As I write, my washing is dripping on the line. It's been doing this for the past week and I'm fed up with it. By the time it's dry, it will no longer smell of daffodils and lambs, it'll smell of winter damp and slugs, or something. Bleugh! I wouldn't be able to play tennis in it if I wanted to, which I don't. (Eh? Jon) Now is not the time to skip around outside trying to hit a ball, but it might be just the time to load up the Speccy and try out a few volleys. And what should I find in my Speccy but Zeppelin's International Tennis. This could be just the thing for those long, winter evenings.
    International Tennis lets you play against a real opponent or a variety of computerised ball buffs. As per usual, you can choose which kind of surface to play on (hard, clay or lawn), whether to go for a single match or a whole tournament, how many sets in a match and the difficulty level. So far, so run of the mill. For International Tennis to be as good as Zeppelin claim, it's going to have to play well.
    
The moment of truth
Hurrah, it plays well! The character sprites are clearly defined and they move smoothly across the court. They're skilful, fast, graceful and right little movers. The choice of moves is such that you can make your player run around like a madman. It all looks quite dangerous actually, there's your player racing up and down slashing his racquet left, right and centre. All it needs is for somebody to run out onto the court and we'd have a real slasherama of a game!
    But hey! This is tennis, it's quiet and civilised, right? Erm, well, not in two-player mode. The pace is so fast and it's actually quite difficult so with two-players a nice game of tennis can quickly become a furiously vocal fight to get those balls over the net. Service is the easiest move to play, and gets more and more difficult from thereon - and this is in easy mode. International Tennis is addictive enough to make you want to play on, so you do get better as you proceed. But there's always a more difficult level and, if you beat the computer opponent at that level, you can always get in a mate who's completely brilliant at computerised tennis. (You can even play doubles with (or against) the Speccy!) But you do need to persevere and the initial difficulties may put some people off. If you like sport sims in general, and tennis sims in particular, this one will give you a very good run for your money.

Ratings given by other magazines

8/10

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