Virtua Tennis: World Tour Interview

The initial release of Virtua Tennis in arcades marked the beginning of a grand sports series. Even after Virtua Tennis made its way to the Dreamcast and later to the PS2, it never really lost its unique (and wildly addictive) take on the sport. And now, Sega is less than a month away from serving a new, pocket-sized entry in the series, Virtua Tennis: World Tour for Sony's new handheld, the PSP.

Of course, a few questions remained in need of answering. Lucky for us, we had the chance to ask Carl Cavers, Chief Operating Officer at Sumo Digital. So head down below and start reading.

IGN: What, if anything, is going to be changed/adjusted/added/removed for the NA release?

Covers: Loading times and UMD streaming have been improved slightly. We have also been able to tweak some gameplay elements because the U.S. version allowed for a bit more time.

IGN: Will infrastructure multiplayer be added to future versions of Virtua Tennis? And why was it kept out of the current release?

Covers: I'm afraid I can't comment on future versions of VT but for the current version, infrastructure mode had to be dropped simple because the infrastructure wasn't in place within the time frame we needed in order to hit the launch window.

IGN: What aspects of Virtua Tennis do you suspect players will enjoy most?

Covers: I think players will enjoy the portability of the simple and addictive gameplay that has been translated from the arcade and Dreamcast versions. Now they can take it anywhere they go.

In addition, in previous versions of multiplayer, one player plays at the front and bottom of the screen facing the court like real life, while the second player plays at the back and top of the screen facing the player, which can be extremely akward and more difficult to play. The PSP has allowed for improvement on the multiplayer perspective to where all players will be facing the court at the bottom front of the screen, making it more intuitive to play.

I am also extremely excited about the new mini-games (Ball Games) that we have added exclusively to the PSP. These mini-games are fun and quite addicitive, so we're hoping people will really enjoy these. People had a lot of fun with the training games in the original VT games, so we put the best of the original Training Games back into World Tour Mode. Players can expect to see the return of Pin Smasher, Alien Force and Tank Attack to name a few.

IGN: Were any of the included tennis stars involved in the development of the game?

Covers: All Licensed players had input into their likeness and were very accommodating in supplying us with reference and feedback on their in-game character models and actions.