Due for release towards the end of March - just in time for Easter - SEGA Superstars Tennis is the latest title to emerge from a continually burgeoning relationship between SEGA and Sumo Digital. The fifth game produced by the Sheffield-based studio for the publisher, the game brings together some of the biggest characters from right across SEGA's expansive universe. Heading to Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, Nintendo DS, and PlayStation 2, TVG caught up with two of the game's head honchos, Lead Designer Travis Ryan and Producer Steve Lycett to discuss Superstars' origins, its future, and whether Ryu from Shenmue is in their plans for future downloadable content...

TVG: The first question today is about the origins of the game, and why the decision was made to make a tennis game that featured SEGA franchises, and how it came about?

Ryan: When we came to the end of [development on] Virtua Tennis 3, although it's quite a pick up and play game, it looks like a simulation so a lot of people wouldn't necessarily buy it because of that. So at the end of development we started to mess about with things in the game's system, put 'big head' cheats in, crazy ball trajectories, stuff that wouldn't get past the agents.

At the same time, SEGA started talking to us about our next project. At first, it started off revolving around a 'Sonic Tennis', but there are so many cool SEGA characters that we thought 'why not have them all?' So we started cherry-picking things from Jet Set [Radio], Space Channel [5], Samba [di Amigo], all these cool characters that we'd played as over the years.

TVG: And how difficult was it to co-ordinate those sort of brands and get the 'ok' to bring them together? What sort of process did the team have to go through?

Ryan: Well SEGA Japan was very involved, and all the original directors from the original games were overseeing the assets to make sure we were doing the right things for the characters. They've been very helpful, supplying us where possible with the original assets from the original games - or if something is not quite right they'd be a little critical about it. Space Channel 5 is a good example of that. We had the original art director on board from that, and she's...

Lycett: ...she's very, very exact.

Ryan: She has an extraordinary attention to detail. So you put characters into the game, and you get a list back saying things like, "Those railings are the wrong height, they need to be 140 centimetres high." But it's good for the project, and the Japanese teams and developers have been really helpful. You ask for things like, "Can we have Sonic and Shadow?" They come back saying, "Yeah, alright," and then you're left thinking what else we could get away with, from characters, courts, to music, to even the mini-games. It was like, let's get the original game modes, let's get the original loading screens...

Lycett: The thing is, if you're up front in what you want to do, and they understood we weren't going to use it in a negative way, then it was fairly easy. Take the Super Monkey Ball team for example. Every time we sent them a build of the game, they came out with fresh ideas. They were getting really enthusiastic, and as time went on, everyone got enthusiastic about it. It's been cool; it's been great working with those guys.

Ryan: It's good as well because the original director for Virtua Tennis 3 gave us feedback and information every time she saw a new version. Even though she's not directly involved with the project, she's been playing it - we're still sort of the Virtua Tennis team as well, which has been excellent.

TVG: Sumo Digital already has a strong reputation in Japan because of your work on Virtua Tennis; did that also help to get your ideas green-lit?

Lycett: We've earned a level of trust now with SEGA. Obviously if this was our first game for them, it might have been a bit difficult, and they may have been a bit wary of us. But this is our fifth game for SEGA now, and we like to put the effort in. A game like this is like the Crown Jewels for us - we've been very lucky.

TVG: Moving on, some of the franchises in the game aren't perhaps on first glance particularly well suited to a tennis title, even as locations to stage matches. You can get away with using characters like Sonic or even NiGHTS, but how does the likes of OutRun and Space Harrier fit in?

Ryan: Originally, we had a level where we had a proper tennis court, because we wondered whether were taking things a little too far. In the end though, we had to take it out because it just didn't fit in. At the start it was just about making a solid tennis game, but as we got more and more into it, it became more about trying to fit as much SEGA stuff into it as possible.

If we're going to be playing tennis with a hedgehog and a little fox in a green environment with little Chao things, let's try and do all these memorable games. For us it was about "Let's have the most iconic OutRun images; what do you remember about Space Channel 5?" We just got carried away with it.

TVG: It's a bit of a SEGA fanboy's dream, isn't it?

Lycett: A lot of people who worked on the game love SEGA. Everybody has something that they remember about SEGA. For me, it's about OutRun, Space Harrier, Afterburner, that kind of thing. For others it could be Jet Set Radio or Space Channel 5...

