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"And that rather weak second service got exactly what it deserved." And out come all the old Dan Maskell stock phrases, not to mention jokes about John McEnroe, iceborgs, and the like.

Yes, it's tennis conversion time and the old arcade favourite, Konami's Tennis finally lobs its way onto the Spectrum courtesy of Imagine's licensing deal with Konami. To be honest, when this arrived I wasn't exactly seized with raptures of enthusiasm and the general reaction was along the lines of "Ho hum, yet another Imagine arcade conversion." But once the game was loaded up it managed to bring a little jollity to an otherwise cold, wet and dreary morning.

On the two occasions that I'd attempted to play the original arcade game I'd found it completely unplayable but the Spectrum version proved to be much easier and more enjoyable to play and although I haven't come anywhere near winning even a single set I can see myself loading this up quite a lot 'til I get the hang of it.

Imagine's conversion is something of a no-frills job, but with the emphasis on playability. There isn't a great range of different shots that you can play with lots of angles, topspin and so on as has been the case with some tennis and table tennis games (which I generally find far too complicated to play well). The direction that you're running in seems to have some effect on the direction that you hit the ball in and the timing of the shot can affect its length, but on the whole it's just a matter of chasing after the ball and thrashing away like mad in the hope that you'll knock it over the net. I realise that that may not sound terribly sophisticated but it's definitely great fun.

The graphics aren't exactly spectacular - the players are white sprites on a green court, with the scoreboard at the rear of the court - but by keeping things simple you can at least see what's going on the whole time, and there are (virtually) no attribute problems.

The options available allow one or two players to play a singles match against each other. Playing doubles against the computer is just asking for trouble. It's chaos, with players running all over the place and the computer managing to co-ordinate its two players with an ease that will make most human opponents look pretty daft.

After a while, you'll be able to tighten up your game and maybe even win a few points (the computer does seem vulnerable to a fast serve and volley game). The game seems to have just the one skill level, so it might eventually be possible to master the game and perhaps it would have helped ensure that the game has a long life by providing different skill levels. Other than that, my only criticism of the game is that using the keyboard controls is a bit fiddly.

The predefined control keys seem to be badly chosen and although you can redefine these keys player two can't choose keys set aside for player one even if player one is using a joystick. This means that if player two wants to redefine the keyboard controls then he or she will probably also have to redefine player one's keyboard controls first, even though player one isn't using the keyboard (and this isn't explained in the instructions either; it took a bit of guessing and trial and error before I began to realise why I couldn't get the keys I wanted for player two).

Still, fiddly bits aside, Konami Tennis has still proved to be the first tennis game on the Spectrum that I've enjoyed playing and is certainly the only one that I'm ever likely to go back to.