So it's tennis. Good grief, what can you say about tennis? Well, you could say that it was a sport originally devised by the Aztecs in the 16th century as a ritualistic torture designed to make unwary explorers break their necks, but that wouldn't be true. Why not, then, forget all about tennis and talk about something more interesting instead? Like, say, what a crap programme Eldorado is.

Eldorado, eh? What a load of old nob.

Well, that's that. Might as well get back to the tennis, I suppose. Wimbledon, unfortunately, is a simulation of the Wimbledon tournament. I say 'unfortunately' because (a) it's one of my favourite words, and (b) because the Wimbledon tournament finished months ago and everyone's much more interested in the Olympics now, but there you go. Luckily though, that's nearly the only unfortunate thing about Wimbledon. This is a spiffing little game, thanks in no small part to the corkingly playable nature of it from the word 'go'. You can pick this one up and be having fun with it inside 30 seconds, and let's face it, in these get-up-and-go MTV-generation times the last thing you want to be doing is hanging around reading pages of fiddly little instructions and stuff.

Wimbledon is immediately easy to play because there are only really two kinds of shot you can play; a high one or a low one, each of which you can also spin with the aid of the joypad directions (you can spin the ball more as your skill points increase). Unfortunately (there I go again), this is also the game's major drawback - if you're playing the tournament, neither player starts off talented enough to play very clever shots, so the game degenerates into a simple pit-a-pat session where both players just wait for the other to make a seemingly-random mistake. Get further, or play an exhibition game, or use the brilliant two-player link mode, though, and things perk up dramatically, with shots whizzing all over the place and players diving around in finest Boris Becker style.

To be honest, those are the best ways to play Wimbledon - stick with the tournament and you'll probably get a bit bored before it gets really good. Mind you, you do get passcodes after each round, which means at least you only have to play the boring early couple of rounds once before you can skip them.

All in all then, a bit groovy, especially if you can persuade a chum to buy a copy too and invest in a two-player link cable. Hey, why should you have to fork out all the dosh? 

POWER POINTS

GRAPHICS 8

SOUND 6

ADDICTION 7

BRAINPOWER 4

FRUSTRATION MEDIUM

TIME TO COMPLETE One week

UPPERS

Looks lovely

Scrolls smoothly

Very fast

Easy to get into

Variable-skill opponents

Some great dramatic dives!

Three different courts

Fabulous against a mate

DOWNERS

Not very many different shots

Hard to see where the ball is sometimes

SEGA POWER SAYS

This is an excellent tennis game, but the lack of sophisticated play early on is a little off-putting. Brilliant two-player mode, though.

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