One of my fondest gaming memories is
playing Virtua Tennis with friends and family. It all started with a friend’s
Dreamcast and Virtua Tennis 2. After a few games of PowerStone or Code Veronica
we always made sure to have a session of Virtua Tennis. Why? Well, it was fun!
But it was more than that. It was our own psychedelic drug with no side effects
apart from a sore stomach. You see, for some reason whenever we played it we
broke out into uncontrollable laughter. There may or may not have been something
in the food there that only began to take affect towards the end of the visit but
whether or not there was, the fact of the matter was that whenever Virtua
Tennis 2 was played, it resulted in uncontrollable laughter.
I’ve asked myself why many times, but I
have only come up with theories. Before that, though, let me tell you that this
phenomenon did not continue on with Virtua Tennis 2002 on the PS2 (or whatever
the hell it was called). It was a fun game, but when I played it, it wasn’t a
drug. It was a tennis game. Of course it did start the greatest doubles
partnership of all time: Carlos Moya and Patrick Rafter. Unbeatable!
But today I played Virtua Tennis 3. I
laughed. The psychedelic drug was back! And I think may have found the answer
to why it is so hilarious. Virtua Tennis 2002 was slower than Virtua Tennis 3
and more realistic. But Virtua Tennis 3 is all out an arcade tennis game played
at a frantic pace. The animations and everything about it are completely
comical. We would both crowd around the net and go for every ball and if we
were at the back of the line then we would dive for the ball in tandem.
A doubles pairing of Nadal and Federer was
funny enough, but when they were both either diving for the ball in slow motion
or going for the same smash in tandem at light speed was even funnier. But
nothing was quite as funny as the pairing of Tim Henman and Layton Hewitt. The
fact that Henman was there was funny enough, but when he’s at the net with
Hewitt, who went for every smash in front of Henman, but somehow missed it was
simply too hilarious. And to top it all of it turns out if you run around on
the spot your shoes squeak—a strategy even more annoying and effective than
Anna Ivanovic’s girly jumps as her opponent serves.
Unfortunately the skill level of the AI had
increased, so Hewitt couldn’t do his dummy smashes at the front of the net and
was relegated to diving at the baseline, however he took the opportunity to
make as much noise with his shoes as possible when he wasn’t diving.
I may just have finally figured it out.
The first virtua tennis game had zombie like faces.
I never found them funny though.
VT3 has some scary ass faces. Mareuismo, or however you spell it, is the scariest. Very fun game though. Shame there's no online, I'd love to give you a few matches. I guess that's what VT'09's for.
Also, VT2 was just called VT2 on the PS2.
I also laughed along after volleying the ball back and forth for minutes at a time, frantically leaping from one side of the court to the other.
Virtua Tennis was one of those games that everyone who played it loved. After Soul Calibur it was probably the most played game on the DC in my house, we'd have four player doubles sets whenever there were enough people.
The zombies had weird hair too.
When it first came out I drove from store to store to find it. Finally at the store closest my home (where I was a legend) I went in and four of the clerks are around the TV in the back fo the store playing Virtua Tennis and having a great time. They stopped playing to ask me what I wanted.
Me: Do you have Virtua Tennis? (looks at screen)
Clerk: Uh. No.
Clerk 2: We only got one copy.
Clerk 3: I bought it.
Me: Oh. (looks at screen)
All of the clerks looked down at their feet and then as I took my first step out of the door I heard raucous gaming beginning once more.
They're mot disturbing than funny!
Darth_Homer:
Mmm, I'm confused. I've seen it called 2k2 and 2 among other things! Actually nothing else...
apsro73:
Great story! You should merely have joined in!