How do you stop the "unhittable return" in Wii Tennis?

July 5, 2007 6:24 PM

How do you stop the "unhittable return" in Wii Tennis?

In Wii Tennis, if you serve without timing it so that you've served super fast (smoking), a human player can dish out an "unhittable" return by hitting the ball low and fast towards the corner of the court. I've not been able to stop this return aside from "smoking" serves. Is there any way to do it?

posted by seiryuu to sports, hobbies, & recreation (14 comments total)

Not that I know of. One of my friends got really good at doing this, and I've never seen anyone hit it back.
posted by panic at 6:44 PM on July 5, 2007

Those smoking serves can be returned. I've seen it done several times, much to my surprise. I don't know the mechanism at work. A previous AskMe has some valuable advice.
posted by nilihm at 6:45 PM on July 5, 2007

Yep, I have returned them too, god only know how though!
posted by teststrip at 6:49 PM on July 5, 2007

Nilihm, the smoking serves aren't the problem. The problem is that the opposing player can return your smoking low and fast to the other side of the court before your little guy can catch up to it costing you a point.
posted by puddpunk at 6:50 PM on July 5, 2007

When serving right to left, this return is unhittable. I don't think you can make the unhittable return from left to right.
posted by Manjusri at 6:53 PM on July 5, 2007

You could just swing the wiimote in short, quick bursts - it'll cause your player to swing the racket reaaally fast (but could also make you airborn, which may or may not help).

Personally, I haven't had much of a problem returning the "smoking serve", but when it's a regular return hit and the ball goes smoking-fast, it can be an issue.
posted by revmitcz at 6:58 PM on July 5, 2007

You are correct - that cross-court return is unhittable.

Let's face it, all of the Wii Sports games are cool at first, but quickly lose their luster once you figure out the many limitations of the games. Those games are basically nothing more than technology demos, designed to:
a) be easy to learn, and
b) show what can be done with the controller.

One of these days, someone will make a real tennis game that's a bit more complex. (and you know, actually lets you position your players!)
posted by chrisamiller at 7:21 PM on July 5, 2007

It's unhittable, and a delight to do on opponents who can't reciprocate the skill.
posted by yeti at 7:28 PM on July 5, 2007

haha... the weekly friday wii-tennis at work eventually evolved to the point where this became a problem...

and a couple of us came up with a solution.

the problem is usually that your character doesn't have enough time to run over to hit the ball.

when serving, wait until the very last moment possible before you swing, and swing only as hard as needed to make contact. you want to serve as slow and as weak as possible. the more time it takes for the ball to head to the other side, the more time you have for your character to start running over to where it needs to be to make it for the return.

after a few more months of that, our matches devolved to nothing but games of offspeed slow-balls, the occasional guy who could get fast serves every time, and the crazy indian consultant who was able to get his charcter to 'fly' consistently by shaking the wiimote around in a batshit insane fashion.

oh, how I miss those days... :(
posted by yeoz at 7:38 PM on July 5, 2007 [2 favorites]

i'm fairly sure i've returned hits like that. it's more a matter of anticipating them and hitting early. you should have someone towards the front of the net -- pull back and swing earlier than you think you need to, you should have a decent chance at returning it.
posted by cheaily at 7:41 PM on July 5, 2007

The trick is to start serving really slow for a while. Change things up. Then, when he's used to the slower serves, give him an occasional quick serve.
posted by JDHarper at 9:03 PM on July 5, 2007

My 7 year old son serves smokin' fast-balls like this all the time, they can be returned, albeit after missing the first few hundred.
posted by Scoo at 9:27 PM on July 5, 2007

He's not talking about the actual serve, he's talking about the return of the smoking fast serve.

When you serve a normal ball, and the returner times it early enough, the ball goes way wide, and you'll usually get there.

However, when you do a smoking serve, the return has a lot more velocity when they get there, making it unhittable to the server.

My solution: make your dude serve lefty. The physics are a little bit different, and so is the timing.

and while Wii Tennis might suck, Wii Golf is AWESOME. Except for that bloody tree on hole #7, or hole #8 where I pray that my ball doesn't roll out.
posted by unexpected at 10:41 PM on July 5, 2007

A friend of mine tells me that Andre Agassi made much of his career though unhittable serve returns. Think of it like you're playing with Agassi, except that with Wii Tennis, everyone can be Agassi!

My friend and I get around the whole problem by simply forbidding the unhittable return. Also the slow serve, because that's just annoying. If you inadvertently win a point by either of these methods, you have to give up the next point, unless you've just won the game/match, in which case a complicated series of adjustment games is in order. We call them "Gentlemen's Rules".
posted by breath at 12:06 AM on July 6, 2007