As soon as Sega announced Virtua Tennis World Tour for the PSP I was all over it. In fact, they practically had to rip it from my grubby mitts. Sega Studios has successfully captured all of the excitement and quality gameplay from the original and perfectly translated it to Sony's PSP, and the result is a game that looks beautiful and plays great. The PSP has played host to numerous sports games, but consider this the first excellent one.

My hunger for this game is truly the sincerest form of flattery because I have such fond memories of the original. My family had gone away for the weekend, leaving yours truly to fend for himself during three of New Jersey's hottest summer days. I had been on the fence about Virtua Tennis, but a sudden urge to pick it up resulted in me bolting to the mall only to discover that the Gamestop had a single copy left, which I immediately snatched up. Upon returning home I popped the game into my Dreamcast and was amazed by what I saw. I had never played a tennis game that looked sweeter or played more amazingly. Thus, a franchise had been born, and now it's coming to one of my favorite portable systems!

Virtua Tennis for the PSP looks very much like its Dreamcast and PlayStation 2 predecessors and that's certainly not a bad thing. Featuring some of the world's more famous tennis players, including Tim Henman, Roger Federer, Maria Sharapova, and Lindsey Davenport, among others, the game challenges you to hit the court and beat these greats at their own game in the most realistic tennis experience ever seen. Unlike Nintendo's Mario Tennis series, you won't be able to unleash special attacks or become hindered by ghosts and banana peels. This is real tennis the way it's meant to be played, meaning that if you just got burned by an overhead smash, there's no way to recover.

There are three modes of play here: Exhibition (standard stuff), Tournament (get through five singles and three doubles stages), and lastly World Tour, which is without question the most appealing. You're able to create your own superstar and partake in a plethora of challenging mini games that'll help you to build up your player's skills. From there you'll enter tournaments and prove to the world why you belong in the tennis circuit, and most importantly, that you're deserving of the coveted number one rank. If World Tour turns out to be just as fun or better than what's found in the other Virtua Tennis games, we're in for quite a treat.

Because multiplayer is all the rage Sega is making great use of the PSP's WiFi capability. Virtua Tennis allows up to four people to play at the same time, so it's possible to enjoy the thrills of heated doubles matches without crowding around a television screen.

My time with Virtua Tennis was limited but it was enough for me to know that this game seriously rocks. It looks just like the PS2 version and that's a huge plus, but it's the PSP screen that truly makes this game special. The 16:9 monster that dominates the system's real estate gives an excellent view of the court.

The game's controls are spot on. Initially I had a bit of trouble playing with the PSP's analog nub, but after a few minutes using it became second nature, and besides, even if you don't care for it you can always switch off to the d-pad. Either way, you'll be set.

Sega hasn't announced an official release date for Virtua Tennis but I'm willing to bet that it'll drop sometime in July, which, if I remember correctly, was when the original debuted on the Dreamcast. Till then, rest assured that the game is coming along excellently and it'll be in your hands before you know it.