As the name suggests this is a tennis game, which really isn’t my cup of tea. But the game is nice enough to play once in a while, even for people like myself who aren't tennis fans.
At the start of the game, there is a menu where you can choose options for game play, save, load or quit. When you wish to quit while playing, just press ‘Esc’ which will return you to the options screen. Here, you can practice your serve or practice against the machine, start a match or join a tournament. Once you’ve chosen the game play options, you’re immediately standing on a tennis court with racket in hand, ready to start hitting that ball.
You move with direction keys and serve with number 1. You can set your move to manual or to automatic, but to be honest I haven't felt the difference. You must serve the ball or receive it. You can hit either defensively or offensively. Of course, the object of the game is to win all matches and, eventually, a tournament.
If you’re not playing in a tournament, you can choose one of four players to play against – one on one. You can also choose one of three different courts: London – grass, Paris – clay, or New York – cement. The game also has a two-player option where you can play against a friend. If you decide to play in tournament mode, you can choose a host city from around the world and enter at the quarterfinals.
The graphics run smoothly and are nice enough but won’t leave you gasping for air. The sounds are ok, too, but nothing special. You hear the cheers from the crowd, the announcer giving the score and a brief description of your opponent. As well as the sound of the ball being struck and landing on the court, these are the only sounds you’ll hear. However, if you decide to quit the match before it's over, you can choose to just watch till the end.
All in all, this game is a nice change from brain stretching adventure and puzzle games, but in my opinion so average that it gets nothing more than a three.
This game performed flawlessly using Win98. At the start of the game, and whenever you return to the options screen, there is pleasant background music with none of the screeching that was experienced with WinXP.
The game runs OK in WinXP but turn the speakers off. I only got high-pitched noises when I started it. Everything else runs fine. You can also run the game in different languages. To run it in English, you must click on TENA.exe file. When I clicked on TENE, I got the Espñaiol version.