International Tennis Open

"You wont find this game outside of E-Bay"

If some form or another, on most every console, there has been a tennis game. And why not the CD-I? What’s our fascination with tennis? All it is is a glorified version of Pong with human paddles right? I don’t know what it is, you really can’t explain the appeal of it. What could be so interesting about hitting a little ball back and forth?

Graphics – 8
These are actually pretty good for one of the earliest 32-bit systems. You got your choice of fields, your choice of characters and all look pretty good. There’s not a whole lot to this game graphics-wise.

Sound – 7
While, kinda plain really. There are just the bare minimums. You know, the grunts of the athletes as you swing, the bouncing of the ball bouncing off the ground, the announcer calling out the scores.

Control – 8
This too is well done, not the best, just good. This is a two player game, but if you want to have both players play simultaneously, you’ll have to buy a port splitter. But its cool cause you can set this game to either move your character and you hit the ball or you move the character and it hits the ball. This is good because of the design of the CD-! Controller. You see, it’s designed to be used in one hand. You can buy a normal controller (one you hold with both hands) if you like.

Characters – 4
There are only four players to choose from. Each character, as in all tennis games, are from different countries and they all have strengths and weaknesses. One semi-cool thing is that when your selecting your character, you get to see a little FMV of them playing.

Replay – 5
I remember when I first got this game, I was addicted. But since then, I’ve experienced greats such as Virtual Tennis for the Dreamcast and Mario Tennis for the N64. Compared to those two, every other tennis game simply falls short. But this is was a pretty fun game for awhile, but now, I can’t stand it.

Overall – 5
As with most CD-I games, there is so much more that could’ve been done with this game. this is a good tennis game, but there are others out there with tons more replay value (not to mention easier to find). So look around, see what interests you. Cause I can assure you, you wont find this game outside of E-Bay.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 08/03/01, Updated 08/03/01