REAL GAMES - ANDRE AGASSI TENNIS

Yay!  A sports game that isn't football!  Granted, I don't know anything about Tennis, but at least it's not football.

Andre Agassi Tennis is one tough and long ass game.  I don't really understand the scoring system or the rules to the game, so don't expect any technical details from me.  All I know is, you have to score 4 times to win a round?  Then you have to win 6 rounds to win an act?  And you have to win 6 acts to beat a person.  And in the tennis tournament, you have to beat about 8 people, and Andre Agassi himself.  So that's 4x6x6x8+1 = a fucking long ass game.  And it doesn't matter if you're playing pro or regular, this game relies more on luck than skill.

Starting off we hav...HAHAHAHA.  Oh god.  Mullets.  MULLETS EVERYWHERE!  The unskippable opening sequence for this game is a bunch of snapshots of Andre and his glorious Mullet\Rat Tail hair.  This is exactly how every sports game should start.

It's like if MacGyver and Solid Snake were on a doubles team.

After those beautiful shots, we have to tackle the controls.  Again, I have no clue what the hell is going on.  All 4 face buttons swing randomly.  You would figure that each button would do a specific swing, but instead any button can produce any swing at anytime.  So just push one and pray.

The audio for this game is depressing.  The ref announces the score in a very Ben Stein-ish monotone voice.  Just replace the classic "Bueller?  Bueller?" line with "Fifteen - Love" and you'll get the idea.  The only part of the audio that is interesting is the scoreboard screen.  For some reason, the game plays the Seinfeld scene transition music.  I kept expecting Kramer to burst onto the screen and rant about the crazy mullets that were everywhere.

When I started playing this, I kept feeling as if I had played it before.  About half way through the tournament, I realized why.  Andre Agassi Tennis is the same damn thing as Tennis for the original Nintendo.  There are a couple of sprite changes, and of course mullets thrown in everywhere, but the two games look damn near identical.  Look at this shit!

They made it wider and made the ref seat shorter.  Wow.  Did I mention that Andre Agassi Tennis came out 10 years later?  I am amazed by our advances in technology.

Alright, enough bitching about the aesthetics.  How does the gameplay measure up?  Well, I would rather play Tennis for the NES than this.  I don't know why, but they messed with the hit detection for the ball in this game, and it makes for a very frustrating experience.  There's no such thing as a near miss.  You either hit that ball with the middle of your tiny racket, or you miss.  You combine this with all of the other problems, and you have a complete wreck of a game.

Even though this game was complete crap, I have to give it 1 ball catcher out of 5 for the mullets and the Seinfeld music.  They made me laugh, which is something most bad games cannot do.  But if you're looking for a good tennis game, go play the NES game instead.

"What is exhilarating in bad taste is the aristocratic nature of giving offense." - Charles Baudelaire