Past, present, and future: 10 portable tennis games

If football isn’t your thing, luckily the gods of sports have made a last minute deal to double up the televised events. So while Rooney and Crouch and all the rest of those overpaid goons tear up South Africa with their studded shoes, we can relax with a little court action in Wimbledon.

But it can get boring. Especially once the match hits the 120th game, and the tenth hour of play. Luckily, there are loads of portable tennis games to choose from, allowing you to have a knockabout while sitting in the stands. Just turn the sound down.

Instead of trawling the App Store for monkey and ninja based tennis sims, we decided to cull this list from the entire timeline of portable games and systems, even dipping into the future. Engage your flux capacitors.

Think the 3DS is Nintendo’s first foray into the world of portable 3D? Think again - the Virtual Boy, one of Nintendo’s most regretted and embarrassing mistakes (only just beating out Hotel Mario on the Philips CD-i) puked out 3D visuals in headache-inducing crimson.

Mario Tennis worked okay though (apparently - the machine never reached our shores), with some added perspective helping you place shots more easily and accurately than ever. Here’s hoping Nintendo has a tennis game ready and waiting for the 3DS to drop.

While that deliciously clicky analogue stick might have made the Neo Geo Pocket the perfect device for mobile brawlers and pocket pugilists, it also worked pretty well for handheld tennis game Pocket Tennis. Or Pocket Tennis Color, if you’re fancy like that.

I’d love to tell you some stats, like the eight tennis players and the five diverse courts you can play on, but my instruction booklet is only in Spanish and German for some reason. Them’s the breaks.

Unlike the N64 and GameCube editions of Mario Tennis, which had the best Mushroom Kingdom athletes, from Donkey Kong to a completely random Shy Guy, competing for the trophy, the Game Boy edition features little human characters and an RPG mode.

You play as a rookie who has to build up his or her skills through training and practice. Don’t worry, though - when you get to the top of the league, you’ll start facing the disgruntled apes and portly plumbers you paid for.

Sega’s Virtua Tennis series is the gold standard of digital grown-up-ping-pong, whether its an imposing cabinet in a dusty arcade, rocking out on Dreamcast or even appearing on Sony’s portable wonder, the PSP.

In fact, World Tour is a remarkably faithful take on the Virtua Tennis series, capturing the franchise’s mix of accessible arcade feel and hidden depth, on the handheld. You’ve also got the wonderful fruit dodging mini-game, and Maria Sharapova.

Very likely to be the very best tennis game on iPhone, Gameloft knocks it out of the park with a top quality game that plays as good as it looks. ‘Out of the park’ isn’t a tennis pun, is it? (No - ed). Oh well.

The game packs in eight players, seven ‘stadiums’ (they’re called courts Gameloft) and all the tennis surfaces - clay, grass, and synthetic. You’ve also got both touch and tilt based controls, a career mode, and local wi-fi multiplayer.

If Mario’s jovial takes on the world’s sports don’t float your boat, you can always count on developer Clap Hanz to represent your favourite sports with cute characters, instant accessibility, and plenty of depth for masters.

CH has been busy with golf for the past 13 or so years, but it's finally had a crack at a new sport - tennis. The PS2 edition of Everybody’s Tennis wasn’t too hot, so let's hope it's cracked it with this portable edition.

It’s not quite as good as World Tour, and it's a little too familiar to even tell exactly what’s new, but we’ve got ten spots to fill so let's run with it.

Virtua Tennis is basically the FIFA of tennis games, as it actually gets most of the licensed players in each of its games, allowing to take to the court as Roger Federer or Venus Williams.

So Mario and Donkey weren’t good enough. And neither were the creepy anime-esque dolls from Everybody’s Tennis? Well, how about Snoopy. Everyone loves that little mute dog.

Having originally appeared on the ancient Game & Watch handheld, Snoopy, Charlie Brown, Lucy, and Linus came back for a second set on Game Boy Colour. And it was, surprisingly, very good.

Getting Virtua Tennis on the PSP isn’t much of a stretch. Sony’s portable powerhouse is every bit as man as the Dreamcast, meaning ports from Sega’s last console to the PSP are just about perfect.

But Game Boy Advance? With the sprites and stuff? Surprisingly, Virtua Tennis comes through unharmed, and despite a hefty amount of compaction and compression, it's every bit as enjoyable as its console brethren.

With Virtua Tennis: World Tour ruling the court when it comes to portable pong on PSP, there isn’t much room near the net for Namco’s take on mobile tennis.

But Smash Court drops crocodile based mini-games in favour of a more serious, sober take on the whole Wimbledon experience. If you want a realistic simulation of tennis, take a look Smash Court Tennis 3’s way.