Tennis Cup, Amiga, Loriciel
Immediately I realised that the concept of this article might be fundamentally flawed, because there’s only so much I’m going to be able to say about images of people wearing all-white outfits and holding tennis racquets. I suppose I’ll just have to zero in on the finer details, like the way the guy on the left is holding his racquet in a way that suggests he’s preparing for an overhead chop. I could create an elaborate backstory to explain this, one where he grew up in an isolated mountain cabin until one day he was spotted by an ageing tennis coach who realised the young man’s firewood chopping technique could be converted into a phenomenally powerful backhand. Hire me to write your sports anime, please.
However, what really stands out to me is just how incredibly smooth and hairless everybody’s legs are, especially the chap in the centre. He must be at least twenty-five percent dolphin.
Konami’s Tennis, ZX Spectrum, Konami / Imagine
More smooth legs on display here, too. I thought it was swimmers who removed all their body hair? Are all professional tennis players competing in these tournaments in the hope of winning enough money to pay off the crippling debts they owe to Veet? I’m not complaining really, this is a perfectly good piece of artwork from prolific computer game artist Bob Wakelin. It’s got movement, precision, a weirdly out-of-place desert chrome logo and the guy on the right’s foot is dissolving away into nothingness. What more could you ask for?
Konami’s Tennis, MSX, Konami
Over on the cover for the MSX version of the same game, we see some very unsporting behaviour as one player celebrates hitting her opponent in the head with the ball. There’s definitely something nasty about that character, as though they revel in the pain of others. Between her single tooth and the fact she’s literally sticking two fingers up at the player, she’s got the air of a petulant baby-person. The on-court tantrums of John McEnroe in the body of a weird pop-art baby with a serious case of Popeye Elbows, that’s what this cover is all about.
International Tennis, ZX Spectrum, Zeppelin Games
Full marks to the artist on this one for taking on the difficult task of making a tennis game look “international” by covering the player in a variety of national flags. Some of the flags might look a little strange – I’m not sure what’s going on with that starless, six-striped US flag beyond the artist understandably not wanting to draw all those stars – but it gets the point across. If that wasn’t enough, there’s a world map printed on the tennis ball. Yes, the only way this could have more succinctly conveyed the idea of international tennis is if it was a picture of the very continents themselves holding tennis racquets, which is what I would have done. Antarctica would have been the umpire.
Advantage Tennis, Amiga, Infogrames
Now here’s a cover I do genuinely like. Sure, it’s painfully nineties with a colour scheme that reminds me of buying packs of highlighter pens during the back to school shop and then never using them, but at least it’s not smooth-legged people in white clothes. The stark background and logo makes for a nice contrast with the colour and fluidity of the chalk drawings, and if you ever needed a theme for a music video to go with an eighties song about tennis, then here you go. Not that there are many eighties songs about tennis, of course. There’s Chris Rea’s “Tennis,” I suppose, but that’s not really about tennis. Nice bass riff, though. Where was I? Oh, right, tennis covers.
On-Court Tennis, Commodore 64, Activision
This chap seems confused that someone has written a bunch of cryptic information on the tennis ball he’s trying to hit. “What is this ‘flash load’?” he ponders as he prepares to slice the ball back over the net. Unfortunately for him he will never be a world-class tennis player, because this artwork clearly depicts him as having hair on his arms. With the extra drag this generates he won’t be fast enough to compete against his hairless rivals.
Match Point, Commodore 64, Psion
Here we see a tennis player whose nickname is undoubtedly “The Underbite.” Captured in this image is The Underbite’s sudden realisation that maybe he should have brought a full-sized racquet to this match instead of the Action Man accessory he’s currently using. Speaking of Action Man, this image looks like it was taken straight from the cover of a sixties or seventies “men’s magazine,” except instead of surviving a World War II ambush or hunting big game he’s getting some healthy exercise down at the local tennis club before heading back to job at the council.
Tournament Tennis, Commodore 64, Imagic
Have you ever wondered what a statue of a tennis player carved from glistening, meaty dog food would look like? No, me neither, but here we are. This is the terrible knowledge that we both now share. I wonder what the thinking behind this particular aesthetic choice was? An attempt to create the ur-tennis-player, perhaps, one that exhibits protean strength and finesse, one that belongs to no single race or creed? That could be the case. Equally the artist could have been eating a treacle sponge while doing the artwork and, having dropped a big dollop of their dessert onto the paper, they decided to work it into the art. Whoever this mysterious player is, they’re in a for a real surprise when they realise that’s not a tennis ball coming at them, and someone’s whipped a cue ball towards them instead.
International 3D Tennis, ZX Spectrum, Sensible Software
I showed this one in an earlier sports game covers article, but I can’t leave it out. I just really like the idea of a tennis game cover that captures the exact moment a player suffers a horrible ankle injury. Not in a mean way, I hasten to add. I just think it’s weird, is all. I also think this player looks like unthreatening pop-jazz musician Jamie Cullum. Perhaps the broken ankle is punishment for Cullum’s anodyne cover of Jeff Buckley’s ‘Lover, You Should Have Come Over.”
Jahangir Khan World Championship Squash, ZX Spectrum, Krisalis Software
I figured I’d chuck in a few covers from adaptations of other racquet sports, because why not? What is squash if not a game of tennis played against a wall? I’m sorry, any squash players who might be reading this, I’m sure you hear that kind of unfair dismissal of your chosen sport all the time.
