0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Actua Tennis

     

1998 was a busy year for Gremlin Interactive not only releasing Actua Soccer 3 they also released the first game in a new sporting franchise under the Actua Sports banner, Actua Tennis which was released exclusively in Europe in 1998 on the Playstation 1, it would also be released on the PC in 1999.

Like the already released Actua sports games, Actua Tennis uses Gremlin Interactive’s 3D game engine to create a fully 3D environment and players, with motion capture used for a more realistic looking player movement and shots, the game developers have also motion captured umpires, line judges and ball boys for a more realistic tennis experience, Barry Davies makes the move over from Actua Soccer for the match commentary and is joined by Sue Barker and Pat Cash.

With players Drop shotting, lobbing and smashing their way to success in a series of tournament as well as singles and doubles matches up to 4 human players can play together, the games tournaments include amateur and professional competitions.

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Tennis game no story or story mode present.

Reviews for this game overall have been a mixed bag with Power Unlimited (Dutch Publication) giving the game a solid 8.3/10 while Absolute Playstation were largely positive in their review praising the serving and the player control, however they were critical of graphical glitches in their 76/100 score.

There were certainly plenty of critical review of the game, German reviewers Video Games rated the game a lowly 44/100 their review is cited as saying Despite good approaches, Actua Tennis does not even hold a candle to the aged Sampras Extreme Tennis, The real players' names and the career mode provide a little bit of motivation, but this is not enough for the glaring graphics and gameplay. The animations are anything but realistic. (translated from German using Google translate has been modified to make sense).

French website Jeuxvideo.com were just as critical of the game with their review blurb mentions poor technical realization, monotonous Gameplay and poor graphics in their below average score of 8/20, Computer & Video Games UK were also critical of the game scoring it at just 3/10.

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit five online retailers and see what the availability of the title is, and what price you would be looking at if you wanted to pick this title up, the sites that I will be using for this are Amazon.com,  eStarland.com, retrogames.co.uk and Gamedude.com I know the last one is very location specific, but from a podcast I listen to I’ve heard they have a huge stock of older games, I will also be including Ebay.com as well

So lets get down to business with Gamedude and eStarland.com get these two out of the way first with neither selling this game, no surprise really with it being a Europe only release, so quickly on to Retrogames.co.uk and they don’t stock this game either.

We now head to Amazon.co.uk in out quest for a copy of this game and we have found it, there are two versions of this game available, the original release which features Greg Rusedski on the cover and the Zoo Classic edition which just has a generic tennis player on the cover.

Both releases are similarly priced, if you are in the market for a used good quality copy of the game you will be able to pick up a copy for somewhere between £3 and £4.50, there are more expensive copies of the same quality available as well.

It may however be worth picking up a new copy of the game with both versions having one copy on sale, the original release is priced at £5 with a £2.03 shipping charge so £7.03 in total, which converts to $9.11 in the US, Euro region countries will be looking at a cost of €7.73, while in Ghana you will be looking at a cost of 40.21 Ghanaian Cedi.

The Zoo Classic new copy is priced slightly higher at £9.99 this again comes with a shipping charge this time £1.30 which brings to total to £11.29, which converts to 64.58 Ghanaian Cedi. In the Euro region countries it will set you back €12.43 while in the US is will be $14.63.

Heading to Ebay.com which like on most occasions is more expensive than Amazon, with the minimum you are likely to spend to get your hands on a used copy of the game is around the $8 once shipping has been added in, a new copy of the Zoo classics release is slightly cheaper than Amazon however, coming in at $10.32 this comes with free international shipping as a result is $4.31 cheaper than Amazon.

Written by

P J Gibbon