Bip. Bop. Bip. Bop. Bip. Bop. Sound familiar? It should, if you’re as old and wizened as we are. You see, while it might prove that we’re ‘too old for this sh*t’, we’re not ashamed to admit that we grew up with Pong. It was a simpler time for a simpler generation – two parallel lines for ‘paddles’, a small cluster of pixels as a ‘ball’ and a whole lot of bipping and bopping, occasionally punctuated with fists punching the air and the cries of ‘In your face!’ (or other similar insults that we’d have used when we were kids) when we managed to slot one past our opponent. Not that we did that very often, of course – our special twist paddle controllers were broken. It wasn’t that we were rubbish. Honest.

Nearly a quarter of a century on from our experiences with the Atari 2600’s goodness though and we’re having flashbacks. It’s 1983 all over again and we’re sitting on the floor cross-legged with our siblings, hitting a ball backwards and forwards with increasing speed… except, where there was once a rather rubbish CRT television with big buttons for changing the channels, there’s now a 42-inch plasma screen. Where there was once a wooden-slated piece of black plastic with toggle-switches that looked like something out of Space 1999, there’s now a sleek and sultry bit of kit with Xbox 360 stamped on the front. And where there were once two young boys in shorts, arguing over missed shots and shouting at inappropriate moments… well, there’s still that, only with grown men. In shorts. Well, sometimes.

That’s not to say that Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis (henceforth to be called just Table Tennis, because we’re lazy) is just a fancy next-gen version of Pong. Even though it is. Kind of. Instead, it’s yet another example of Rockstar’s almost to-beexpected Midas touch, wherein it takes something that sounds like a fairly average idea and then turns it into a lump of gold, complete with diamond studs. Rockstar San Diego – the motley crew behind the Midnight Club series – has managed to not only turn around an entire next-gen game in little over a year (and that’s development time from start to finish, including creating the engine from the ground up), but also turn a bizarre idea for a videogame into one of the most addictive and skill-driven sports games we’ve seen in a very long time. And let’s not forget, we’re old… so that’s probably quite a while.

So, yes – the sport of table tennis. Not exactly the first thing you’d expect to see coming from the house of Grand Theft Auto, particularly when there’s an entirely blank next-generation canvas for the publisher to make its mark on. You might have thought a new Midnight Club game would be a good start, or perhaps even the movement of the upcoming school-’em-up Bully (which, seeing as it appears to have dropped off the radar of currentgen consoles, we’re convinced will be coming to the 360… trust us, we just have a gut feeling about it). But table tennis? That’s exactly what we thought. It doesn’t take a genius to realise that there hasn’t been a decent table tennis game… well, ever. Why?

A combination of reasons, we reckon. For starters, table tennis isn’t exactly a popular sport as far as videogames are concerned – despite being one of the world’s largest participation sports with over 40 million competitive players across the planet, and even being an Olympic sport since 1988 – and as such, no developer with any real talent has seen a reason to attempt it. Plus, there are all the connotations of how the sport is played to consider; it’s ridiculously fast and involves massive amounts of ball control in an incredibly confined space, not to mention a whole slew of diving around on the part of the player that would need to be translated pixel-perfectly into an onscreen avatar. Maybe the reason there hasn’t been a decent table tennis game ever is that it’s just… not possible?

Well, no. That can’t possibly be the case, because Table Tennis exists; Rockstar’s rather obviously named effort debunks all those theories and proves that with the right care and attention, it can be done. True, some rather cheeky efforts have been made to attract the interest of the gaming public in the first place – adding the Rockstar Games label to the title, for instance, to ensure that the shallow gaming masses at least pay it some attention – and that’s probably the hardest thing the publisher has to overcome. But once you actually go hands-on with the game and get to grips with how addictive the action is, it’s hard to fault what Rockstar has created, at least in terms of how refined the concept actually is.

While Table Tennis manages to recreate the sport very faithfully with all the strokes, spins and nuances that you’d expect, it’s hard to think of it as a simulation. That’s probably because in accurately mimicking real-life table tennis, Rockstar has accidentally created a game that can only be seen as arcade in nature – the overly fast pace and need for lightning-quick reflexes, not to mention the wide range of shots available to the player gives an almost fighting game edge to it. Yes, we said fighting, as in beat-’em-ups. No, we haven’t gone crazy. Much of the skill in playing Table Tennis comes not just from mastering how to apply spin to the ball (relatively easy) and how to use that spin to send shots rocketing wildly around the table without making it fly off into the ether (not nearly as easy), but also from being able to react to the actions of your opponent. Again, just like in a fighting game. Instead of watching your opponent’s movements though (which, depending on the style their chosen character uses, could vary wildly), it’s all about watching the actual ball; the coloured trail it leaves as it streaks across the table changes depending on the spin applied and the brighter the colour, the harder the spin. By paying attention and hitting the right counter button (so, Y for backspin, B for right spin and so on), you can stop yourself bapping the ball into the net or off into the onlooking crowd, especially if you make use of the pad’s vibration – the more the pad shakes, the more likely it is the shot you’re about to play will go flying – and ability to ‘fake out’ your opponent by waiting until the last minute to flick the stick and choose your direction, sending the camera and your character’s initial animations in one direction while the ball goes in the other. In this way, Rockstar has added a large dollop of skill to what could otherwise have been a random mess of button presses, as all the other table tennis games have been in the past.

It’s the fact that Table Tennis has such refined controls and manages to offer a huge amount of precision accuracy in such a tiny space that it excels where others have failed and, to that end, it’s incredibly addictive. Just as Virtua Tennis captured the essence of the sport but still had enough of an arcade edge to avoid being just another drab simulation, so Rockstar has achieved the same here – something that, while not exactly surprising considering how it managed to revive both the scrolling beat-’em-up and arcade racing genres in the same way with The Warriors and Midnight Club respectively, it should be commended for. However, the game also has plenty of small touches that you might initially miss and don’t actually mean much, but still help add that Rockstar flair that we’re accustomed to. Rallies play out to a hushed silence, with pacebuilding music fading in once the action has started to hot up to drive the adrenaline of players; a mixture of motion-capture and animation brings the multiple characters to life, with each bringing their own playing styles and gestures to every match; players, while starting off pristine and lively, slowly start to sweat and show signs of fatigue depending on how much you make them work. Small elements, like we said, but ones that make a big difference on a subconscious level.

Of course, there are slight issues that some might see as missed opportunities; specifically, the fact that compared to something like Virtua Tennis, Table Tennis seems a little light on single-player options. With only four tournaments to compete in and nothing in the way of spurious minigames or other modes, we wouldn’t be surprised to see some people complaining. To be frank though, we can see why such omissions have been made – for what Rockstar is offering, they’re just not needed. If anything, the single-player mode is only there for you to hone your skills, unlock new characters and, most importantly, practise for the contest that is multi-player. With its focus concentrated heavily on both online and offline multi-player competition, there’s no denying that Rockstar is betting a lot on people going headto- head. However, when a game can get crowds of players all shouting and jeering at each other, gasping at missed shots and making people punch the air in victory and even highfive (yes, really), you know there’s got to be something special about it. It’s fun. It’s fast. It’s incredibly frantic. And yet, it’s one of the most precise games we’ve played in a long time. So, it’s table tennis… so what? When it’s this good, we can forgive Rockstar almost anything. Almost.