Just so we’re clear on this: every player in WTA Tour Tennis from Konami is a female pro tennis star. No guys. I could personally care less, but maybe some of you don’t like playing as girls or whatever. Or maybe you love playing as girls and this fact greatly adds to the game’s value in your eyes. Honestly, I think it’s kind of cool, just because women’s tennis is a pretty big sport and even a non-fan like me can recognize several of the players’ names. It really does suck that Anna Kournikova wasn’t included though.

The first thing you’ll notice is that although most of the players are American or European, they are presented in Japanese anime style. It’s perhaps an odd choice, but it works well enough. The rest of the graphics are pretty average, with the game being presented in the same style as most old 16-bit tennis simulations. The ball is easy to locate while in motion, and that’s really the most important aspect. The visuals could really use more color and more splash though; I didn’t expect fireworks or laser eyes, but WTA just looks very bland.

Tennis games are all about control. You want it to be simple for beginners but complex enough that advanced players can do their fancy stuff. WTA goes too far with its simplification; three different strokes are mapped to the B button, and the game supposedly uses the correct one based on context. Yeah, right. I’ve had many, many experiences of B not hitting with the kind of shot I wanted, and you can hardly blame the GBA’s lack of buttons. Mario Tennis packed in a dozen shots into just two buttons; WTA only has about six shot types and you still can’t always use the one you want to. The A button works fine for lobs, but mapping two other shots to holding either shoulder trigger and then pressing B just makes things more confusing and awkward than they already are. Don’t get me wrong: the controls are generally very responsive, but they aren’t mapped out well at all.

WTA’s gameplay is, like its graphics, a throwback to 16-bit games like Super Tennis. Even with the 2D graphics, the tennis action comes through nicely and you can pick the game up and have a good time with it almost immediately. Doubles games are even more interesting, and you can set up multiplayer games with up to four people that I’m sure are all kinds of fun. Unfortunately, the computer AI has some major holes that led even a novice like me to find sure-fire winning strategies. I’ll lay mine out in detail with hidden text in case you don’t want it spoiled:

When you have the serve, hit as hard as possible to the far side of the box. Then rush the net and try to volley the ball to the opposite side of where your opponent is standing. This method works about 50% of the time; even if you don’t score immediately, you should be in good position to score anyway after a few volleys.

Now here’s the kicker: when your opponent has the serve, you can get a return ace at least 90% of the time. Combined with the above strategy, this makes it practically impossible to lose a match or even a set. Just move up to the back of the serve box, right around the middle (this constitutes about two steps up and sometimes a step to the side to get centered). Then return the serve to the far edge of the court opposite of the side where the serve came from. Once you learn how to not hit the ball too far to the side (out of bounds), this method is nearly fail-proof. I won four matches in a row with it, often taking six or seven return aces in a row. In one match I had 92 return aces. The AI doesn’t ever seem to catch on.

Doubles matches patch up the AI holes and offer a much more challenging experience, and you shouldn’t have any problems in multiplayer, but the dumb CPU players totally euthanize singles matches against the computer.

Overall, WTA Tour Tennis is a fairly solid tennis game with a few glaring problems. It’s mostly just very average, but if you’re dying for a GBA tennis game, you won’t be disappointed. Don’t expect anything as flashy or intuitive as Mario Tennis though.