Let’s do some word association: Football? Glamorous. Rugby? Punishing. Basketball? Exciting. Tennis? Boring. Enjoyable to play (I presume) but to watch…plain, old boring. Every year people congregate in the same part of London, on the same wind-swept summer days (When will we get some sunshine?) to observe a series of events that will determine the age old question: ‘Who will win this year: Nadal or Federer? Or Federer…or Nadal? (Okay, so Dodjovic won the last competition but you get where I’m coming from).

I don’t hate Tennis; I’ve just never seen the appeal. I’m not the game’s audience…or so I thought. Up until the release of the Dreamcast, the only sports titles I had even began to acknowledge were things like FIFA, and a brief stint with a Formula One game on the N64; but that was about to change. Little did I know that hitting a fuzzy, lime-yellow ball from one end of a court to the other was about to become very cool indeed (and furthermore, a representation of it would be the very first title I would purchase on Sega’s new system). Enter the splendid Virtua Tennis.

Sega used to be awesome. In yesteryear the console market was their domain, as was the now-dying arcade scene. Row-upon-row of machines adorned with an AM2, Namco or Capcom logo. It’s still superbly entertaining wandering through the front door of such an establishment, allowing the mechanism to eat up your tenner on the coin machine and then wasting away an afternoon fluttering between Daytona USA and Virtua Cop. Fifteen years ago of course, this was the highlight of my holidays. No crisp, golden beaches. No ogling at the scantily-clad attire of the fairer sex. Just me, a light gun and a horde of bad guys (who the Wachowski brothers clearly mimicked in their three Matrix films).

But as the ‘90’s turned to the ‘00’s, arcades started to change. It wasn’t due to waning popularity or because I was getting older, it was down to additional content. Deep in the back of the crowded expanse, nestled somewhere between Time Crisis and the original House of the Dead (my favourite was the third iteration where you had that ridiculously big shotgun to throw around. Or Typing of the Dead! On the PC? No? Just me then) was a little cabinet that had the words ‘Virtua Tennis’ painted across it. And so the fashionable yet legitimately fun sports game was born.

Yu Suzuki had absolutely no desire to stumble into simulation territory when he dreamt up VT. It was never going to be a taxing, painstakingly realistic portrayal of the sport, nor a contrived effort to add numbers to the ‘Virtua’ brand. What it was going to be was graceful, lively and aesthetically pleasing.

The ‘Virtua’ games have always been known for their polished visuals and right out of the gate you knew VT wouldn’t be bucking the trend. Vivid colours offset by a rocking J-pop soundtrack meant every match was handsome and had a ‘feel good’ factor to it. Players moved around swiftly and with precision, and the winning of any kind of prolonged rally made you feel like a young Tim Henman in-the-making (terrible analogy). Balls swerved, characters grunted and the voice over guy never failed to impress with any announcement of the current score line (he clearly relished his job).

As fun as the single player was, it wasn’t until you rounded up that motley crew of youth you called friends and sat them down in your bedroom/living room that Virtua Tennis really came into its own. The pleasure had during four-player sessions was extraordinary. Matches that were won at all convincingly by two people would be followed by yells somewhere in the region of ‘that was unfair-you guys are the best two players!’

And so a rotation policy Sir Alex Ferguson would be proud of would be instigated, but as soon you found the right combination of teammates, the right sweet spot, you were there for hours. In your 20’s, such sessions are normally accompanied by an array of beer or spirits to conform to the status quo,; but back in the day VT bypassed the need for alcohol and jumped straight to fun (I haven’t even mentioned the array of party games on offer-stupendous fun).

Sometimes it’s difficult to determine exactly why we like something. Take the 2004 mildly-recognized romantic-comedy Wimbledon. I don’t know why I like this film. Maybe it’s Paul Bettany just being ‘Paul Bettany’. Maybe it’s Kirsten Dunst doing something far removed from the tosh that is Spider-man 3. Or maybe it’s because Wimbledon is a British romcom that doesn’t fall prey the usual clichés.

Sure, it’s cheesy and derivative in places, but it’s also genuine, well-paced and engaging. And that’s Virtua Tennis. VT never pretended to be something it wasn’t. You knew roughly how long matches would last, you knew things weren’t going to be sensible and you definitely knew things would be fun. There have been better sports games over the years, but for unbridled enjoyment and pure pick-up-and-playability, you only need look in one place…