World Court Tennis
TurboGrafx-16, 1989
Developer: Namco
Publisher: NEC
Had I known I was up against Tennis Satan himself, perhaps I might not have rushed headlong into humiliating defeat. It was going to take more than my legendary forehand and prophesied tennis instincts to take down the Evil Tennis King and free Tennis Kingdom from… uh… well…
You know, I still wasn’t sure just what this world needed to be “saved” from. Sure, it was geographically a mess, but that was about it. All anybody did here was play tennis. I mean, I can’t blame “a” Tennis King for being a little bit antsy about having a green tennis demon/doppelganger living at the North Pole, but it seemed like he mostly kept to himself. On top of that, nobody in Tennis Kingdom seemed like they were particularly unhappy or evil (except maybe the tennis rapists and this guy). There were tennis courts EVERYWHERE. How bad could this place really be?
None of that truly mattered anymore, though. I’d gone too deep, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to leave tennis kingdom without avenging my loss. I had to know that I truly was THE GREATEST TENNIS PLAYER IN THE LAND. My battles thus far had taught me exactly how to accomplish this goal: OBTAIN BETTER SPORTING GOODS THAN MY OPPONENTS.
I knew a few things:
1. A man in Toronto was selling “A”gassi ranked gear. At this point in time, I lacked the funds to acquire that gear.
2. There were six “fixed” tennis courts in Tennis Kingdom (as in “not the ones that materialize out of thin air every five seconds”). I had conquered two of those courts when I defeated Witt and Sevens. Each of those victories had earned me a pearl. Presumably if I could find the other four pearls, something good would happen.
3. There was a big lake in Paris. Something should be there.
As I wasn’t in the mood to run headlong back into a tennis match just yet, I figured the first logical step was to warp back to Paris and check out that lake. Now that i had an inner tube, aquatic exploration would not be an issue.
Sure enough, something WAS in the great Parisian sea. An isolated doghouse. I wondered how many tennis francs this primo piece of real estate had cost. Inside?
Finally! The mystery of the pearls revealed! I’m no economist, but something told me that this guy would have better luck moving his merchandise if he set more reasonable prices. Currency that you can only obtain by beating the world’s greatest tennis pros is necessarily in short supply. I guess you have to dream big if you live on an isolated island with no means of escape.
At this point in time, I concluded that the next logical step would be to fight my way across the wilderness looking for the remaining tennis courts, while at the same time gradually earning the tennis food stamps necessary to purchase that “A”gassi gear. I was curious though… there had been lakes in Toronto and Tokyo. Why didn’t I check them out first?
Well I’ll be, Toronto apparently had a lake-dweller as well.
A step up in quality from the Parisian doghouse I had just visited, no doubt. What useful information would I find here?
You know, if I lived in the middle of a lake in post-apocalyptic Canada, I would probably be asking for help instead of refusing to dole it out, but hey, what did I know. Maybe I’d find the Japanese to be a little more hospitable? I warped back to Tokyo and took to the seas.
A-ha. Whatever I was about to find, I was sure it wasn’t going to be hospitable. It was time to make like Commodore Perry and bust Japan wide open.
NEXT TIME: PACIFIC THEATER OF OPERATIONS