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With Wimbledon more than a ball's bounce away, tennis-starved fans can gorge themselves on some French racquet play.

Tennis Cup offers both tournament tennis and one-off matches, with enough options to satisfy the most fastidious aficionado of the sport. One or two players can take part over one, three or five sets against each other or the computer in a doubles match. Four types of court are available (grass, clay, indoors, hard) and computer opponents are set at one of three difficulty levels.

The action is displayed split-screen, the players' areas scrolling sideways to accommodate wide shots (effectively this gives two screens' width). There are six different types of service and 30 different kinds of stroke available, depending on where you're standing and the type of shot your opponent has just played.

Normal tennis rules apply, and particularly successful players can be saved to disk for later use.

Tennis Cup is one of the most innovative and complex simulations of the sport yet seen on 16-bit. The split screen perspective, even though it sometimes feels cramped, conveys the action brilliantly - both players can have the extra realism that 3D offers.

Technically, too, the gameplay is accurate: the ball movement and shadows are nicely done, there are some smatterings of speech and the players are well animated. Mastering the wide variety of strokes and services takes a lot of practice, but there are plenty of easy opponents to play against before challenging the real masters.

What makes Tennis Cup so outstanding, though, is the presentation - apart from some niggly disk loading times, there's great scope for changing all the parameters from player statistics to the type, length and difficulty of a match. It's a game any tennis fan should get their hands on.