Wii Sports was the catalyst that sparked the Wii revolution in 2006 and Tennis was the king amongst the games, it was the easiest to play and everyone knows how to play tennis. You could guarantee anyone could play it.
However, Tennis never got another look at again from Nintendo, sure Wii Sports Resort had Table Tennis and EA had the realistic Grand Slam Tennis but popular Tennis never got another look in. Wii Sports was left untouched like a cooking recipe handed down from your mother.
Now with the beauty that is HD, MotionPlus controls and thankfully online, Wii Sports Tennis is back and it’s still a ton of fun to play. Forget about cheat playing your way through this one, you won’t be able to make small little moves and expect to play the game properly.
With MotionPlus you’ll have to swing your arm, twist your wrist and use an appropriate amount of force to serve, lob and slice the ball across the court. You’ll find yourself having to move around a bit more, though never as much as the advertising would let you. The characters still move themselves, so there’s no need to worry about that.
The second big addition to Tennis is online functionality. You can play with random people from any country, your own Club (which is most likely going to be your own country) or from your friend list. In the games we played international support was patchy at best for Tennis, terrible lag plagued every game we played with someone not from Australia. The connection bar in the lower right hand corner of the screen never moved above one bar.
Players from Australia fared much better and only the odd amount of lag on some shots was visible. For the most part you should be able to play with friends here in Australia with no problem. You can also play with a friend in the same room against two other people online which is a neat feature. The GamePad isn’t used at all here aside from changing some your ‘shout-outs’ that you can congratulate, mock or empathise with other players – it’s kind of ironic isn’t it?
As strange as it sounds other than playing Tennis there isn’t anything else you can do online, all mini-games can only be played locally and you have to play the ‘hot seat’, by taking turns which is really disappointing. The mini-games aren’t that much fun either and are probably best used for training purposes.
Aside from the move to HD, the games don’t look terribly different, the areas are nice and clean and the lighting is better but in the end it’s just Mii’s moving around a court. The game’s presentation within menus is simple and clean.
Odds are you played more than $13 worth of Wii Sports Tennis the first time around on the Wii. If you can see yourself doing it again, then Tennis is worth the asking price. The addition of HD isn’t much but the online options are certainly fun. Hope you got more than one Wii Remote Plus laying around.
Wii Sports Club is a free download from the eShop, it comes with a 24 hour trial for all available games. After which each sport can be purchased for $13AU forever or $2.60 for a 24 hour pass.
Discounts on hardware, games and accessories