Image Works/Teque
£9.99 cass, £14.99 disk

The ball was in! Yes, just as you thought you'd heard the last of tennis for this year Image Works release Passing Shot. This conversion of a Sega coin-op recreates all the thrills and spills of that well known lawn game. The only thing it doesn't have is the strawberries and cream (yum!).

The first decision to make once the game has loaded is select which of the four world events you would like to compete in. They range from the easiest France, to the hardest England. Each event is shown as a map of the country involved. You have the choice of playing the game one player against the computer, two players against each other or two players in a doubles match against two computer players, so every taste should be catered for. There are two view points in the game, spectator level for service and an aerial view for rallies, so the player can keep up with the action all the time.

Most tennis games I've seen on the Spectrum before don't give the player a choice of stroke, which makes them hard to play and low in addictiveness. Passing Shot is different. Depending on which direction you push the joystick, you get one of four strokes - flat, slice, topspin and lob. The wide variety of strokes are no help if you are rubbish at tennis like me though, the computer trashes me everytime!

Graphics in Passing Shot have been kept very close to the arcade originals, with detailed close ups of each player, 3-D courts and a strange sun type thing that pops up after every game and pulls faces! Strange. Colour is monochrome in the play areas with the odd bit of colour in the border to spruce it up. Music fans among you will be glad there is a tune in the game; the only trouble is it plays all the time (aaargh!). Of course, the normal rules of tennis apply with you being required to reach six games to win the set.

Passing Shot is one of the best tennis simulations going, whether you're a fan of the lawn game or hooked on the arcade machine, this is for you.

NICK [84%]

Hey man, the ball was in! You could see the chalk dust!! Oh sorry, just getting into character... Wimbledon finished a fair while ago, but the software companies still insist on releasing these tennis games. The sprites, decked out in their natty sports togs, move around the screen very well, and the computer opponent certainly gives you a good run for your money. I've never seen the Sega original of this game, but tennis coin-ops are a bit of a rarity (I've not heard of that many), and judging by Passing Shot on the Spectrum there should be more.
MARK [85%]

Mirrorsoft
£9.99 cass/£12.99 disk
Reviewer: David Wilson

Well, I'll be Dan Maskelled! The only boy to consistently get a 'C-' for sport in his school report gets another sports sim game to review! The nearest I've ever come to a tennis star was a summer job polishing Des Lynham's commentary box windows at Wimbledon! Still - scoff, scoff - that's a hefty punnet of strawberries I've just polished off. I've got my galoshes on my feet and my sun block on my shnozz, all that's left to do now is load in Passing Shot from Mirrorsoft!

Eeeeeeeee (computery noise)! There we are, it's loaded! Right, we've seen the demom, now let's look at the whole game. It's got two player option and it's set in four countries, each representing a level of difficulty with different playing surfaces and opponents. The game is played from two viewpoints, spectator's viewpoint for service and overhead viewpoint for the rallies. In the latter mode, the computer unfortunately doesn't show you the whole court, only a portion. The screen then scrolls up and down following the progress of the ball.

The control system sounds simple in theory, but it's a tad tricky in practice. You have four different types of stroke at your disposal, the lob, the flat, the slice and the topspin, all which you operate by pushing the fire button in conjunction with a direction. Confusingly then, the direction control alters the type of stroke, rather than the direction in which the ball travels. This is dictated by the player's position in relation to the ball. For example, hitting the ball at the end of a forehand stroke will send it to the left hand side of your opponent's court, at the start of the stroke to the right, and so on.

Right, you start in France, then move to Australia, followed by America, playing the deciding last set of an international tennis final in each. The fourth and hardest level takes you to Wimbledon. Here you have three sets to play, one in each of the quarter final, the semi final and the final! Then you're World Champion! Simple, isn't it? Erm, actually, no, it's not, but with a bit of perseverance on the 'easiest' level I won the four matches to gain entry into the Wimbledon quarter finals! Unfortunately, here I was soundly thrashed!

The player sprite moves very slowly. This presumably serves to introduce a strategy element so that, like in real tennis, you need to anticipate where the opponent's return will go. Since your player isn't on the screen when your opponent hits the ball however, you have to start moving while you're on screen and hope you end up in the right place. On the hardest level, everything seems to be that much speedier, whilst your sprite movement is still slow. This makes some returns impossible.

The two player option is fun, you and a chum playing together against two opponents. Shame you can't play each other though. Also, it can be tricky knowing who's who. Because both sprites are exactly the same, you can't always see your players, and the computer swops you on to different sides of the court to receive service! Okay, so it's got some graphical problems and repetitive backdrops, but the animation is nice and there's a crazy tennis ball that appears when a game is completed and makes a face at you. Oh, and the music's horrid, but you can switch it off and just have the ball sounds.

Basically, this is a flawed, straight tennis simulation, with some nice graphical touches, a tricky control system and sluggish player movement. But for all that very playable and addictive. Anyone for Passing Shot?

BARGAIN BASEMENT

Torch? Check. Helmet? Check. Ability to write incredibly informative and witty reviews? Check. (Sort of.) Say hello to RICH PELLEY & JON PILLAR.

