Virtua Tennis - On This Day

When you think about it, tennis was the first commercial video game in gaming history. Admittedly, there was no set play in Pong, and the ball bounced off the side of the court, but apart from that, the concept is very similar to tennis. Years later, there was almost no platform that did not have its virtual tennis. However, only one tennis game at the end of the 20th century caused a standing ovation. It was Sega's hit Virtua Tennis, known in Japan as Power Smash.

Virtua Tennis appeared on arcade machines in Japan at the end of 1999, and today it was ported to the Sega Dreamcast console. It was not the first tennis with 3D graphics, but it was the most beautiful tennis until then. The version for the Dreamcast console was further expanded compared to the arcade version and had a career mode called World Circuit.

In his career, the player started from the 300th position in the ranking list, and in addition to matches, he had to do training. In Virtua Tennis, the training was such that you had to knock down certain objects on the court with the ball, deflect as many balls as possible fired by the machines, etc. Later, other similar games took over this concept.

Virtua Tennis was not a complete tennis simulation but had a healthy balance of realism and arcade. The game had five types of surfaces to play on. We had male tennis players available, some of whom were licensed, e.g. Tommy Haas, Carlos Moya, and Jevgenij Kafeljnikov.

Upon its release, Virtua Tennis was recognized as one of the best tennis games ever made. To this day, the game holds the highest average rating (92) for a tennis game on Metacritic. The first Virtua Tennis eventually appeared for PC and portable consoles, and the sequel moved to PlayStation 2 in 2002. Sega's series lived until 2011 when the fourth and so far last part was launched.