Activision Tennis is a 1981

1981 in video gaming

-Events:* November -** The British video game magazine Computer and Video Games starts.** Game & Watch - released in Sweden.* Arnie Katz and Bill Kunkel found Electronic Games, the first magazine on video games and generally recognized as the beginning of video game journalism.-Notable releases:*...

 Atari 2600

Atari 2600

The Atari 2600 is a video game console released in October 1977 by Atari, Inc. It is credited with popularizing the use of microprocessor-based hardware and cartridges containing game code, instead of having non-microprocessor dedicated hardware with all games built in...

 video game by Activision

Activision

Activision is an American publisher, majority owned by French conglomerate Vivendi SA. Its current CEO is Robert Kotick. It was founded on October 1, 1979 and was the world's first independent developer and distributor of video games for gaming consoles...

. It was one of a series of sports games by Activision, which also included 1980's

1980 in video gaming

-Notable releases:* May 22, Namco releases Pac-Man, which is their biggest selling game of all time* December, Nintendo releases the Radar Scope arcade game...

 Activision Boxing. Activision Tennis was designed

Game design

Game design, a subset of game development, is the process of designing the content and rules of a game in the pre-production stage and design of gameplay, environment, storyline, and characters during production stage. The term is also used to describe both the game design embodied in a game as...

 by Activision co-founder, Alan Miller.

Gameplay

Activision Tennis is played for one set of games, in which the first player to win six games won the competition, unlike real life tennis

Tennis

Tennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all...

, where competitors have to win, at least, two out of three six game sets.

One of the players on the screen appears in pink

Pink

Pink is a mixture of red and white. Commonly used for Valentine's Day and Easter, pink is sometimes referred to as "the color of love." The use of the word for the color known today as pink was first recorded in the late 17th century....

; the other one in blue

Blue

Blue is a colour, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 440–490 nm. It is considered one of the additive primary colours. On the HSV Colour Wheel, the complement of blue is yellow; that is, a colour corresponding to an equal...

. Most of tennis' rules applied to this game, except that there are no out of bounds shots. Shots that hit the lines were always considered inbound shots. Due to technical limitations (low resolution), the tennis ball appears as a block instead of a sphere.

Legacy

Both Activision Tennis and Activision Boxing have been re-released in specially made video controllers, which usually contain packs of five or six games each. The game is also available through Microsoft's Game Room service for the Xbox 360.