Despite the inclusion of Sonic the Hedgehog in Nintendo's megahit Super Smash Bros. Brawl, SEGA fans are a bit starved for fanservice these days. Luckily, SEGA headed that problem off by having the foresight to bring us SEGA Superstars Tennis hot on the heels of Brawl.

The SEGA Superstars games on the EyeToy brought numerous SEGA characters together for fun and mini-games. SEGA Superstars Tennis takes a page from the Mario Tennis playbook and pits 16 SEGA characters against one another in a tennis tournament.

Superstar!

The game was developed by the same team that did Virtua Tennis 3, so it's no surprise that Superstars Tennis is basically Virtua Tennis hosed down in SEGA juice. This is hardly a bad thing, as Virtua Tennis delivers a solid tennis game, and the nuances of the gameplay have not been dumbed down just because this is a less serious title. You can still hit all the same cross shots, drop shots, and lobs with tennis skill and strategy remaining important to the gameplay.

New to Superstars Tennis is the Superstar move. Successful rallies and scored points build up a meter. Once filled, you can activate a Superstar ability that will fire off trick shots and on-court obstacles related to your character. Ulala hits a "5"-shaped shot and litters the opponent's court with Morolians. Jet Set Radio's Beat calls in taggers to spray-paint their foe's side to make it too slippery for fast movements.

Fault

The Superstar abilities are highly effective against most human opponents, but against the computer players they expose the game's major flaw. The AI players cheat like there's no tomorrow, especially on higher difficulties. In some matches, you can actually see them warping at superhuman speed from one side of the court to the other in order to return your wicked crosscourt shots. I've used Dr. Eggman, and I know from experience that he cannot run that fast. This becomes more frustrating than anything else. It's a shame that the computer relies on breaking the rules more than playing well.

There's no shortage of things to do in SEGA Superstar Tennis. The Superstar mode is a career mode of sorts that offers dozens upon dozens of tennis tournaments and mini-games to play. While most of these are inventive and fun, including a few brilliant ones that reference classic SEGA titles, some of them border on the sadistic. Since the Superstar mode is what unlocks the hidden characters, you'll find yourself forced to slog through unreasonably demanding "hit the ball perfectly every time" mini-games just to get access to favorite characters.

Service

The sheer amount of SEGA nostalgia present in the game is impressive. The usual suspects such as Sonic and his friends are represented, but the roster also includes courts and characters from more obscure series like Space Channel 5, Jet Set Radio, and even Alex Kidd. Each court has numerous unlockable music tracks to accompany it, providing a nice range of classic SEGA music throughout. Even non-character driven games like Out Run and After Burner make appearances. The only truly glaring omission is Shinobi. The 16 character roster is 25% monkeys (AiAi, MeeMee, Amigo, and arguably Alex Kidd), but lacks even a solitary ninja.

If you're a SEGA fan, there's a lot to love about SEGA Superstars Tennis. Just about everything in the game is designed to trigger SEGA nostalgia, although it does call attention to the tremendous SEGA back catalog of franchises that are languishing in limbo these days. Without the SEGA characters, it's basically just another Virtua Tennis game, but the point is to please the fans and remember the days when SEGA turned out classics on a regular basis, and it achieves that goal brilliantly.

Review by: Matt Keil