Virtua Tennis is a series of tennissimulation video games started in 1999 by Sega AM3. The player competes through tennis tournaments and various arcade modes. Originally released to arcades, for the home console market the game was expanded with the introduction of the campaign mode. The latest games in the series are available on all major consoles, starting with Virtua Tennis 3.
Name changes
Domestically in Japan the series have always been released as Power Smash although with the third entry in the series the name was expanded to Sega Professional Tennis: Power Smash, although Sega Professional Tennis logo and name have been prominently featured in all the games, it was only in the title of the third game. Once Sega sold the 2K name to Take-Two Interactive, the triquel was released under the original branding as Virtua Tennis 3 all updates and sequels have been under the Virtua label to date. Internationally it was released as Virtua Tennis, to fall in the same brand as other Sega Sports games such as Virtua Striker, with the sequel the name was changed to Tennis 2K2.
History
Arcade and Dreamcast
The original game was developed for the Sega Naomi Arcade Hardware by Sega and ported to the Sega Dreamcast Sega's home console based on the Naomi Hardware. The sequel Virtua Tennis 2 was built over original home console build. There were several upgrades made to the game. Most notably enhanced graphics, more courts, and a female roster were introduced to the series featuring the likeness of Serena Williams, Lindsay Davenport and even lesser known players such as Jelena Dokić. After ceasing development of video game consolesin 2001, Sega announced they would be making games for all platforms and made a deal with THQ that allowed them to make original games based on Sega franchise for the Game Boy Advance, one of which was a Virtua Tennis game. Virtua Tennis 2 was also ported to the PlayStation 2. Sumo Digital was tasked with porting Virtua Tennis 2 to the PlayStation Portable and they released in fall 2005, the game was an update to Power Smash 2 expanding the World Tour mode, however the character roster was the smallest the series, has featured to date.
Multiplatform games
In 2006, a new game in the series, Virtua Tennis 3, was released in the arcades for SEGA Lindbergharcade system. The game was ported to PlayStation 3 with SIXAXIS controls incorporated into the gameplay, the Xbox 360 port was handled by Sumo Digital, a studio that previously ported an upgraded version of Virtua Tennis 2. While Sumo Digital was porting Virtua Tennis 3 for the Wii in 2008, they were instructed by Sega to feature Sonic as an unlockable character, which gave Sumo Digital an idea to make a Tennis game composed of Sega characters past and present, which was released as Sega Superstars Tennis which ran on the Virtua Tennis 3 engine Sumo Digital developed for the Xbox 360 port. The following year Sumo Digital released an update to Virtua Tennis 3 called Virtua Tennis 2009. At GamesCom 2010, Virtua Tennis 4 was revealed for the PlayStation 3 with PlayStation Move controls incorporated, the series also introduced a new first person perspective to help players control the game more effectively with the Move controller. Sega released Virtua Tennis Challenge in 2012, the first edition of the series to be released for iOS and Android.
