Arcade Archives: Konami's Table Tennis

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This week's Arcade Archives release is... Konami's Table Tennis (Konami, 1985)

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Although referred to on EU / US digital storefronts as Konami's Table Tennis, in-game it's still called Konami's Ping-Pong (Ping-Pong is a trademarked name). Preference Settings allow players to set serving tosses / smashes to Up on the D-Pad to allow almost complete control of the game via directional inputs (you still need to hold a button to switch to your backhand stance, or hold Down and use the face buttons).

Here we are, folks, an exciting game of table tennis is about to begin! Sure, it may look like a typical tennis game from the 1980s and players are represented by disembodied hands, but the play is simple and lightning-fast! Either against the computer or a second player, it's the first to eleven points to win, but you don't have to worry about moving left or right to line up your shot or anything like that- your paddle automatically follows the ball, so it's just a case of picking the right type of shot (drives, chops and smashes, all with backhand variants- forehand strokes lean to the left and backhand strokes lean to the right, so use this to keep the ball on the table) and getting the timing just right. Be sure to keep an eye out for Konami's beloved penguin Pentarou in the crowd!

You might already know this game for its Famicom Disk System port where Pentarou gets replaced with Diskun, or perhaps one of the European microcomputer ports with the Martin Galway title screen music, but here's the arcade version for you. I'm not much of a table tennis expert (my table sport of choice is air hockey) but this is a pretty neat and fast-paced interpretation of it, and the fact you don't have to line up shots means timing is everything, so it can be quite challenging! I was a little surprised this supported two players to be honest- the perspective means that the player on the far end of the table is going to have a bit of a different experience from the player at the near end (this is why Nintendo's own Tennis for NES doesn't have two-player versus, you'd need the double-screen arcade Vs. System version for that) but it might be worth a try if you're looking for a good table tennis game.