AIR Tennis is a generic breakout clone with a twist of tennis. You move your character horizontally in order to prevent the ball from passing you and attempt to break all the bricks in the stage to advance to the next one. The twist is that instead of just catching the ball, you have to hit it with your racket and depending on the timing of your hit, the ball gains momentum and is able to break multiple bricks at once.
As its name implies, the game uses the characters of AIR. You can select one of the three female leads from the visual novel/series each with their own strengths and weaknesses in Speed, Power and Hyper (lol! I can actually read the moonspeak coz it's just engrish in katakana) although, I'm not sure how much of a difference it actually makes since they all control the same way. Z for left swing, C for right swing and the directional keys for left and right.
The graphics are nothing to write home about. Generic cute sprites matched by colorful backgrounds. I must say that the character art looks a bit unpolished (but it might be intentional), although the sprites of the characters are quite well-made. The animation is also not as smooth as I'd prefer for a modern 3D game. The shadows flicker a lot on my system, but then again, it could be due to my PC's configuration.
Sounds are the generic smack, smack, thwack sounds plus some fun little forgettable background tracks reminiscent of AIR's soundtrack. Certainly not at the level of Tohou OSTs.
The gameplay is nice. After all, it's based on a classic game. They've added quite a few things to make this a unique experience. A power bar on the right of the screen determines how well you've hit the ball. It depletes with each brick or obstacle that it hits. A hyper bar on the right of the screen slowly builds up as you keep hitting the ball and when it fills, you get a temporarily hyper-mode wherein the ball cuts through any bricks that it hits without bouncing back. Each character is equipped with a set number of specials, where they throw projectiles to break more bricks, represented by an "S" sign at the left of the screen which you can activate by pressing... S. There's also combo-hit counter that counts how many bricks you've hit repeatedly. Other than that, it's really just a glorified breakout clone in a pretty AIR package. I'm not sure, but the game seems a bit short. It seems there are only three stages which are all selectable after you've chosen a character.
So that's AIR Tennis for you. A fun, short doujin game for anyone. No Japanese comprehension level necessary to enjoy it. The main menu only has three choices. Start, Ranking and Quit.
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