So, here we’ve got to blokes playing squash, which is fair enough for the cover of a squash game. Leg-hair status: just as bald as tennis. The guy on the left’s leg is so smooth that it’s producing a blinding glare with which he can dazzle and disorient his opponent, which I’m sure isn’t technically against the rules of squash but is certainly rather poor sportsmanship
I say “that guy,” but of course he’s the eponymous Jahangir Khan, a man who was certainly a squash champion. How much of a champion? Well, according to his Wikipedia page, Khan won five hundred and fifty-five squash matches. In a row. A five-and-a-half-year unbeaten streak. At that point you have to wonder whether all the other squash professionals’ hearts were really in it any more. “A tournament’s coming up, huh? Oh, Jahangir Khan has entered. You know what, I think I’ll save the air fare.” Khan eventually lost his streak in 1987. After that he went on another nine-month unbeaten run. He was good at squash, is what I’m saying, and he must have been a real easy pick for the star of this computer squash game. Khan is also the uncle of Natasha Khan, better known as the musician Bat for Lashes. I don’t know why this article has ended up containing so much music trivia. Maybe I’ve got a subconscious desire to write about music or something, so let’s give it a try – I’ve been listening to Alice Cooper’s albums that he doesn’t remember making recently, the ones from the deepest points of his struggle with alcohol and drugs, and there’s some fun, weird stuff in there. Check out the track “Skeletons in the Closet,” for example. Okay, hopefully that’s gotten the musical stuff out of my system for now.
Jonah Barrington’s Squash, ZX Spectrum, New Generation Software
Here’s another cover that you might have seen before if you follow me on Twitter, and it might be my favourite of the bunch. It must have taken a huge amount of effort to get a professional athlete to look this uncomfortable. What on earth was the direction behind this piece? “That’s great Jonah, we’ve got some good action shots, but what if you pretended to be trapped in a giant, invisible baby bouncer? I feel that could really work as a concept.”
Superstar Ping-Pong, Commodore 64, SilverTime
Ping Pong also gets a seat at this table, of course. Not an especially interesting cover on its own, the real charm of Superstar Ping-Pong comes from that advertising blurb. “The potential of a ping-pong game has at last been realised” is such an overblown statement that it’s impossible not to love, as though there were millions of die-hard table tennis fans out there thinking “soon the computers will be able to recreate the game we love with perfect fidelity, and when that day comes we can at last fold up our ping-pong tables and put them away in the garage forevermore. No longer will we suffer the tyranny of not having enough space to play table tennis! This glorious day is soon at hand, my brothers and sisters!”
Table Tennis Simulation, Atari ST, Starbyte
You might be thinking that’s it’s not going to be an accurate simulation of table tennis if you’re playing as a tortoise, and you’d be right. Have you seen how fast top-level ping-pongers go at it? No, I think this cover is actually a clever piece of expectation management. By showing you tortoises right out of the gate, the game is subtly conditioning you to not be surprised when the actual game runs really slowly. Crafty, very crafty.
Ping Pong, Commodore 64, Konami / Imagine
A much better cover here, as you might expect from a company like Konami. There’s almost a martial arts flavour to it, I reckon. Mind you, that might be because I’ve been playing Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise recently so when I see people leaving ghostly after-images of themselves when they move, that’s what I’m reminded of. Still, I feel like if you changed the background and airbrushed out the paddles you’d have a perfectly acceptable cover for Yie Ar Kung Fu.
Tiebreaker, Commodore 64, Kingsoft
The more you look at this cover, the more bizarre it gets. Just how long is that net? Why has the player gently knocked the ball straight to his opponent instead of trying to score a point by blasting it into the vast unoccupied space provided by this huge circular court? Are the insurers of this event not worried that one of the players might injure themselves by colliding with the six-foot tall trophy that’s right in the play area? The plaque on the trophy implies that the current holders are Kingsoft themselves, so we’re left to assume that they’ve created their own bizarro version of tennis in an attempt to spice things up.
Serve and Volley, Commodore 64, Accolade
I feel like the artist on this one ran out of energy just before they got to the racquet. Everything else is perfectly fine, but the racquet seems to have been painted on in Tipp-Ex. Unless… that’s the ghost of a tennis racquet?
Passing Shot, Commodore 64, Sega / Image Works
Definitely the most boring cover I’ll show you today is this re-release art for Passing Shot. It’s... a tennis ball. This is a tennis game on the Commodore 64, and that’s more than enough to give you a very strong idea of how it’s going to play. However, there is that title logo, and if on first glance you read it as Passing Shot and not Passing, erm, something else, you’re a better person than I.
Real Tennis, MSX, Takara
To finish the article, let’s quickly look at a selection of fascinating faces, starting with this one where a young man has suddenly arrived at the realisation that he’d rather be doing anything else with his life than playing tennis. “Aww geez, he’s hit the ball back towards me again,” his expression seems to say, “how long will this nightmare continue? I could be at home watching YouTube videos of motorsport accidents!”
Grand Slam, Amiga, Infinity Software
Look at this doe-eyed youth, fresh of face and lean of limb, a slight smile on his lips. That’s how you know he’s not a real sportsperson, they don’t tend to smile while they’re actually playing their sports. You wouldn’t either if you went through the same training regimen as a pro athlete.
Jonah Barrington’s Squash, Commodore 64, New Generation Software
Finally for today, this alternate cover for Jonah Barrington’s Squash reveals the true emotion that squash brings to the surface – pure, undiluted terror. These men are clearly very frightened of what’s going on around them, the icy claw of horror scratching at their hearts as the walls of the squash court seem to press in on them. I can only assume that the winner of this match has to face Jahangir Khan next.