Ryan: We had different little groups in the team as well. There was a group who remembered Alex Kidd so they were really happy. The Space Harrier and Virtua Cop groups are good examples; they were just experimenting and they'd come back and ask whether they could have Virtua Cop in the game - it's got nothing to do with tennis at all. There was a bit of a debate about it, but if it was fun it could stay in the game. There's a group of us who are really avid fans, but there are others on the team who are really into SEGA games. There's something for everyone in the game really, and that's just the team.

Lycett: I think in the beginning we kinda started this game for ourselves, it's just a happy coincidence that everyone seems to like it.

Ryan: I think the other thing is that it's not only a SEGA fanboy's thing. It's bright and colourful, and it's a different take on tennis. Young kids who perhaps don't know who Alex Kidd and Gilius are, they'll just see cute little characters.

TVG: I guess it also helps that SEGA have recently released the new NiGHTS, so now you also have kids recognising the brand as well as gamers in their twenties who played it on the Saturn.

Lycett: Well as we were saying, if it introduces players to new characters, then that's great.

Ryan: It's the same for Samba de Amigo as well. Samba on the Dreamcast was awesome, but there aren't a lot of gamers of the Wii generation who know what Samba de Amigo is.

TVG: Back-end functionality has also been built into the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions, allowing for the possibility of downloadable content in the future. What structure do you think additional content will take; could it come as brand packs such as a "Shenmue Pack" with Ryu and a couple of environments for instance?

Lycett: I think that when we looked at it, the game was set to add extra court scenes and extra characters. To be honest, there are no particulars but from our point of view, we'd probably add a new court and two characters.

Ryan: This is just from internal discussions and nothing is confirmed, but we were talking about packs. So there'd be for instance a REZ court and a REZ player, or a new House of the Dead pack with two zombies players. It would probably come in packs so you could buy themes based on the games you like.

TVG: Were there any brands that you had to cut because of time?

Lycett: We had a big list, but the problem with adding more characters was the amount of animation. Each character was individually animated, and you're looking at each character having between a hundred and fifty to two hundred animations - and that takes a lot of time. And once they're animated, you have to make sure the game still plays, because the game is animated-driven, and then you have to get them all approved. So it's quite an involved process.

We just wanted to make sure that we got all of the characters in it that we really wanted. People ask why we don't have Ryu from Shenmue, but that's an artistic decision. Would he fit in? We have other humanoid characters but they tend to be more 'cartoony', so I don't know. We'd like to put more in I guess...

Ryan: I wanted Big the Cat [from Sonic Adventure]. Everyone hates Big the Cat, but I really like him...

Lycett: I really wanted the Space Harrier guy.

Ryan: I think originally we wanted Linda from Samba de Amigo...she does make an appearance but I'm not sure whether we're supposed to say that...

Lycett: To be honest, where we've not been able to get a playable character in we've tried to do is get people in at the side of the courts for cameo appearances. There are plenty of references there.

Ryan: One of the Jet Set ones has the police run across the court chasing after you.

TVG: Can you go into a bit more detail about the Nintendo DS version of the game?

Lycett: It's kind of our philosophy at Sumo maybe, I guess. We make a handheld version of the game, we don't make it limited or cut it down. Obviously, you are limited by the platforms in some way, but we try and treat it as the full game. So the DS version has the same features of the other platforms, it has the same characters and same courts - it doesn't have all the music because the size of the cartridge.

Ryan: It's the same approach though as Steve says. It's the same characters, courts, games - the same content. It was similar with what we did with OutRun on the PSP before.

Lycett: All credit to the guys on the DS team, they basically wanted to get it as close to the other platforms as Virtua Tennis had been, so they put a lot of work into that. If you look at the characters animations, all of them fit onto DS - I don't know how they managed to do that, it's a miracle. And of course it also has multiplayer too on single and multi-cart.

Ryan: The one difference with the DS is the touch control. You can play with button control - most players will play with this - but for casual gamers, you can use the touch screen, which works like Pong. You can also put a little bit of after touch on the ball with the stylus too.

TVG: I understand that it's coming out of five platforms, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, DS, and PS2 - but not the PSP. Why was the decision made not to make a version for PSP and is the door open for a future release based on a PS2 to PSP port?

Lycett: (Jokes) What, PS2 to PSP? Who would do that? That's a crazy idea! You've got to bear in mind is that Sumo is quite a big company but we have limited resources. This is really our first big multi-platform - OutRun was quite a big job at the time and that had three...

Ryan: It's not because we don't like PSP...

TVG: Well that's what I was going to say, after all, Sumo has done a great deal on PSP and is known for its work on the platform...

