Virtua Tennis: World Tour review

Platforms: PSP

There are two very good reasons why I’ve been excited at the prospect of playing Virtua Tennis: World Tour on my PSP. First up is that along with Crazy Taxi and Soul Caliber, Virtua Tennis was one of my all time favourite Dreamcast games. And as anyone who owned a Dreamcast will tell you, it was a console awash with Grade A titles, so making the top three is no mean feat.



The second reason that I’ve been looking forward to playing Virtua Tennis is that my wife is in it! No, really, she is. In case you’re thinking that this review is going to descend into some lame fantasy about being married to a tennis star, I can assure you it’s not. But I can also assure you that right there, on the player select screen, I have the choice of selecting (or not) my wife. Now, I’ll let you guess which one of the (female in case you were wondering) players has to put up with me every day, but I’ll give you a clue, it’s not Maria Sharapova – I just couldn’t put up with those grunts and screams all day long.

So, now that I’ve got the novelty of seeing the woman I married in a video game out of my system, let’s move onto the game itself and the big question at hand – Does it live up to the Virtua Tennis legacy? The simple answer is yes, while the more qualified answer is HELL YES! But before I tell you just why this game is so good, and why you would be certifiably insane not to have it in your collection, I have to cover my one major gripe.