Retro Replay Review

Gameplay

The first few matches make Love Smash! easy to place. This is basic, accessible tennis rather than a demanding sports sim, built around quick singles or doubles matches for up to four people. Exhibition mode is the immediate pick when you want to pass controllers around, while Tournament offers a more directed route through the game. That split is sensible: one mode lets you get straight to a match, and the other gives you a reason to keep choosing a racket.

Its strongest wrinkle is the character roster. Eight initial competitors, plus two hidden unlocks, means your selection has more flavor than choosing a different outfit on an otherwise identical athlete. Each character has individual abilities and a signature special move, so it is worth spending a few games with several of them instead of locking into the first face you like. The special moves push the game toward arcade theatrics, giving a match a little more personality than plain point-for-point tennis.

Doubles is where the four-player support has the clearest payoff. Tennis naturally creates simple alliances and sudden blame when a point falls apart, and the game gives a group a straightforward way to share that energy. Solo players can still work through Tournament and chase the hidden characters and costumes, but the small number of courts and core competitors puts a ceiling on the long-term variety. It is a game that benefits from treating a rematch as the goal, not an endless progression grind.

Graphics

The courts do more than repeat the expected tennis-stadium backdrop. Alongside traditional venues, matches can play out at an army base, construction site, and mountaintop, which fits the game’s broad anime-arcade tone. The character costumes and distinct special moves add another layer of visual variety, even when you are returning to the same competitors.

Story

Tournament mode hangs its premise on a secret underground society gathering eight of the world’s greatest players to compete for fame and fortune. It is a knowingly heightened excuse for a tennis contest, and that is the right scale for this kind of game. The premise gets you into the bracket without asking you to take the competition too seriously.

Do not expect the tournament framing to carry the game on its own. Its real purpose is to turn matches into a sequence and give the roster a shared reason to clash. The personalities come through more in each competitor’s individual abilities, special move, and unlockable costumes than in the bare premise.

That light touch works best if you want sports-game context rather than a story-led campaign. You get a tournament with a playful, conspiratorial setup, not a tennis epic. For an arcade game, that is enough: the narrative stays out of the way and lets the matches do the talking.

Overall Experience

Love Smash! has a likable sense of scale. It does not bury tennis under complicated systems; it takes a familiar sport, gives its athletes special moves, and drops them onto courts that include a mountaintop and a construction site. The result sounds slight, but it has the ingredients for a solid local multiplayer diversion, especially when your group prefers colorful competition over simulation-minded detail.

The catch is that its simplicity is both the invitation and the limitation. Once you have sampled the roster, courts, singles, and doubles, there are only so many directions left to go. Unlockable characters and costumes offer a reason to stick around, and Tournament supplies structure, but neither changes the fact that this is a compact arcade tennis game at heart.

Give it a chance if you want an offbeat PlayStation 2 tennis game for short sessions with friends, or if anime-styled sports games with character powers are your comfort food. Skip it if you need a deep career mode, a huge stable of athletes, or the tactical density of a serious tennis sim. For the right night and the right group, its uncomplicated matches can still land cleanly.

Retro Replay Score

6.4/10