Smashing Tennis

Indie-created arcade tennis for the Mac.

News by GamesIndustry International Contributor

Published on March 11, 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Autun, France - March 11, 2009 - Independent game developers at the mac games and reviews website, Macgames.org, have announced the release of their first game, a new tennis game for Macintosh, Smashing Tennis.

Smashing Tennis was created with a specific focus: to make a game challenging and entertaining for avid, arcade tennis players. Realistic physics were incorporated into the game as best as could be done in a 2D environment, therefore, the game play is accentuated by real ball flight trajectory, as well as sound effects, which are recordings of actual tennis matches. The court surfaces also come into play and greatly vary the feel and style of game play. Each court surface offered in Smashing Tennis: grass, clay, hard decoturf courts, behaves as on real life tennis court surfaces, such that grass courts will have a fast performance with balls skidding and bouncing low favoring serve and volley players; hard court surface play involves a medium speed tennis, which gives slight advantage to fast and hard hitting players; and, clay courts, having the slowest speed but high bounce, reduce any sort of power game but will work well with drop shots.

Players of Smashing Tennis choose their own abilities, as well as their level of difficulty. Pressing F6 enables the Easy Play Mode whereby the up and down cursors are disabled, so it is only necessary for the player to use the left and right cursors and the space bar. The up and down movement of the on-screen player will be automatic in Easy Mode. To play the advance Hard Mode, press F7 and players use all cursor keys to control multidirectional mobility of the tennis player. Note: Gamers on laptops must press the function key and the F keys to select difficulty level).

Smashing Tennis offers a Training Mode so that players can practice refining their moves and shots, as well as become more familiar with the game, before they embark on playing in Tournament Mode. (Tournament Mode is only available after purchase). With some training and a knowledge of key controls, players will be able to smash, dive, lob or even make a drop ball shot to trick their opponent. They will also be able to aim their serves and well as control the strength of their hits. A look at the in-game "Help" and "Tips" describes all the moves and shots a player can make, along with which keyboard controls to use.

Single Player option in Smashing Tennis involves one gamer playing against the computer, however, 2-Player mode allows two players to play against each other on one Macintosh computer.

Smashing Tennis Features

1. Family Friendly, A Game for Both Adults and Kids

2. 1 and 2 Player Modes

3. Easy and Hard Difficulty Options (F6, F7 - laptop players must press Function Key and F Keys)

4. Adjustable Skill Levels (Strength, Precision, Speed)

5. Training Mode

6. Tournament Mode (Full version only)

7. 3 Court Surfaces: Clay, Hard (Decoturf Blue) and Grass

8. Realistic Physics and Sound Effects

9. Blinking shadow shows where the ball will land and/or if it will be out of bounds.

10. Games are automatically saved.

11. An Easter Egg is hidden in the game.