First Impressions: Virtua Tennis 3

Ever since the first Virtua Tennis appeared on the ill-fated Dreamcast, the series has broken the rules of the sports genre – by appealing not only to dedicated followers of Tim Henman’s annual crash and burn, but also to a vast audience of people whose first reaction to Wimbledon is to frantically stab the remote control in the hope of finding repeats of Airwolf on UK Gold instead. Given this success, it’s in some respects astonishing that Sega has managed to avoid the conventional sports game approach of the annual update, instead launching only two iterations to date – but that, perhaps, reflects the company’s understanding of its market. Football fans may buy into annual updates of their favourite games – but if Virtua Tennis’ fanbase is made up of people who are not, by conventional definition, tennis fans, then an annual update could actually kill the series. Clever chaps, those SEGA boys.