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1993-01-08
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Path: menudo.uh.edu!menudo.uh.edu!usenet
From: andrey@cco.caltech.edu (Andre Yew)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: Pro Tennis Tour 2
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.games
Date: 8 Jan 1993 23:10:54 GMT
Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett
Lines: 307
Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator)
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <1il1luINN64e@menudo.uh.edu>
Reply-To: andrey@cco.caltech.edu (Andre Yew)
NNTP-Posting-Host: karazm.math.uh.edu
Keywords: game, sports, tennis, skill, commercial
PRODUCT NAME
Pro Tennis Tour 2
BRIEF DESCRIPTION
Pro Tennis Tour 2 (PTT2) is a tennis simulator with enough features
to satisfy even most tennis players. It is system-friendly and epitomizes
ideal Amiga game programming.
AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION
Distributed by:
Name: UBI Soft
Address: 1505 Bridgeway, Suite 105
Sausalito, CA 94965
Telephone: (415) 332-8749
Actually written by:
Name: Bluebyte
Address: Aktienstr. 62
4330 Muelheim, Germany
LIST PRICE
$49.95 (US).
SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS
HARDWARE
Though it runs on the Amiga 500, 1000, 2000, and 3000 with 512K of
memory, it has extra features if you have more RAM.
With 512K of Chip and 512K of Fast RAM, you get full save functions.
This means you can save only from the main set of menus and not from
the individual features. So you can only save only player
information and not ball machine information. What this means
becomes clearer later in the review.
With 1MB of Chip RAM, you can play mixed games, and you get better
sound effects.
SOFTWARE
PTT2 requires at least Kickstart 1.2. It runs fine under 2.04.
COPY PROTECTION
PTT2 is copy-protected by a lookup scheme. A purple piece of paper
with black ink (which is very low-contrast so you have a hard time copying
it, presumably) contains a matrix of codes. You are asked only once in the
beginning for a code.
PTT2 installs on a hard drive. It has its own installer that just
copies files to a partition. Make sure you specify a subdirectory for it,
because the files on the disk aren't in any. It will create the necessary
directories if it can't find the one you told it. After that, you can just
double-click on its icon to run it without the original disk.
If you install it to hard disk, it will automatically save all files
to the hard disk.
Overall, this is one of less annoying copy-protection methods I've
seen. It's similar to that of Maxis's games.
MACHINE USED FOR TESTING
I ran PTT2 on an Amiga 3000, with 2 MB of Chip RAM, 8 MB of Fast
RAM, and 2.04 softkicked. It has a Commodore Ethernet card installed that
caused no problems at all.
REVIEW
I like Pro Tennis Tour 2 (PTT2). As an intermediate tennis player,
I was impressed by how many features the programmers stuffed into this
1-disk game. For example, you can hit standard ground strokes like backhands
and forehands, as well as chips, slices, lobs, smashes, and volleys. About
the only thing missing is control of spin, so you can't do sidespins or
control the amount of topspin you apply on your backhand, for example.
So how do they do all this? The controls are relatively simple and
actually reflect real court experience. You see the court from one end,
like on television, and control your players with 1 to 4 joysticks (more on
this later). The standard way to hit the ball is to run up to the ball,
moving the joystick in whatever direction you want to go, bring back your
racquet, by pressing the fire button, and swing your racquet, by letting the
fire button go. How you get different strokes is by moving your joystick
while the fire button is pressed. Push up to lob, down to chip, left to hit
more towards the left, and right to hit more towards the right. When you're
at the other end of the court, reverse the up and down directions. The
longer you hold the joystick to one direction, the more extreme the action,
and the longer you hold your fire button, the harder the swing. This is
somewhat like real tennis -- the longer you have to set up for a shot, the
more choices you have for one. While this may sound a little difficult at
first, it's pretty easy to get used to it.
The computer opponents are quite good, though not unbeatable. Being
computer-controlled, they are very adept at controlling their swings and can
tell exactly where the ball will land. As a result, the computer ends up
making some pretty incredible-looking shots, but it is fair -- your computer
opponents have the same physical limitations as you do. So if the computer
barely chased down a ball, don't expect it to hit a blazing, super sharp
cross-court forehand. However, hit the ball softly to the computer, and it
will usually hit something nearly unreturnable by you.
PTT2 has three modes of play: singles, where you play with one
opponent, doubles, where you play with another person against two opponents,
and dirty doubles, where one person takes on a doubles team. The computer
is pretty savvy in singles play using many popular tactics in real tennis
and will take advantage of you any time it can. However, it is considerably
dumber in doubles play. If you play with a computer doubles partner, be
prepared for a frustrating game. Basically, the computer pretends it's in a
singles game and will mostly act like it. Sometimes, it will hog up the
whole court and not cover its side of the court, and sometimes it will just
stay on its side. It's very unpredictable what it does.
You can also play with up to three other human players. To do this
you need some sort of parallel port thing that the manual says to ask your
dealer about. I'm sure such a device exists, but I haven't looked for it.
If you play with only one other human player, you can just plug a second
joystick into the mouse port.
Not all tennis players are created equal, and this is reflected in
PTT2 as well. Each player has several categories -- forehand, backhand,
forehand volley, backhand volley, smash, service, and conditioning -- with
ratings for each. Initially, you start with 64 points in each category with
80 extra points to distribute among them. When that player is played by the
computer or a human in character mode, all those factors come into play.
You can also personalize other player characteristics such as name and sex
(which changes only how you look on court). Each character can be saved to
disk as well.
It can be frustrating to learn your tennis strokes in a game, so PTT2
also provides a programmable ball-machine for you to practice against. You
can vary the machine's ball frequency and speed as well as specify a
sequence of up to 9 different shooting positions. They cover shallow and
deep shots, as well as lobs. Each shot can be aimed to the left, middle or
right. You can also save your ball-machine sequences to disk.
So where can you actually play a game? There are two choices,
either the pickup game or tournament play. A pickup game is exactly that --
you play one match just for the fun of it. The computer opponent is no less
weaker than usual, though. Tournament play throws you onto the professional
tour where you start with no money and a dismal ranking, and enter
tournaments around the world to raise your ranking and get more money. You
can play the four Grand Slams (the Australian Open, the French Open,
Wimbledon, and the US Open), with their accompanying warmup tournaments
(usually small tournaments held before the Grand Slam event) along with the
Davis Cup, where players compete in national teams. You have a logbook in
which you can specify the tournaments you'd like to play in. Your
opponents start out weak and get progressively stronger. I haven't really
gotten very far into tournaments, so I don't know how strong computer
players really get. It seems pretty faithful to how the professional tennis
tour works in the real world (minus political and social intrigues).
Now on to the technical details of the game. Overall, it's very
well done with very nice touches throughout. The game opens with the
Bluebyte logo and then the PT