Serve and Volley

Serve and Volley is Accolade's idea of a tennis game. It was actually developed by Artech, just like Apollo 18. The game was designed by Rick Banks and Paul Butler and programmed (with some help, I'm sure) by Lise Mendoza.

It is not your usual tennis game since there's a whole procedure to follow to make a shot: aim, shot selection and court repositioning after the shot. The game seems quite slow but in actuality, it has to be otherwise there would be no time to go through the motions to make shots. It's a little bit like Matchday 2, the football game, in terms of slowness, in other words, it's a good thing.

Once you have figured out how to make shots, the game makes a lot of sense and is quite pleasant.


This first video shows how to make a shot in Serve and Volley. It's basically what you get when you select "Instruct" in the game selection menu. I think it's pretty wise to go through this training prior to play for "real".


Second video is just me playing a couple of games against the computer on clay at the "hard" level. As you can see, the computer doesn't offer much of a challenge.

In conclusion, the game's concept in terms of player control is quite amazing. Unfortunately, it's just too easy to beat the computer. So, it's probably better to have two humans battling it out on the court.

If you follow the "Instruct" tutorial, you don't need the Serve and Volley manual. But if you don't, well, you're gonna need it.