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You’d be forgiven for confusing this Super Tennis with the SNES game that has the exact same title. To add to the confusion, the SNES game is even available on the Switch via Nintendo’s retro game library (itself a bonus for subscribers to the Nintendo online service).

The only thing this Super Tennis has in common with the SNES game is the title, aside from the tennis setting of course. In reality, it doesn’t play anything like a tennis game; instead, it’s entirely based around quick time events – when your opponent hits the ball towards you, you’ll have a second or two to hit it back by entering the correct button combination. Build up enough successful hits in a row and your opponent won’t be able to stop your returning ball. Fail to return just one ball and you’re out.

There’s no traditional tennis points system either. Hit the ball past your opponent once and you’re straight on to the next challenger; there’s a neat bit of risk vs reward in the design here – beating an opponent gives you cash, and you can spend this (if you have enough) to save your progress on the ladder. Get beaten and you’re back down to your last checkpoint which – if you’re as cocky as me – could have been put in place several opponents ago.

It’s all nicely presented – though the commentary runs out of phrases very, very quickly – but it ends up being very repetitive. There’s a decent amount of costumes to customise your character with, but there’s no benefit to them aside from the cosmetic change. Backdrops end up being nicely varied too, but the gameplay doesn’t change at all.

It’s all a bit odd; it doesn’t feel like tennis from a gameplay point of view; nor is there any attempt to implement the actual rules of tennis, so the theme ends up being a bit of a baffling one. It’s fun for a short time, looks quite pretty – in a retro sort of way – and is certainly a decent test of reflexes, but if you’re looking for a tennis fix there’s a number of better options available on Switch already, including the classic SNES game which shares this one’s name.

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