Family Tennis

Family Tennis released December 11, 1987 exclusively in Japan for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The fourth of Namco’s lengthy “Family” series of sports games and the first to concentrate on tennis, Family Tennis plays much like its Nintendo forebear and other tennis game contemporaries. It shares the same viewpoint from behind the court and requires that the player make their way to where each shot is heading and return the ball by tapping the swing button in order to win.

Family Tennis has a few notable quirks, however. First, is that the many fictional tennis players available all superficially resemble actual real-life stars of the sport. The second is “Cosmos Mode”, in which the action is taken to outer space. Besides the starry background and the astronaut ballboys, there’s little functional difference however. There was also four female characters, of the sixteen total, who all had a bigger racket then the men. Essentially making the women into an ‘Easy Mode’