International Tennis Open

Genre:

Sports

Year:

1994

Developer:

Infogrames

Publisher:

Pathé Interactive

Perspective:

3rd-person

Theme:

Tennis

Releases:

DOS (1994), Macintosh (1995)

The biggest highlight of every tennis season is clearly the most famous, oldest and most prestigious tennis tournament - Wimbledon. We're into the second week of Wimbledon 2014 right now, so I decided to add a game with a tennis theme - International Tennis Open. The main problem with tennis games is mostly in their gameplay. Either there are just a simple scrolling games, where you move from one side of the court to the other and no great art is needed to pass the ball, or here are unnecessarily over-complicated and only few can return the ball to the other side. This game belongs mostly to the first category, game controls are not the worst, but they can't match the controls in Great Courts. At the begining it's really not that hard to return the ball, so game may seem a little bit boring, but when you move up the ladder, things are getting more complicated. Graphic is colorful, but also average. Although courts are nicely done, players are jumping around on the court and their animations are sometimes distracting. On the other hand, I am very pleasantly surprised by the sound in this game - they are excellent and I really enjoyed the genuine commentary indicating the status of individual games and sets. If you practice a lot, you could become another Federer, at least in this game :).