Overview

The player has only two choice of hitting the ball: a normal stroke (button A), or a lob (button B). The direction of the ball depends on the timing of the stroke, e.g. if the (right-handed) player hits a forehand early, the ball goes wide to the right, and if he hits it late, then the ball hooks to the left. If the player can reach a lob from the opponent, he can smash it. At higher difficulties, it is almost impossible to win the point except with a smash.

In 1985, Tennis was released for the Japan-only NEC PC-8801 by Hudson Soft. In 1989, the game was re-released for the Game Boy, and again in 2002 for the e-Reader and in the Nintendo GameCube game, Animal Crossing. It also appeared in WarioWare: Twisted! as one of 9-Volt's games. It is also available on the Wii's Virtual Console. It was also featured on the game 350-in-one, released in 1990.

Apart from other Nintendo first party tennis games, such as Mario Tennis (Nintendo 64) and Mario Power Tennis (Nintendo GameCube), this game had much more realistic physics. For instance, players could accidentally hit the ball out of the court. In the other games, the power was purposefully limited and the ball would almost always stay in the court.