Genre: Sports
Developer: Sumo Digital
Publisher: Sega

Virtua Tennis- World Tour takes after its grandfather Dreamcast version by featuring detailed player models, colorful eye-catching visuals, and some wonderful animation. It isn't quite as detailed as the aforementioned Dreamcast title, but it's darned close.

Unfortunately, I remember Virtua Tennis on the Dreamcast as having a much better soundtrack than this title has. Fortunately, World Tour's tunes aren't poor by any means, and the grunts, sneaker squeaking, and racket hitting sound effects work well enough.

Yu Suzuki coined the "Virtua" name to represent the "easy to play, difficult to master" concept. While he had nothing to do with Virtua Tennis, the "Virtua" prefix is put to good use here, and while using only two buttons, Virtua Tennis is a complex, difficult, yet rewarding game to champion.

The fabulous visuals and excellent gameplay are only marred by the lack of a competent play mode. The most complex and fun mode, "World Tour", implements some roughly hewn RPG elements. These elements add some depth, but not enough to override the fact that World Tour is probably best enjoyed with friends via wireless multiplayer-- which happens to not be a bad thing really!