Publisher: Sega
Developer: Sumo Digital
Release Date: March 18, 2008
Genre: Sports
ESRB Rating: Everyone

As a huge fan of tennis games since the aptly titled Tennis was included on that massive all-in-one NES game cart (how many games were on that thing, 60? 100? I can’t remember, but you could get lost for hours in that thing), I was really looking forward to this title. While I generally prefer the more serious minded and technical sports games, complete with real players, detailed stat tracking etc.

I’ve had a blast with many of the Mario Tennis games, and was hoping for something at least comparable to them, and this game was almost certainly inspired by them. Sadly, SST is no Mario Tennis, nor is it even Tennis.

SST features a variety of characters and settings from past Sega games, some of which need to be unlocked, including characters from the Sonic series, Nights, Alex Kidd, The House of the Dead and more. There is also a good deal of game modes, both single and multiplayer, but the PS2 version is sadly lacking in online play. Many of the mini-games need to be unlocked by progressing through the single player tournaments and challenges, and most of them are fun at least for a while.

All sounds good so far, but problems start popping up when you actually get playing the games. SST is an extremely simple game that requires very little skill to play, which is evident from the first set of your first game.

The action and timing requires very little precision, if you’re in the general area of the ball and swing at around the time the ball is there, you’ll hit. That’s about all there is to it. The characters cover so much ground that lobs and net play is all but ineffective, forcing you to sit at the baseline and keep whacking balls back and forth till someone mercifully misses one. Each character has unique super moves that can be used, but again, there’s no real skill in using them and they don’t really add much to the game.

Now to be fair, the Mario Tennis games largely suffered from the same problems of simple game-play, but this was compensated for with the addition of RPG elements of character interaction and character building that SST lacks.

I grew bored of SST extremely quickly, maybe as a result of playing the similar Mario games for many hours already, maybe not. All I know is that aside from some of the enjoyable mini-games and challenges, I didn’t have much fun playing the actual tennis, which I can say I did with the Mario games, despite their similar weaknesses.

Graphics also fail to impress. The character models are decent, and the environments are unique and quirky for the most part, but lack detail and resolution, and the frame rate occasionally has hiccups despite the lack of graphical might.

If you enjoyed Mario Tennis or are simply a big Sega fan looking for a game with some great fan service, you may get some enjoyment out of SST. Anyone else would do well to rent first before giving this one a purchase.

News: Poor sales (at least in the U.S) caused many retailers such as Gamestop to quickly slash their prices on SST. You should be able to find a new copy for as little as $19.99.

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