Tennis Ace

Tennis Ace is a 1991 tennis game for the Master System in which the player controls one of the tennis players in a series of matches against the computer or against a second player on the same screen in a direct duel for victory. The game offers basic tennis mechanics — serving, forehand, backhand, and aiming shots at different parts of the court — with the goal of outplaying the opponent and winning enough games and sets needed for overall victory in the match and in the subsequent longer tournament for the title.

The court is shown from an angled perspective that allows the player to follow the movement of the ball and both players well in space, and the game offers several different court surfaces, which slightly affects the bounce of the ball and the overall speed of rallies between players on the court, as well as serving strategy. The controls are adapted to the simple Master System controller, so the player focuses mainly on correctly timing a shot and choosing the direction of the return, without the complex button combinations required by much later tennis simulations on more powerful platforms and personal computers. The player characters are shown with simple but legible sprites, and the game tries to at least hint at differences in serving style or movement between individual tennis players, within the limits of the hardware and its colour palette at the time.

Tennis Ace is among the later sports titles on the Master System, released at a time when the European and Brazilian markets already represented the console's main sales support thanks to local distributor backing and loyal players, while newer systems already dominated elsewhere in the world. Today the game is a pleasant, if not groundbreaking, showcase of what the tennis genre looked like on eight-bit platforms, and fans of retro sports games will appreciate it as a solid addition alongside more famous tennis titles from other gaming systems and console generations of the time, despite the lack of the more elaborate tournament modes of later games.

Why play: For fans of retro sports games looking for a solid, if not groundbreaking, showcase of the tennis genre on eight-bit platforms from the late era of the Master System.