SEGA Superstars Tennis on the DS is essentially two games in one. First you have the regular tennis gameplay featuring some of SEGA’s famous, and not so famous, characters from its library of games. The other half is a collection of mini games in which those SEGA characters play tennis-ized versions of some of SEGA’s arcade and console classic games. This game is a case of two halves not making a whole, though, as neither mode is compelling enough to keep you interested for long, leaving you with a lackluster game that will soon generate a strong lack of interest in its players.

The tennis portion of the game is straightforward. You select a character from a roster of sixteen classic SEGA characters, eight of which are unlocked from the start of the game, and hit the court for singles or doubles play. Each character has a specialty such as speed or power, but there’s not that much of difference in the gameplay experience with the different characters. The controls are simple and as such so is the strategy – keep to the baseline and alternate your volleys to opposite sides of the court until your opponent is caught too far out of position to return the ball. Scoring points will power-up a star under a character’s feet which can be used to unleash a superstar power such as a wildly snaking ball, but these powers only last for one rally and don’t have that much of an impact on the game. You’ll breeze through most matches without breaking a sweat simply by hitting the ball to the left and then to the right. The computer-controlled opponents aren’t smart enough to try and counter your style of play and are perfectly happy to run back and forth across the court until they miss. It’s not hard to see how this lack of variety and challenge make this mode grow quickly tiresome.

The mini game mode includes ten game modes based on SEGA games such as Virtua Cop and Jet Set Radio. These modes integrate tennis play and game elements from the original games in ways that vary from interesting to tedious. For example, the Virtua Cop modes have you hitting tennis balls at bad guy targets while trying to avoid the civilians. House of the Dead mode involves tennis ball averse zombies shambling towards you across the court. The target oriented games can be fun, as can the puzzle-based Chu Chu Rocket which has you hitting tennis balls to change the orientation of arrows that need to be used to direct marching mice to a rocket. Other games that involve dodging and collecting grow tedious quickly, such as Jet Set Radio or Sonic’s ring-grabbing play. You’ll probably try out all of the games and then find that you’ll only want to return to a few of them. Since you probably won’t be spending too much time with the tennis gameplay, you’re essentially buying the game to play three or four mini games. Unless you’re a diehard SEGA fan, this is too little to justify buying the game.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 60%. A few interesting mini games are not enough to carry this overall bland tennis game.