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PlayStation Basement #24 - V-Tennis

This review was originally published on the Console Purist Facebook group on February 9th, 2019. It has been edited slightly for formatting.

Continuing into February, Valentine’s Day will soon be upon us. I’ll be doing a few related reviews on PlayStation Basement starting with this one. PlayStation Basement occurs here every Saturday with a review of an obscure or odd game for PS1. Reviews use a nine-point scale where 9-7 is Good, 6-4 is Neutral, and 3-1 is Bad.



For this review, let’s talk about V-Tennis, an early tennis game for the PlayStation. We’ll be starting the Valentine’s reviews here, since everyone starts at zero, called “love”, in a tennis match. V-Tennis was developed and published by Tonkin House in September of 1995 in Japan. It was later released in May 1996 in North America and June 1997 in Europe, both published by Acclaim.




The cover art for V-Tennis is adequate but nothing particularly outstanding. The American and European versions have a woman hitting a ball towards the camera on a court displaying the Acclaim logo. The sky is a colorful violet of a vapor sunset. The original Japanese release features a drawing of a blonde man about to hit the ball in a dramatic leap. It is as if saying “this is your chance to decide the match” in comparison to the attack on the player, a different kind of challenge, of the western releases. I don’t think either do a great job, as the western release has such a weird composition, and the Japanese release is really dark. I think the latter is a bit more visually appealing though.




Graphically, V-Tennis looks like an early PlayStation game. The character models are simple, the playfields are plain, and the menus are bare bones. The characters move a bit stiffly, but they have some nice little elements to them; I like the little win poses that the characters do. There are a variety of camera angles, some dynamic and some static, some useful and some particularly weird (most likely intended for watching a computer only match). I like the backgrounds of the various locals, though they are stretched out in a bad way often.

The backgrounds work well with the sounds of the game, despite their morphing nature. The game has an electronic/city pop style to its soundtrack that really stands out to me and makes the game fun to play. I think that this soundtrack really makes an otherwise plain game stand out. The sound effects all sound good as well, and I like the announcer.


V-Tennis is tennis. There’s no Mario or Mutant League here. There’s no space gravity, sci-fi blasters, or wizardly magic. This is just tennis as it is, and that’s fine. The game plays fast and is pretty easy to understand, though there are some more advanced elements to the controls to boost your game as you get further in. The game is divided into exhibition matches against computers or other players and a single-player tournament mode. Players can select between 8 different men and 8 different women; computer players have the addition of four computer-generated characters. The characters are not all balanced fairly, which I don’t see as a particular weakness but probably isn’t the best thing either. There are eight different locales, from the twilight of New York to the roaring waters of Niagara Falls, and three (or four for indoors) different court styles. The game allows singles or doubles play, and the length of the game can be set as well.



V-Tennis is nothing amazing, but I do like it. There isn’t much to say here, but it’s a fast-playing and fun tennis game that can be picked up for cheap at the time of this review. I have never heard anyone talk about this game, and I don’t really know why. I really enjoyed the vapory aesthetics of it, and I think you might too, at least if you enjoy arcade-style tennis games without any frills.

V-Tennis receives a Good (7).

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Location: Pittsburgh, PA, USA

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