World Court Tennis for the Turbografx 16 is part of Namco's line of tennis games that brought us Family Tennis and Super Family Tennis, among others. It is, of course, a tennis game with all of the match modes to which you may be accustomed with tournaments, singles matches, and doubles matches that support up to four players. That's cool and all, but what's really cool is that some asshole at Namco decided that it also needed a Dragon Quest-inspired Quest Mode... yep, there's a full-on tennis RPG to play here!
You see, the evil tennis king from Chicago has made a mess of things, so the good king adorns you with shitty equipment and $500, then sends you out in the world to find the six tennis arenas to take down the tennis king's henchmen and fund the magic ball, which will allow you to return the tennis king's serve much more easily. Yes, this is all very real, and not some early April Fool's Day joke. You roam an overworld, getting challenged to random one game tennis matches, with cash on the line. This allows you to buy better shoes, shirts, and racquets, which raise your stats, greatly improving your chances of winning. Win matches, buy equipment, and take down those evil tennis goons!
As a tennis game, it has decent graphics and sound, but very good play control. You don't have quite as many types of stroke as, say, Super Tennis, but the important stuff is there, and it feels good. It doesn't look much better than an NES game save having more colors on screen at once, but it gets the job done, and seeing your little player jaunt about in a Dragon Quest-style map with his gear on and get challenged to a tennis game by a guy who looks suspiciously like Rick from Splatterhouse is definitely amusing, and does actually givs some fun depth to the single player experience beyond simple tournaments.
Played this one? Have memories of it or maybe Final Lap Twin, which had a similar Quest Mode but with single lap races?