Wimbledon Championship Tennis

Overview

Wimbledon Championship Tennis is a basic, serious tennis game developed by Sega second-party developer SIMS. It was released on Master System, Game Gear, and Genesis/Mega Drive.

Aside from the title, players won't find anything licensed in here. So, no Edberg in the roster, but a guy called "Ekberg". The tennis players have three attributes (Speed, Power, and Skill) and are divided into three classes (Ground Stroker, All Rounder, and Net Player). There is a total of 16 players in the Master System version of game, supposedly all male. Since the game only gives their surnames and no gender, this topic is open for debate. In the game itself, they are differentiated only by the color of their clothing. The Genesis/Mega Drive version has 24 players, split evenly between male and female.

The game offers three types of floor. A looped animation of a bouncing ball allows the player to gauge the effect on the gameplay beforehand. Lawn is the fastest of the three, Hard is neutral, and Clay slows down the ball. The impact on the gameplay is quite noticeable.

Speaking of options, there are two basic modes. The Tour Mode is a series of bracket-based tournaments. The player can create their own tennis player in this mode, but aside from the name and the three stats there is no further customization. There are no difficulty levels per se, but the game gets progressively harder. This is also a pure single player experience, so doubling up with another player in Tour Mode is not possible. There is also the Free Match Mode which offers all kinds of singles and doubles. The CPU can fill out all slots and is actually not that bad of a double partner.

One thing that can be said about the gameplay itself is that it's really, really fast. The players are zipping about at incredible speeds, making this a somewhat frantic tennis game. The two action buttons correspond to a lob and a normal shot respectively. As with any tennis game, positioning is key. In this case, it's a little harder because it's possible to overshoot the ball quite easily given the absurd running speed.