Smash-Hits

Basically, every sport can be broken down to the essentials in a few words: 'cycling', 'swimming', 'running in circles', 'chasing/shooting/throwing a ball'. It all sounds pretty unspectacular. And in my opinion it is - at least to watch. At the top of my list of things I wonder why you should watch is tennis. If I want to watch two people moaning in hot net action, I'll visit certain websites.

Be that as it may - there is a market for this nonsense and, of course, various video game derivatives. One representative of this trade was the Virtua Tennis series, originally called Power Smash in Japanese, which found its way from the arcade machine to the home Dreamcast console at the turn of the century with Virtua Tennis. Players could compete against each other with a selection of eight athletes in four competitions - male athletes, mind you..

Games from the Virtua Tennis-series

Virtua Tennis (2000)

Virtua Tennis 2 (2001)

The accompanying soundtrack was composed by guitarist Chiho Kobayashi. So if you (like me) were waiting for synthpop and uninspired MIDI droning, you will be disappointed by the 20 tracks of the gamerip. In fact, the score sounds quite 'modern', which is probably due to the rock approach with shrill guitar riffs and corresponding drum sequences. A real surprise for me, which I would have expected to find in a contemporary Mario Kart or the Mario Strikers-series rather than in a posh over-the-net knockabout.

The composer remains true to her formula for large parts of the album and only occasionally adds a little 80s glam to the rock ballad through accents or smaller acoustic highlights (Hero of Time, Dream and Passion, Into Central Court). The biggest exception, however, is Start Match, which sounds like the opening to a typical fantasy epic and then settles somewhere between Titanic and Terminator - unexpected, but not bad. This in turn also describes the score quite well.