''Sampras Tennis 96'' is a 1995

tennis Tennis is a List of racket sports, racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent (singles (tennis), singles) or between two teams of two players each (doubles (tennis), doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket st ...

video game A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...

for the

Sega Genesis The Sega Genesis, known as the outside North America, is a 16-bit Fourth generation of video game consoles, fourth generation home video game console developed and sold by Sega. It was Sega's third console and the successor to the Master Sys ...

developed by

Codemasters The Codemasters Software Company Limited (trade name: Codemasters) is a British video game developer and former publisher based in Southam, England, which is a subsidiary of American corporation Electronic Arts and managed under the EA Sports ...

. It is the sequel to '' Pete Sampras Tennis''. Like its predecessor, it was one of the few titles released on the

J-Cart The J-Cart is a special ROM cartridge developed by Codemasters for the Sega Genesis console. It held not only the game data but also came with two additional gamepad ports. This effectively allowed four players to play simultaneously without any ...

format, which provides two additional controller ports for multiplayer games. The game was followed by '' Pete Sampras Tennis '97'', which was released for the

PlayStation is a video gaming brand owned and produced by Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), a division of Japanese conglomerate Sony. Its flagship products consists of a series of home video game consoles produced under the brand; it also consists ...

and personal computers.

Features

It was endorsed by

Pete Sampras Pete Sampras (born August 12, 1971) is an American former professional tennis player. One of the most successful tennis players of all time, he was ranked as the List of ATP number 1 ranked singles players, world No. 1 in men's singles by the A ...

, one of the best-known tennis players of the late 20th century. The game is pretty standard

sim fare. It features a first-person behind-the-back view of the court with player's choice of multiple

male Male (Planet symbols, symbol: ♂) is the sex of an organism that produces the gamete (sex cell) known as sperm, which fuses with the larger female gamete, or Egg cell, ovum, in the process of fertilisation. A male organism cannot sexual repro ...

female An organism's sex is female ( symbol: ♀) if it produces the ovum (egg cell), the type of gamete (sex cell) that fuses with the male gamete (sperm cell) during sexual reproduction. A female has larger gametes than a male. Females and ...

players and pick of several different styles of play - including head-to-head and mixed doubles.

Description

The Europe-only sequel to ''Pete Sampras Tennis'', ''Sampras Tennis 96'' includes new features, such as a reworked graphics engine with

parallax Parallax is a displacement or difference in the apparent position of an object viewed along two different sightline, lines of sight and is measured by the angle or half-angle of inclination between those two lines. Due to perspective (graphica ...

scrolling, new shots and aftertouch controls, with an Indoor court joining the previously available grass, clay and hard courts. Changes to the game go well beyond the graphics - now the ball reacts differently in each court and it's harder to control the direction of the ball, meaning the powerful forehands that could win a game in minutes of the first game are much harder to pull. Services now must be perfectly weighted in both power, direction and timing, facing the risk of hitting the net or going off bounds, with a speedometer showing how fast the best serves went. All these are controlled using the three buttons of the gamepad and the d-pad, with the A button for lobbing the ball, B to make passing shots and C to dive for a direction. By combining the B and A or C buttons it's possible to add top/back or full spin to the ball, with the Y axis changing the power and the X axis the direction. The large roster of Pete Sampras Tennis was replaced by only eight players:

himself, Sam Nimitz (German, powerful player best suited for hard courts), Marie Guyennot (French, accurate and fast around the court), Minori Hurosawa (Japanese, fast and agile all around), Dino Turnetti (Italian, with an aggressive style of play), Wanda Tucker (American, all around), Esperanza Delgado (Spanish, powerful serve and volleying abilities) and Richard Potter (English, rookie all-arounder). There are three game modes to square things up - Challenge (single match, pairs or doubles on any court), Tournament ("Party mode" for up to eight players) and World Tour (single player mode, where the player squares against seven computer players, with the option to play singles or doubles. There's a Pro mode which extend the match to three sets and increase the difficulty setting by enhancing computer player AI and allowing them to perform spin shots).

References

External links

* {{moby game, id=/pete-sampras-tennis-96, name=''Sampras Tennis 96'' 1995 video games Codemasters games Europe-exclusive video games Sega Genesis games Sega Genesis-only games Tennis video games Video game sequels Video games set in 1996 Multiplayer and single-player video games Video games based on real people Cultural depictions of Pete Sampras Video games developed in the United Kingdom