Tournament Tennis on the ColecoVision looks and plays similarly to Match Point on the ZX Spectrum. It was first released by Imagic in 1984.

According to the on-screen credits, Tournament Tennis was developed by D&L Research, and I’m wondering if they are the original French developer of this particular tennis engine, or if they copied it from elsewhere. French, because I know that the original developer of Match Point was French, and that Psion ported it to the ZX Spectrum from the TI-994A original. So maybe there is some relationship between the games?

You can play one or two player matches; at novice, amateur, or pro levels, or watch a demo. You can input player names, although nothing is saveable. The ball is tiny but stands out well against the garish green background and the player animations are pretty good (they’re an exact copy of the player animations in Match Point).

Opponent AI is okay, but the feel of the game isn’t quite right. You might be able to return a few balls back and forth, but this is a fairly archiaic representation of tennis. And it’s certainly no Super Tennis…

Overall, Tournament Tennis is not a go-to sports game from video games history, merely an interesting oddity on the ColecoVision.

More: Tournament Tennis on YouTube