Interviews

March 17, 2008

Sega Superstars Tennis: Interview and New Trailer
By Louis Bedigian

“We made a huge list of characters from Dreamcast games, Saturn games, Genesis games, Master System games....and narrowed it down.”

“Games don’t have to be realistic to be fun.” I’ve said that plenty of times. But I’m rarely compelled to say, “This game plays great and is a stellar representation of the real thing.” Those words apply to just one tennis franchise: Virtua Tennis. Published by the makers of Sonic and Virtua Fighter, and developed by Sumo Digital, Virtua Tennis 3 ushered in a new era of addictive sports gaming. Its core game was top-notch, realistic fun; the mini-games, while completely fictitious, were just as enamoring. The game was unstoppable on the new generation (PS3 and Xbox 360) and made serious waves on PSP.

Despite its fan and critical acclaim, Sumo Digital surprised the world when they announced that they wouldn’t be making the next Virtua Tennis games – not yet, at least. Instead, their next project would be a more lighthearted sports game that, not unlike Sonic the Hedgehog, appeared to have been inspired by a mushroom-loving plumber: Sega Superstars Tennis. Combining the best of Sega’s character lineup with the gameplay design talents of Sumo Digital, Sega Superstars Tennis could have what it takes to one-up another mascot tennis game. See proof in the newest trailer.

"If you look at Mario Tennis, it only has the Mario license," said Lead Producer Steve Lycett. "You've got characters from that world. What we did with Sega Superstars Tennis is get a number of characters from the [Sega brand, not just one particular game]."

"Another thing is," adds Lead Designer Travis Ryan, "you don't usually get to make family-oriented games for Xbox 360."

"Yeah, try to get Mario Tennis for the 360!" Steve says, laughing.

Online Play, Character Selection...and a Sequel!?

Steve took a moment to address the reasons why online play wasn't included with the Wii edition of the game. "When you look at the Wii version, we had to decide what was best for the audience," he says. "In this case we thought it was a console where everyone would sit down and play together [in one room]. And we wanted to give them the ability to play together [that way]. Another way to look at it is, on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, online is an expected feature. On other consoles it's not. Obviously no one expects it on PS2. We'll take a look at it maybe next time."

When it came time to narrow down the character lineup, Steve said it wasn't easy deciding who to eliminate. "That was the hard part. We made a huge list of characters from Dreamcast games, Saturn games, Genesis games, Master System games. Everyone [at the Sumo Digital] team got involved, Sega got involved, and we narrowed it down."

With regards to a potential sequel (on any platform), he adds: "We're gonna look at what people like and don't like about the game. We always do that. We like to make sure that whenever we make a game we learn from it, and can apply whatever we learned to what we do next."

Sega Superstars Tennis is the first fantasy tennis game from Sumo Digital. With that in mind, what changes had to be made to the Virtua Tennis formula and what elements could remain?

Travis Ryan: I think what we wanted to do was not just use the existing game engine. It's great but looks like a simulation. Some people are put off by that. What we wanted to do was make it more appealing. We wanted to establish a little more variety.

One of the great things about Virtua Tennis 3 was its speed.

TR: With Virtua Tennis a lot of the players are very similar with minor AI tweaks. With this game we wanted to establish differences, this character has an advantage [over that character]. There was a lot of play-testing and a lot of balancing.

Do the characters (like Sonic) retain any of their trademark feel?

Steve Lycett: Yeah. I think we've definitely considered that. Sonic's [got] speed, Eggman's powerful, [etc.].

What are some of the courts that were created for the game? Their themes appear to be based on Sega's superstars.

SL: I think what we tried to do with the courts, again, was like Sumo's process for selecting characters. We looked at the environments [from different Sega games] and tried to decide what was cool. Sonic is a good example. The reason we're using Sonic for this game is that we're trying to capture that iconic moment from Sega games. We re-created Green Hill Zone as a 3D environment.

In the Wii version, will the game have a buttons-only mode for players who want a more traditional gaming experience?

SL: First of all, I have to ask: if you bought a Wii and you don't want motion controls, didn't you make some kind of mistake there? In all seriousness, controllability is very important to us. With the standard controls, anyone who's played Wii Sports Tennis, and I'm sure everybody has, you've got a good idea what to expect. Basically you [use the remote] like a racket. Speed and timing [when you swing] effect the shot. We had to [make] the Wii version different from the others. When you swing your remote you expect it to just swing the racket straightaway. When you think about how that works it's really baffling. That took quite a bit of work. The Wii controls took more time to get right.

What can we expect from the mini-game lineup? Will there be any from Virtua Tennis 3?

SL: No. The mini-games in Sega Superstars Tennis, we created eight of them, were inspired by the [characters] we enjoyed from this game. Whenever possible we wanted to create something original. They're all single-player games [with missions], and each can be played in multiplayer.

Virtua Tennis 3 was made for PSP. Sega Superstars Tennis, however, was made for Nintendo DS. Why the switch?

SL: Simple. When was first started making the game, we were talking to Sega and it was decided to make it for another platform. You've gotta keep in mind too that we're not a big firm. We're not a small firm but we're not a massive firm. We're making all five versions of this game (PS2, PS3, NDS, Wii, 360) at once. At one point we basically looked at what kind of audience would be right. This is more of a family game. It's also kind of an arcade game that suits the DS. To do a PSP version [too] we would have needed so many more people.

Will the music correspond to the levels, such as Green Hill Zone?

SL: What we try to do, again, with all aspects of the game and mini-games, is try to reference as much of the original games as possible. I think we have eight pieces of music in the game, so Sonic, for example, we have music from there.