All Star Tennis 99 is the first tennis game ever released for the N64 console, with nicely detailed 3D graphics and a fun Bomb Tennis tournament!
Review
STORY / GAMEPLAY Since this is a sports (tennis) game, there is no actual story. All Star Tennis '99 features all of the usual exhibition, tournament and season options that are present in most tennis video games. There is a variety of tennis courts (or even balls) to choose from plus eight real-world tennis players. The female athletes tend to be more quick and agile while the males use more power on their game. But, to be honest, All Star Tennis '99 is a rather tricky game to play, that sometimes it gets frustrating! Like in many older console tennis games the control seems tough - at least at first. As usual, the primary difficulty is the timing. The game also features a fun (and weird) Bomb Tennis (!) tournament in which a large bomb appears with its fuse lit when the ball touches the ground. A few seconds later this bomb explodes and if you're caught within the blast's radius you lose the point (weird indeed!)
GRAPHICS / SOUND The game's graphics are cool featuring smooth motion captures and some nicely detailed 3D tennis courts (sometimes with significant polygonal flickering though). The camera rolls nicely during the match. The game's sound offers sampled sound effects (like crowd cheering, ball hitting the ground) and a quite "touchy" intro music theme.
Screenshots
Sounds
Intro/Menu music:
In-game music sample:
Gameplay sample
Hardware information
Nintendo 64 (N64)
CPU: MIPS R4300i-based NEC VR4300 at 93.75 MHz (connection to the system via 32-bit data bus) MEMORY: 4MB of RAMBUS RDRAM (expandable to 8MB with the Expansion Pak) with 562.5 MB/s peak bandwidth. GRAPHICS: 64-bit SGI co-processor (Reality Co-Processor) at 62.5 MHz chip split internally into two major components, the "Reality Drawing Processor" (RDP) and the "Reality Signal Processor" (RSP). 64-bit SGI co-processor (Reality Co-Processor) at 62.5 MHz chip split internally into two major components, the "Reality Drawing Processor" (RDP) and the "Reality Signal Processor" (RSP). Supports: 235x224 to 640x480 flicker free interlaced screen resolution. Hardware Z-Buffering. Hardware Anti-aliasing. Hardware Texture Mapping (32x32 pixel texture maps). Tri-Linear filtered MIP Mapping. Environment Mapping SOUND: Stereo 16bit PCM audio capable of 64 channels at 44Khz