Center Court 2 [1997 unreleased Amiga AGA tennis game]

Originally Posted by s2325

ball sprite

I promise the missing 1% is not the ball sprite

[Mark Brown]

I say this about everything but it would make a nice physical cd32 release.

[Etze]

I hope the source code was salvaged, too.

[Python1]

Special unexpected teaser for the author of the game (see his EAB nickname) in the small attachment below!
Don't worry, a real teaser is coming later :-)

[DamienD]

Talk about numerous "teasers"

...may I ask when will the files from the recovered hard drive be available so that we can all try out this unreleased gem?

[s2325]

[ Show youtube player ]

[ransom1122]

SecondService - Wow what a nice story about your game and a happy ending seeing the game is now available. Well done to all involved.

Only 4 second YouTube video? Lol

[Gordon]

Looks fantastic graphically judging by that vid

[Python1]

Below in this post the promised teaser video before SecondService will release Center Court 2 (probably tomorrow)!

Now that a decent video is out, I will speak a little about the gameplay of Center Court 1 and 2. Firstly, CC1 doesn't seem to be a very well-known Amiga game. The fact that there isn't any WHDLoad install (yet?) and that nobody ever asked for one tends to confirm it (though CC1 is fully HD installable). Some (unique?) positive and negative mention of it in this thread: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=70672

The critics in the mags were also pretty tough. However, in an Amiga Power preview of March 1995 I could read: "[...] even in its current unfinished state [Center Court] is the best tennis game any of us have ever played". Unfortunately, I couldn't find any review/preview of CC2 :-)

CC1 is *extremely fast*. The first time you play it is quite a challenge to return the ball and you will probably hate it if you are one who usually prefers games that use a mouse over a joystick... And if in your younger days you already didn't like those fast games that seem, at the first approach, unplayable, today you should stay very far away from CC1 :-) My mate and I loved it and we played it every time we met to play Amiga games. Good days...

CC2 has a slower and more classical tennis engine (e.g., without repeated pike jumps of your player) and therefore, pushed by incredible sound effects, I think it will win most votes. However, people who enjoyed CC1 will probably still prefer CC1 over CC2.

Maybe we can say CC1 is more an "arcade" tennis game while CC2 a "simulation" one. Whatever, I highly recommend both. THANK YOU SecondService for those two great tennis Amiga exclusive games!

Finally, below is what my friend has to say about the game (CC1 as he didn't play CC2 yet). Python2 speaking:

I really liked how fast the game was, and by fast I do not only mean that the ball was going fast, but also that you could actually play a full game of tennis in a very short time.

There was nothing superfluous to the game. You put the floppy in, you select your options, and a few seconds after that you could be playing. There was no intermission, no in-between points screen.

A game (tennis "game" terminology) could last less than a minute. A whole set could be played in 5 minutes or so. In CC1 there is a possibility to play a career mode, but it was really best with two (equally skilled) players.

[dlfrsilver]

absolutely great game ! It's indeed very well made

[Adrian Browne]

Nice, needs a longer video.

[Predseda]

Looks really realistic!

[lolafg]

Great !! Another new game in 2016 !!

[edd_jedi]

Looking forward to this!

[ExiE]

I see that you are rushing to release it, so it means finishing the game is out of question?
I am sure there are people who could help you to at least translate the game to english completely before release...

[Predseda]

And also there must be a good graphician for the title screen.

Ok, here we go!

The good news is that I´ve used the delay to play around with WinUAE. I didn´t really expect to be able to run BlitzBasic2 from my restored HDD image within WinUAE, but it works and it was possible to do some quick updates to the game.
I´ve done my best to fix the missing 1%, so I added the missing english text parts as well as a small title screen (nothing fancy).
The whole game now has about 5 MB, as I deleted quite some unused gfx files (raw TV scans from the 90s), so the zip file is small enough to be added to this post.

Some tips for playing:

there are a few ingame key commands:
ESC - abort a game
"p" - pause
SPACE - replay

For the career mode I recommend using best of 1 for match durations in the options menu before creating a new player, unless you have LOTS of time.
For career mode, make sure the HDD is write enabled, the game wants to write to the disk after each tournament to save the results.

I only tested the game within WinUAE (by adding the CC2 folder as a harddisk), my original setup was an Amiga 1200 with 4MB RAM and a HDD. I haven´t done much testing now, I still hope everything works well.
If someone would like to update player names and/or tournaments, there are 2 editors included in the main folder (tennis_editor1 and 2). I haven´t tried them out though.

Have fun everyone

EDIT: new updated .zip file is on the 3rd page of this thread

[s2325]

longer video [ Show youtube player ] Nice feature are detailed shadows.

[ransom1122]

Working fine



Reminds me of the good ol' days smashing Pro Tennis Tour, but this seems better. Thank you

Dam' hard I might just add. Need practice

for a single match, you could make the computer opponent a little worse in the beginning (you can edit the skill bars)