Paddle Mania (Arcade)

If you only gave Paddle Mania a brief glance, you might just write it off as a fairly plain top down tennis game, but if you stick around a while to see what this arcade game offers, you’re in for something far more creative than that. While the game’s name, the arcade marquee, and the playable character all imply this is just going to be one on one tennis and the game does feature that in some parts, when you start seeing a team of surfers throwing balls at a tennis player on a beach or a sumo wrestler deciding to play ball with his body instead of a paddle, you’ll see the true appeal of this title.

Paddle Mania may only hint at tennis with its title, but it’s sort of attempting to be a game about the Olympics. Rather than having each sport played separately though, SNK mixed together all of the ones it found interesting and placed them onto a tennis court where even the main sport featured isn’t quite the same as normal. Rather than playing like tennis or paddle-ball, Paddle Mania has turned the tennis court into something closer to air hockey or Pong. To score points, you need to get the ball past the opponent and through an open goal behind them, the player with the most points at the end of a single minute winning the match. The air hockey comparison is perhaps the most appropriate, because even though you are swinging a paddle left or right depending on which of the two buttons you press, your player moves around the court more like they’re being dragged about rather than running to their destinations like a real human.

The design of a match in Paddle Mania avoids being a realistic adaptation of tennis because it really needs to be able to stretch the concept for the crossover matches. During rounds where you play against athletes from other sports such as volleyball, you’re still just swinging your paddle on your side of the court, there being no net in the middle but no athlete is able to cross the center court line despite this. Depending on which sport you’re facing off with, the ball can come at you in many different ways, the simple tennis play evolving into something strange that encourages different strategies and play styles. When you’re up against the surfers, they don’t even try to hit the ball back at you, instead coming by on surfboards and chucking so many balls at you that you really need to play a hard defense to avoid them gaining a lead you can’t catch up to. The synchronized swimming team on the other hand are actively trying to stop the ball, one swimmer in the back trying to follow its trajectory as a few in front go through the routine and potentially block it with their dance-like movements. Learning how these quirky mixed sports work is definitely the best part of Paddle Mania, the player asked to take the basic abilities tennis provides them and overcome whatever edge the opposing players has thanks to their alternate set of skills. Even the sumo wrestler who just seems to be smacking the ball back in a way not too dissimilar to tennis requires a new approach since he can so easily get to the ball if you’re just wildly swiping your racket about.

Admittedly though, wildly swinging your racket isn’t always a bad tactic. One small issue with Paddle Mania is the game’s speed, and while you can select from three different difficulties in a surprising level of mercy from an arcade game, it never quite adjusts the speed to a point where your racket swinging can be done with consistent care. Some of the game’s AI is just too aggressive for a minute long match, but there are still many moments where the ball can slow down to the point you can deliberately swing your racket in a way to slip past enemy defenses. There is another option for getting around the other player, most tennis opponents and the sumo wrestler susceptible to being knocked down if you can smash the ball into their face just right. This gives you a quick window to earn your point, so while a slower pace would allow for more consistent tactical play, there are still moments where you can gain the upper hand even in a heated volley. Pace adjustment could also help with the game feel, certain foes like the sumo wrestler moving so perfectly to block that it feels artificial. In those moments it feels like you’re playing against a computer game rather than a character, but that doesn’t really hurt the game so much as make the difficulty feel a little unnatural at times.

Perhaps the only big disappointment of Paddle Mania is the fact so few of your rounds involve facing off with different sports. There are only 9 rounds to Paddle Mania’s regular play, the game alternating between playing against a tennis player and playing against an entirely different sport with every round, regular tennis coming out on top with 5 of the 9 rounds. Luckily, Paddle Mania didn’t make these too plain. While there is what might as well count as this game’s version of regular tennis on show, there are also special courts with gimmicks to keep the less creative play varied. On one tennis court, the goal behind the players has a stone barrier move back and forth to potentially block incoming shots, and in another the goal is a gate that opens and closes repeatedly during the match. These would also benefit from a generally slower game, but you and your opponent are definitely on an even level here and so slipping past the gimmicks is still both challenging and interesting despite being a step down from mixed sports.

One interesting aspect of a Paddle Mania arcade cabinet is its flexibility. With four sets of controls for players, you can play a few different versions of the game. You and another human player can take on the nine rounds of tennis and mixed sports together as a team or play against each other by way of a regular tennis match but on the gimmick courts. Add in a third player and you can do a two-on-one tennis match, and finally, a four player group can do two-on-two tennis. It is a bit of a shame you can’t play as the teams from different sports in multiplayer, but making them interesting opponents in single player was probably the priority, the game risking overcomplication if you could feasibly play as an athlete from all five sports. The regular tennis, as mentioned, can still prove to be fun because you’re still trying to slip your ball past a highly mobile opponent, and having humans on the other side means some of the artificiality of your opponent’s ability to reach the ball so quickly is replaced by being able to play off of human reaction times, social deception, and other multiplayer tricks to succeed.

THE VERDICT: Had Paddle Mania focused solely on its version of tennis, it would be a solid but forgettable game, but once it starts throwing in sumo wrestlers and synchronized swimmers, Paddle Mania reveals itself to be a far more creative title than it initially appeared. Having to adjust your play strategy to athletes from entirely different sports not only gives you unique challenges, but it breaks up the regular tennis and allows them to still feel pretty good thanks to the mild gimmicks added to that mode. It is a shame there wasn’t a greater level of commitment to the concept of a full on sports mix, but along with some flexible multiplayer and difficulty options, Paddle Mania can still provide entertain with its strange version of the Olympics.

And so, I give Paddle Mania for arcade machines…

A GOOD rating. SNK’s 1988 sports title isn’t really what you’d expect from an Olympics game or a tennis game, but that’s what makes it stand out from the sports crowd. The basic controls of Paddle Mania are pretty plain on first look as well, but by having your opponents and the court undergo such impactful changes, the simple act of swinging your racquet to the left or the right is made much more engaging than you would think. Blind luck isn’t going to help you get past a sumo wrestler, and wild swinging won’t help you outscore a tennis player when the goal is only open occasionally, so while a more cooperative game speed could allow you to better engage with these gimmicks, Paddle Mania is still able to make good use of these shake-ups to keep the action fresh. It’s really easy to be upset that more of the game is tennis than mixed sports though, mainly because you can see the promise and creativity on display in the ones that do show up. You’re not really stepping down to something worse to pick up regular tennis again, but a game that took the concept much further would potentially hit on gameplay that could be extremely imaginative and wild.

Surprisingly, Paddle Mania didn’t officially make it to American shores despite a highly successful release in Japan. However, thanks to an update to the SNK 40th Anniversary Collection, Paddle Mania was finally made available to Western audiences in a much more accessible form. Perhaps if the game had a bit more faith put into it, Paddle Mania could have received a sequel that explores the concept of sport vs. sport much more, but what we did get, and what Americans can now more easily play, is a fun sports title that toys with what video game tennis can be.