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エースをねらえ！
©Yamamoto Sumika / Telenet Japan
Release: 1993-12-22 (¥9400)
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 70s
(itself based on a shōjo 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 in 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. During any of the play modes, 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 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 throughout the story mode.
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In japan, sport animes were highly popular in the 70s.
Ace Wo Nerae is a shōjo manga by Sumika Yamamoto
and was published from 1972 to 1980. Shōjo mangas are Japanese comic
books usually aimed at a young female audience and are known for featuring
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
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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 of the
crowd (or at least at the time). I only wished some of the small problems
had been ironed out - the camera can be a pain at times and figuring out where the ball is or
will end up after performing a tricky shot can be a real challenge. As a side note, all the emulators
I tried the game on had display problems and don't properly refresh the
3D tennis court... the real cartridge plays fine though. The collision detection is also
rather weak and is really forgiving.
Music tracks and sound effects are almost non-existent which is
a shame - especially when the game's packaging 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 that shouts the
score after each point... All in all, Ace Wo Nerae is an impressive and
surprising (for the time) tennis game and you do not have to be a shōjo anime fan to enjoy it.
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