Surprisingly only the second tennis game on N64 – and the first one to be released in America (although Europe is the only place that got both). Sadly, this isn’t as good as Centre Court Tennis, and that one was just an OK game to begin with. All Star Tennis is simply awkward to control, and it feels like the player you’re controlling has a mind of their own.

This tennis game is all about getting to the right spot – directly to the side of where the ball is going. Then you have to press your shot at the right point, then use the stick and Z/R for spin and power. It’s a lot to deal with, and your character may just decide to ignore that and flop over with a pathetic dive instead. I’m awful at sport, yet I am better at real tennis than the tennis in this game.

Another strange thing is that while the game give you a ton of actions for hitting the ball, serving is more basic than any other tennis game I’ve played: press the A button one and the game will handle the rest, no timing your swing or anything like that.

All Star Tennis also has a few extra modes on top of singles, doubles and tournaments. There’s a bomb tennis mode which leaves behind a bomb wherever the ball lands. This is actually easier than the main mode as the CPU doesn’t quite know how to move around when there are bombs on the court. You can also turn on special shots, which I expected to be hard to hit shots with a bit of flair, but they have fancy effects involving wormholes and teleportation.

This game doesn’t know if it wants to be series or silly, and ends up being awkward. The presentation also doesn’t help. While the graphics are fine, the sound consists of music that a lift would be ashamed of, male or female grunts and an Umpire who gets really annoying, particularly when he’s shouting “be quiet please” to the crowd because a very faint mobile phone had gone off.

Poor

The speed of the game is all wrong too. The players are quick to move around the court but frustratingly slow when it comes to swinging the racquet, meaning that you have to start a shot almost as soon as the ball crosses the net – meaning that due to the very unhelpful artificial intelligence ‘assistance’, you’ll find your player diving when you wanted to perform a running shot, or blocking when you wanted to smack the ball into your opponent’s face.

Martin Kitts, N64 Magazine #26. Review Score: 68%

Remake or remaster?

There are better tennis games to bring back.

Official ways to get the game.

There is no official way to get All Star Tennis 99