Peter-J--Skerritt--Jr-One of SEGA’s few remaining sports franchises is coming this fall to a PSP near you.
SEGA announced today that Virtua Tennis World Tour is in development and that the series’ trademark gameplay has been retooled to take full advantage of the PSP’s capabilities.
Virtua Tennis World Tour seems to closely resemble Sega Sports Tennis for the PS2, a game which was basically a port of Virtua Tennis 2 for the Dreamcast. In this game, players will be able to play as a tennis pro, create their own pro, play some minigames to improve their player, and more. Virtua Tennis World Tour will also support Wi-Fi, so up to four people can compete at once. Other game modes include Exhibition play, Tournament play, and a World Tour mode that lets players create their own tennis pro and move him (or her) up through the world rankings.
The game’s development is being handled by SUMO Digital, which is the same team that did a solid job in porting OutRun 2 to the XBOX last year.
There aren’t many tennis games out there, and the Virtua Tennis series stands as the cream of the crop. We’re hoping that SEGA can serve up an ace with this one, and we’ll be monitoring it closely as we draw closer to its release.