campaign feel, which is pretty neat.
For example, if you enter a tournament with 32 players in it that's five full matches of first to win 3 sets, but you won't play all those games. Let's consider the first game, which might go something like this. The computer will show you a montage of highlights from the game so far and then stop at the first turning point, usually at some middle score (you know, 3 games all or something). You'll then be given a task to do and should you complete the task, the computer will then simulate the rest of the set for you and leave you one set up, whereas if you fail the task the set will go to your opponent. This carries on until the game is won. Tasks themselves are quite varied, and range from simple ones (like 'break serve to win game at 30-40','win two consecutive points', 'win game in less than 180 seconds', etc) to the more tricky variety (such as 'serve onto the service line', 'hold service game at 15-40' and 'win match with 50% NICE shots'). This way of playing out the tournaments is much more interesting than playing all the games and as such is a breath of fresh air, although I have one small complaint. Because the loading times in Smash Court Pro 2 are generous to say the least, and because there's a lot of stats and highlight flashes and what have you going on, you will spend a good deal of time tapping 'X' and willing the game to get on with it. I suppose they decided to glitz and glam this mode up a bit, but there is a lot of needless razzmatazz.
Anyway, the arcade styling that Smash Court Pro 2 has inherited from Namco is quite evident in the game's simple control scheme. However, for all it's simplicity this title is a lot less forgiving than you would expect and provides a decent challenge for even the most seasoned Virtua Tennis aficionados. The game has a wide selection of shots assigned to different buttons (circle for topspin, 'X' for slice and triangle for lob or drop shot) and naturally the direction of the shot is guided by the direction you hold on the D-pad immediately before you press the required shot button. Similarly, serving is a standard tap-then-tap-again affair, as it should be. In fact, the only surprise feature is the NICE shot, which flies in the face of tennis game convention. As far back as Jimmy Connors Tennis on the SNES, maybe further, the power of a shot has always been directly proportional to the length of time you hold the shot button down. This has always made sense since another convention of tennis games is that you can't move while holding the shot button down, meaning alert players who get into position early to charge their shot up are rewarded. Not any more, Smash Court Pro 2 rewards super powerful NICE shots to players who tap shot a split second before ball arrives, blowing the stayed conventions out of the water. It's a system that works and indeed looks good on-screen, but I can't help but think the logic behind this set up is somewhat flawed.
Talking of flaws, two other glaring issues spring to mind. Firstly, the lob and drop shot have been moved onto the same button - triangle - where lob is achieved by hitting up and triangle and a drop shot is pulled off by tapping down and triangle. This feels needlessly overcomplicated. If you're rushing to the net to collect a light ball by you opposition, the urge should be to flick a drop shot across the net. This requires you to hold up (to run forwards) then tap diagonally down and to the right (or left) with triangle, holding off hitting triangle to the last minute to try and get a NICE shot. For me, that's a little too much effort for what should be a simple maneuver and demonstrates the title's stubbornness.
Secondly, the players are often a little sluggish, especially compared to their Virtua Tennis counterparts. This means you can get a bad case of 'Sega Thumb' real quick as you subconsciously press the D-pad harder to run your guy around the court faster, in turn accentuating the difficulty in pulling off moves like the drop shot described in the last paragraph. The players also have an unlikely reluctance to stretch or dive for shots that are out of their immediate reach and this is something of a surprise as seeing players lunge for every shot is what you'd usually expect. To add insult to injury, the developers actually chose to assign a dive return to R1 and circle pressed together, although the results of using said move are usually quite random, and remembering the extra, unintuitive button press in the heat of a rally is quite annoying. Bizarrely, the computer player also seems to have problems with remembering the dive move and you often see balls that you'd usually expect computer controlled opponents to return with ease go sailing past. Weird.
Apart from those revelations, there's not much more to mention. The court graphics are decent, the crowd is predictably poor and wooden in a PSone 2-D kind of way and the music is an unsurprising mess of wailing arcade riffs. But at the same time, the game on the whole is more than adequate to have a good game of tennis and that's all you really need. I have to admit, I quite like Smash Court Pro 2 and it will be my Tennis game of choice until something better comes along, but the best console tennis game? I don't think so. I can't comment on Xbox tennis titles because I haven't played any, but as far as the PS2 goes Sega Smash Tennis is probably more of a multi-player crowd-pleaser. Mind you, even that is outshone by the benchmark title of the DC's Virtua Tennis 2 (yes, even though I know they're practically the same game). Still, until Sega inevitably updates the Virtua Tennis franchise under whatever name, Smash Court Pro Tournament 2 provides a decent alternative. You could certainly do a lot worse.
Smash Court Tennis Pro Tournament 2
PS2 review by Jim Smith - Friday 25th June 2004
Thunderbolt score: eight out of ten
Players: 4
Online: No
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