The basic tennis matches in this are fairly solid, if fairly standard. You have a few different types of shots, and run back and forth hitting the ball. As you hit the ball, you will build up “superstar” mode to build up, where you can activate a special power – although oddly I found that Sonic’s ability (Super Sonic) made it easier on the opponent, by swinging the ball to the centre of the court instead of the sides. If you don’t like it, you can make it longer to charge or just turn it off.

While the normal matches are nothing special, in the singleplayer mode, you will encounter lots of different ways to play. You will have to play a lot of matches and tournaments to unlock it all, but it’s well worth it. Some minigames are a bit dull (the Sonic ones especially, as they’re just walking around and don’t involve hitting the ball), but others can be a lot of fun.

In the Super Monkey Ball missions, you’ll progress through different kinds of hitting monkey balls into holes by hitting them with a tennis ball, before ultimately playing snooker trick shots by hitting a cue ball in a way so it hits another ball into a hole (and you can’t pocket the cue ball). Each mode builds up on its concepts like this until you get to the “main mode”. The Puyo Puyo mini game is incredibly good fun, and you have to hit Poyo pieces to get rid of them (hitting blocks of the same colour will get rid of all of them). House of the Dead and Virtua Cop require you to hit enemies with tennis balls, while Chu Chu Rocket works well as tennis.

I think it’s a shame that you have to play though some of the duller parts of Sega Superstars Tennis in order to get to the minigames, because the events you do unlock are a ton of fun.