Sega Superstars Tennis has now made it’s way to Xbox 360 as Sega continue to do things Nintendo’s way by using their wonderful backlog of characters to create videogames, and why shouldn’t they? After all who doesn’t want to see Sonic and Alex the Kidd square up on the Tennis Courts?

The games main event comes in the form of Planet Superstars and the 100 challenges within this mode include mini games, tennis tournaments and special events, all of these take part in the worlds of Sega, using environments from games such as Sonic and Space Channel 5. Winning a challenge will allow you to unlock new characters and also unlock new worlds, more challenges and items such as new music tracks.

Since all of the courts are not unlocked at the beginning of the game, I decided to try my luck in the land of Super Monkeyball. While playing through this level it became apparent that most of the challenges I played where actually based on the mechanics of Super Monkeyball. At the start of each game you are given a target which you need to reach, for example in one you must knock 10 Monkeys (who are trapped in bubbles) through a portal, without knocking any of the empty bubbles through, while another game basically sees you playing snooker by having to pull of a trick shot with coloured bubbles. At the beginning of the challenge you will be told if there is a prize and therefore if you complete it successfully you will be awarded. All in there are 12 challenges to be unlocked within the Super Monkeyball world alone and I found them to be great fun and quite challenging.  

There is such a great variety to the challenges you will face in all the different worlds, the mini challenges also seem well thought out and not just thrown in to fill things out, while the double and single player matches help really beef things up a bit.

Some of the prizes that you win are also quite fantastic, I don’t really want to spoil anything but one of the characters I unlocked surprised me, I just didn’t think for a minute that they would include a character from this particular game, but I am so glad that they did.

So what of the tennis itself? Well it is very similar to Sega’s brilliant Virtua Tennis, the controls are very easy to use, meaning that you should be able to pick up and play this game fairly easily. Sega have also included special moves for each character, this can be used when the superstar meter at the players feet is filled, simply press the trigger and then your character will be transformed into it’s own unique superstar state. To give an example of this, Sonic turns yellow and as soon as he hits the ball back to his opponent it goes on mazy run before reaching it’s destination, making it very difficult for them to predict it’s path, some of the other characters special moves are even more difficult to play against though and involve obstacles landing on the court which making things even more awkward.

Sega Superstars also includes a tournament mode, here you play in either five single matches or three double matches, each of which takes part in a different court from the Sega world, when playing in this mode I used Sonic and once I managed to win all five games, I was then treated to a special match against his arch enemy Dr Eggman. This mode is great if you are just looking for a few rounds of tennis, you can even play here with a friend.

Other modes in the game include a once off match with up to four players, and of course the Xbox Live mode, which includes the usual ranked and unranked matches and gives you the option of both single or double player matches and tournaments.

Finally Sega Superstars Tennis also includes games, there are a collection of eight of these which are all based around Sega titles, to give an example of this, in one of the games you play as Sonic and while standing on the court you must collect as many rings as possible while avoiding the large spikes that the giant robots on the other side are firing at you, it’s great fun, especially when you are trying to compete for the best score amongst your friends.

As far as presentation goes Sega Superstars Tennis cannot be faulted, all of the courts, from Outrun and Space Channel 5 to Super Monkeyball World really look fantastic and remind you of the game that they represent, the characters also look brilliant in fact Sonic hasn’t looked this good in a long time, oh and just wait until you see that character I was talking about earlier, pure class. The sound also adds a lot to this game, it has that classic platform music feel and all the characters have their own unique effect when hitting the ball.

Sega Superstars Tennis is a game I have really enjoyed playing, for people like me who aren’t big fans of tennis this really helps bring a bit of fun to proceedings and makes things feel less serious and considering some of my favorite games of all time are represented, I can’t help but think others will feel the same. Sure the game doesn’t play the greatest game of tennis in the world but it does offer up one of the most fun games that you will play on your Xbox 360 this year and that is a fact.