World Court Tennis is a tennis game with a twist. The action itself features no big surprises: the players control their characters over the scrolling tennis field and try to counter balls from their opponents. It is possible to perform typical tennis actions like cross, smash or lob and the hit performance depends on the timing.

However, the unique feature of this game is a story mode which takes various elements from Japanese role-playing games. The story involves an evil king who banned all tennis matches outside of membership courts. The player goes out to overthrow the king so tennis can be brought back to everyone. So the player explores a top-down world map reminiscent of Dragon Warrior, explores the surrounding and fights enemies. Those fights are either random encounters or scripted boss battles and play out as regular tennis matches.

The overall goal is to find all membership courts and defeat the inhabitants. Because of this, the game does not end when defeated; the player gets dragged to the king and has to pay a penalty fee. Money is the only resource and is earned by defeating enemies. It is used to buy updated equipment: shoes improve speed, rackets improve power and shirts help to evade random encounters. The game is no RPG, however, because there is no actual character development.