Arcade Archives: Vs. Family Tennis

 

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This week's Arcade Archives release is... Vs. Family Tennis (Namco, 1987)

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Preference Settings allow players to display the extreme sides of the screen not normally visible. As explained in the Hamster stream for this game at around 3:06:20, the differences between this and the Famicom version are that this only has the Exhibition mode and it also slightly alters the rules of tennis, removing the rule of deuce (presumably to keep games faster and not have people hog the machine all day, this is an arcade game after all).

Sports, sports, sports, sports... It's tennis, by Namco! To be fair, this is the first in the Family Tennis series, one of a few Namco-developed tennis games- if you've played Smash Tennis on the SNES, this is part of the same series (it was released in Japan as Super Family Tennis) as is Family Tennis Advance for the GBA. There's also the World Court games in the arcades (the first of which is also available on Arcade Archives) and the Smash Court games on PS1 and later PS2. This is where Namco's tennis lineage began though, and it has a few advantages over the only other tennis game on the system at the time, Nintendo's own Tennis. Specifically, you have a selection of characters with different stats to play, different courts to play on with different effects on the ball (including one in space) as and you can play versus two player, not just against the computer! This is because of the perspective used, opting for a more top-down look compared to Nintendo's angled view of the court so both players have the same amount of space to work with. It does mean things have to scroll a little, but it works fairly well, just perhaps outclassed by the later Namco tennis affairs.

Surprisingly, this isn't one of the games available on either Namcot Collection or the localised Namco Museum Archives sets, so this is the only option you have for playing this one, plus like some of the other Vs. System games, this is currently not available for use in MAME. You might want to look at World Court Pro Tennis via ACA first, but this has charm too. Might as well take this moment to mention that most of the sports games Namco released on the Famicom had the Family title and had a mascot lady playing the sports, as seen here, and she was even briefly brought back for some Namco slot machines. Big fan of the art of her at the baseball game!