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The Lowdown
Pros: Lots of characters to unlock, two player mode, you can program
"tactics" for your doubles player
Cons: Devoid of the story that made the series, ridiculous control
scheme, surprisingly boring
 Purchase
at Play-Asia
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Japan has had tennis fever for awhile now.
The hit anime Tennis no Oji-Sama (aka Prince of Tennis) has been a hit
in Japan. Its success has even generated an American fan base and the
anime isn't even released here yet! With all of this buzz around the
show, of course some company has to make a video game about it. Konami
stepped up to the plate in 2003 when they released two Prince of Tennis
games, Cool Blue and Passion Red for the Game Boy Advance. However, that
was about a year ago and fans want more Prince of Tennis.For those
who are unfamiliar with the Prince of Tennis series here is a quick run
down. The main character is Echizen Ryoma who plays on the Seigaku team.
Echizen isn't any ordinary tennis player he's a tennis superstar from
America and on top of that his dream is to be the best player. The story
follows Echizen and his team as the battle rival schools during tennis
matches. If they were just hitting the ball back and forth this may be a
little boring, but this isn't the case. All of the characters have super
moves like the ability to lob a ball at super sonic speeds and create
illusions of balls. If this does sound a little crazy, just know that
this show is popular. It was the number one anime in Japan at one time.
Anyway, on to the game. When you unwrap your brand new cartridge you
can choose between singles and doubles matches against a computer, but
you only have one character to start out with. Of course it is
appropriate to start out with Echizen, but Konami could have at least
given another character. One of the funniest things is if you want to
play doubles at the start of the game you're forced to use two Echizens
since there are no other characters. On the plus side there are 32
different characters to unlock for either Stylish Silver or Glorious
Gold. Konami made two versions of Tennis no Oji-Sama 2004 and the only
difference between them are the characters you have. Glorious Gold
contains Seigaku (Echizen's school), St. Rudolph, Rikkai and Yamabuki.
While Stylish Silver has Fudomine, Rokaku, Fudomine and of course
Seigaku. In either game you're going to be spending time unlocking
characters. Unlocking characters is a tedious process. You have to play
with a character through all of their single matches or a specific
combination of characters through all of their double matches. When you
start out you'll unlock characters pretty quickly since you only have
Echizen. However, if you want to unlock all of the characters you'll
have to play through the game many times with random combinations or you
have to consult your local message board.
If the process wasn't tedious enough to unlock characters, you
actually have to play the game to do it too, which is a punishment in
itself. First of all why did Konami remove the story of the game? Fans
of the series would love to play through tense character specific
battles and through alternate stories. Konami must have assumed that
everyone already knows the story or they just decided it wasn't worth it
to put it in. So there are no character backgrounds, no in game text to
intensify the match, nothing. To be honest, Konami really could have
gotten away without adding a story, after all this is a sport game, if
they had some great gameplay. Of course, Konami didn't really put any
emphasis on making a unique gameplay experience. I know no one really
expects tennis games to be revolutionary, but after some good tennis
games like Virtua Tennis and Mario Tennis the bar has been raised.
Prince of Tennis: Glorious Gold doesn't pass the bar. It has the
gameplay of the original tennis simulator pong with the addition of
special moves. The controls are simple A is a basic shot while and B is
a lobbing move. L and R can be used to place spin on the ball. When you
actually play the game you'll quickly learn that doing basic hits (A)
are sufficient enough to win matches. Scoring points and taunting your
enemy fills up your special meter. When your special meter is full, your
character is flashing white and you're holding L+R while pressing a
button you can unleash a super move. Yes, the time when you can actually
do a special move is as confusing as it sounds above. Completing special
moves becomes more luck than skill because your character doesn't seem
to flash at the right time. Instead of being able to do the move
whenever you want you're forced to gamble between mashing A and
completing a basic hit or doing the ridiculous button combination in
hopes of a super move. When you actually perform a super move you're
treated to a little graphical show and the move almost always causes the
enemy to miss their hit. If you look carefully at the left hand side of
the screen you'll notice that there is another bar next to the special
bar. This bar is the enlightenment bar and when it is full you can hit
L+R+start to activate it. This allows you to do unlimited supers until
the yellow meter bottoms out.
While the supers are cool looking and the main highlight of the game
they are way too powerful. Doing a super move pretty much guarantees that
you're going to get points that round. At the best super moves can even
knock the opponent's racket out of their hand. This is a huge benefit
because you automatically win the battle after three racket drops in
what is known as a racket KO. Konami also left so many things to exploit
within the game that you can play the game and avoid actually "playing
tennis". One of the classic tricks is doing a lot of dive shots to build
up the enlightenment meter and then just let hell break loose with your
unlimited special moves. Rinse and repeat until you are bored, which
will happen quickly. If you choose to avoid using special moves you'll
have a hard time beating the game. The computer will use a special move
almost every chance they get, which means if you don't use special moves
you'll be behind in points. All of these gameplay flukes take away from
the "tennis" part of the game and it becomes more about beating the
system.
If Konami did a good job in one area of the game it would have to be
the visual presentation. Konami has some really detailed static images
of the characters. The quick scenes where a character is about to
unleash one of their super moves look nice too. Konami even has a
character gallery with some well done pictures of the characters in the
game. While Konami did make some good and large sprite based graphics,
the actual in game graphics are nothing special. Maybe Konami didn't
want to have heavy graphics to avoid in game slowdown, which would be
devastating to the game. In any event, the graphics are probably the
highlight of the game.
Prince of Tennis: Glorious Gold is something that only the biggest
fan of the series can enjoy. The game has too many gameplay problems,
too little entertainment and not enough story for people outside of the
series to enjoy the game. Even fans of the series will get bored of the
game pretty quickly because the game just isn't fun to play.
Import Friendly?
The majority of the menus are in English (except for the important
tactics menu) and there is no story to worry about.
US Bound?
Doubtful US release on two counts the series isn't here and the
game isn't any good.
Overall
You'd have more fun actually playing tennis or dreaming about playing
tennis then playing this game.
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