International Tennis Open

STORY / GAMEPLAY
Ok, this is a sports game, so there is no actual story here. You are a tennis player who plays his way through different tennis terrains (courts). Depending on the difficulty level, these courts are divided into grass, hard and clay. There are three different gameplay modes to choose: Training, Exhibition and Tournament. Selecting Training, you may attempt to perfect your game and style. In Exhibition, you go for a full three sets against one out of only four AI opponents. Well, as with most CD-i games, there is so much more that could have been done. Surely this is a good tennis game but there are tons of tennis games with better gameplay quality (in various gaming systems)!

GRAPHICS / SOUND
Most of the game's visuals are presented nicely. Each tennis court is detailed and with bright colors. The tennis players look also great (they actually look as "almost digitized" figures) and the overall design of the game looks cool. But, graphics aside, there is some real "sloppy" animation, with too many frame-skipping when you run to hit the ball! This causes problems with the game's mechanics, resulting in too many lost shots. The game offers some FMV sequences showing each opponent you go against and they look (and sound) really nice. As far as the game's sound quality, there are many sampled sounds i.e. the grunts the athletes do when they swing the racket, the sound of the ball every time it bounces off the ground, the announcer's calls for the scores, and a few more. As I said above, this is the only tennis game for the CD-i and thankfully, it's a decent one.