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(c)Yamamoto Sumika / Telenet Japan
Cartridge SHVC-EE
Tennis game
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Ace Wo Nerae is a 3D tennis game by Nippon Telenet
based on a popular Japanese anime from the 70's
(itself based on a shôjo Japanese manga series by Sumika Yamamoto).
The player takes control of Hiromi Oka, a young and cute rookie tennis player.
Even if she's still studying at High School (she's supposed to be 15 years old),
she aims, through determination and hard work, to become the greatest tennis
player of all time - the Ace Player ! The game offers three modes - versus
(up to four players), training (for first-timers) and Story. As expected, the
story mode gets the player to compete against a selection of premiership tennis
players, and cutscenes slowly unfold the story. At all times, Ace Wo Nerae
uses the Super Famicom's graphics capabilities to produce a 3D
representation of the tennis court (set to a fixed overhead view for the versus mode)
which cleverly simulates an actual 3D moving camera. Each button of the controller
pad is linked to a type of swing and the players can therefore use a large
selection of traditional tennis moves. Matches can be quite long and a password
system is used to save the game's progress during the Story mode.
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In the 70's, sport animes were popular.
Ace Wo Nerae is a shôjo manga by Sumika Yamamoto
and published from 1972 to 1980. Shôjo mangas are Japanese comic
books usually aimed at a young female audience and they usually feature
female protagonists and pastel colors. The manga was later adapted into a
TV animated series and even into a live-action television show in 2004.
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LK
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Add your Pov here !
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P
O
V
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Ace Wo Nerae is surprisingly one of the best tennis game for the Super Famicom system.
The quality and speed of the 3D animation is what makes this title stand out from the other
big names tennis games that were available at the time. I only wished some of the small problems
were ironed out - the camera can be a pain at times and makes it hard to judge where the
ball really is or will end up when performing tricky shots. (As a side note, all the emulators
I tried the game on had problems and didn't properly display the
3D tennis court...). The collision detection is also
rather weak and is really forgiving.
Musics and sound effects are almost non-existent which is
a shame - especially when the game's front box mentions the DSP technology which, if I'm
not mistaking, stands for Digital Signal Processor and is a specialized microprocessor designed
for real-time digital sound processing. Maybe it was only used for the voice telling the
score... All in all, Ace Wo Nerae is an impressive (for the time) and
surprising tennis game and you do not have to be an anime fan to enjoy it.
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