Encore
£2.99
Reviewer: Jon Pillar

Back in the days when keyboards were rubber, there was a Speccy tennis game called Match Point. It seized the title of top racqueteer and has held it right up to this present day, fending off the likes of 3D International Tennis, and...um... (sounds of pages being rapidly turned) a couple others. But now Passing Shot's appeared (well actually, it's been re-released, but you know what I mean). And to put it simply, it's very, very good.

It's a one or two-player arcade conversion, viewed from above (but with head-on perspective for serving - more on that later). One neat touch is that the second player is the doubles partner of the first, so you can team up against the Speccy for a change. There are 4 types of shot (lob, flat, top spin and slice) and with a bit of practice you can soon hold your own against your computerised opponents. The graphics are small but smooth (although the overhead view means it's difficult to keep track of who's who in the doubles game) and, all in all, it's very professionally polished.

On the minus side, the difficulty levels are a bit cosmetic. They just specify how fast the players can move, with the Speccy following the same tactics throughout (ie always going for the ball). But this does mean that the gameplay is always kept brisk, and I find it's more enjoyable on the fastest setting anyway (So there!)

Also, the head-on perspective when you're serving is all a bit redundant. It's supposed to provide a clearer picture, but as the ball flashes when it's at the correct point in mid-air I have a sneaking suspicion the whole sequence is just there to break up the overhead views and show off some superior graphics. Still, this is more of a grump than a proper complaint.

And there you have it. Fast and furious, great for one player and excellent for two. And with a few extra brownie points for making the game a mixed doubles match, I'd tot that up as, ooh, a Your Sinclair Megagame. How's that for service?

Label: Mirrorsoft
Author: In-house
Price: £8.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Jim Douglas

What? You cannot be serious? Wimbledon finished months ago and Mirrorsoft are now releasing Passing Shot, probably the most tennisy game you've ever come across in your whole life.

In case you haven't played the coin op, here's what goes on. You find yourself on centre court in the middle of a big tennis championship. Here's your opportunity to become an international megastar overnight.

Passing Shot is all about the serious aspects of tennis. None of this Ra-ra doesn't matter whether you win rubbish. If you lose, you're out. If you win, you're on a highway to glory.

You can play alone against the computer or team up with a mate and play the fiendish machine at doubles. Either way you're faced with an escalating scale of ever tougher opponents.

Serving is viewed from the spectators' point of view, just like Wimbledon on the telly. You toss the ball into the air and hit FIRE at the moment appropriate for the service you desire.

WHACK! Immediately, the screen changes to an overhead view and the ball gets bigger as it gets higher. You can see the computer controlled player scrabbling around, trying to work out where the ball is going to fall. Not a hope. An Ace. Smashing start. Obviously, you won't be fortunate enough to serve so successfully all the time, and you'll more likely than not find yourself on the wrong end of an ace return.

Once in a rally, anticipation is the name of the game. You're not going to get anywhere simply standing on the baseline and waiting for the other guy to make his move. Get right into the net, crank up your reaction time and hammer the guy into the dust.

The rougher your opponent, the faster the game and eventually you should be moving into position for your next shot immediately after playing one. By controlling the destination of the ball, you can dictate where your opponent has to run and therefore what sort of shot he is likely to return.

Graphically Passing Shot isn't a marvel. There simply isn't much room for fancy graphics in an overhead game without making the screen look cluttered. If you'll forgive the slightly naff looking white figures (what colour would you rather have a tennis player, pink?) and pay attention to the things like the ever-increasing size of the rising ball and the animations of the serving action, you'll agree that graphically we're not talking a fault (har har).

Passing Shot is a corker of a game. I'm not a big fan of sports simulations as a whole, but this one's smash hit with me (haw haw).

Label: Encore
Memory: 48K/128K
Price: £2.99 Tape
Reviewer: Chris Jenkins

A good tennis sim is a joy to behold - let's face it, this is the ideal sport to put on a computer. You have one and two-player modes, a minimum of necessary animation, and so long as you get the ball dynamics right, it's difficult to make a hash of it.

Teque's conversion of the Sega coin-op Passing Shot has all the features you would want of a tennis sim - one-player, two-player and doubles mode, joystick control of choice of shot (flat, slice, top spin and lob), and all the features of the game such as aces, double faults, direct returns and so on. The big gimmick, though, is that you have an audience-eye view for the serve, and a top-down view during the rally.

While this could have made Passing Shot a uniquely enjoyabie tennis sim, in practice the slight pause and screen blanking between the serve and the volley is so irritating and off-putting that it spoils most of the enjoyment.

Not complete balls, then, but hardly ace.

Encore
Spectrum £2.99

Time to stride on down to the tennis court and whack some yellow balls about in this Speccy adaptation of the unknown Sega coin-op. Switching between top-down and 3D views, this isn't an awful Tennis game, but aspiring Edbergs should look elsewhere. Come to think of it, Psion's antique Match Point offered superior playability so look around for that instead.