Lycett: We looked at the PSP, but it depends on the demand for it now.

TVG: I spoke to Warren [Leigh, SEGA Europe's Producer] earlier, and he mentioned that Superstars Tennis wouldn't be available on PlayStation 2 in Japan. Is that a gap that you exploit with a PSP version?

Lycett: Potentially. Japan is quite a strange situation because the game gets released on the platforms where it will do well. I'm not sure why it's not coming to PS2 in Japan - you'd have to ask SEGA Japan about that I'm afraid!

Ryan: The other thing is that this is Sumo's first Wii and DS game, so it was a learning experience. If we'd had more experience with those platforms then we may had more capacity.

Lycett: To give you an idea, we had sixty people working on the games, so to add another platform, that goes up by a degree.

TVG: With the extra control system functionality, would you say that the Wii version of Superstars Tennis was the lead platform?

Ryan: They're all unique in their own ways. The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 [versions] have the online functionality, it's obviously High-Def and more detailed, the platforms are obviously for a more hardcore market. The Wii version is a bit more casual. It's a different game of tennis on Wii, it's not like Virtua Tennis, where you have to get into position and build up the shot; on Wii it doesn't work like that - you have to be there to take the shot yourself. It's almost like there's three versions of the game.

Lycett: Yeah, we had this joke in development that the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions are the 'Shiny' versions; Wii and PS2 were the 'Rusty' versions, and I'm not sure what we called the DS version...

Ryan: It was just the DS version...

Lycett: We haven't said to anyone about getting version over the other, because people have different expectations. The Xbox 360 and PS3 versions are expected to have online multiplayer; the Wii is expected to have motion control; and the DS? I'm not sure what people expect of the DS version, but I hope that we've got that!

Ryan: Personally, I would get the Xbox 360 version because I'm an achievement whore and I want to play online. My sister or whoever would pick the Wii version.

TVG: The SEGA Superstars brand has now been trademarked; if you were given the opportunity, which sport would you like to do next time?

Lycett: Oh God! Well, if you looked at multi-character games, what do you want to do...?

TVG: Well if you look at Nintendo...

Ryan: Yeah, they've done Mario Golf, Mario Soccer...

TVG: They've also got the fighting with Super Smash Brothers...

Ryan: It's not that we're going up against Nintendo. I think it's because SEGA have got so many cool characters that you can do so many cool things with them, and you don't have to make games within specific genres - you could do them in 'versus' situations.

Lycett: You'd like to do a fighting game...

Ryan: I'd like to do a SEGA brawler game, but something free and fun. Or a racing game - there's a lot possible.

Lycett: Anything where you have multi-player competition. We obviously did a tennis game this time because we have experience with it. But also, everyone knows the rules. If we'd picked football, then perhaps it would have less of an appeal; perhaps not everyone would know all the rules.

Ryan: And there's also enough SEGA to carry on if they want to do more Superstars.

TVG: Going back to the game, are the characters balanced out or do they have their own attributes?

Ryan: It's different to Virtua Tennis, because in that all of the players are on pretty much an even playing field with their own adjustments. In this game though, there are four key archetypes. You've got the power player who can hit harder shots but moves around a little slower; you've got the fast players who is short but quite average; something quite new are the spin characters where you have an after touch to curve the ball like in Sensible Soccer. The fourth types are the all-rounders, so that all allows for a lot more variety in the playing types.

Lycett: In terms of multiplayer, we tried to make sure that nobody is super-powerful. But if you're a fairly decent player then it doesn't really matter which one you play.

TVG: Can I also quickly ask about the whole "Curien Masion" thing too? [The House of the Dead environments have been re-named in Superstars Tennis]

Lycett: Yeah, we've been asked this a lot. The situation is that Virtua Cop and House of the Dead are banned in Germany, and as far as we understand it, if a game is banned there then you can't reference them in another game. If we'd done a German version of the game, then we'd have to double the number of versions - or we could just choose another name. So as Curien is the name of the mansion in House of the Dead we renamed it Curien's Mansion, and Virtua Cop is known as Virtua Squad in America, so it seemed like a safer choice.

TVG: Well, that's about it. Thanks for speaking with me, and best of luck with the game.

Lycett: Thanks a lot, we're on schedule for a release on March 20th...

TVG would like to thank Stefan McGarry from SEGA Europe, together with Travis Ryan and Steve Lycett from Sumo Digital for their self-described 'informal chat' and answering our questions. SEGA Superstars Tennis has been pencilled in for release just in time for Easter.