I could be wrong, but I think my very first Mario game was Tennis for the Game Boy, in which you don’t play Mario at all. He’s the umpire, a bristling presence in a high chair, eyes glued to the ball. Unless there’s a spin-off I’ve missed, Mario himself wouldn’t take up a racquet till Mario’s Tennis on the, ergh, Virtual Boy. At the time, I had no idea who he was. Why did the umpire have a properly drawn face, while the players themselves looked like stickmen in Wimbledon whites? Why did he always seem so happy when he declared my serves out of bounds? Why did the crowd always agree with his decisions? I hated the man immediately.
I’m wasting your time with these nostalgic ruminations because I’ve been wasting mine with Thwack from Jon Topielski, a nifty indie tennis game with an immediately addictive browser-based demo. Rendered in chubby 3D with the Godot engine, it uses parallax to create a sort of wobbly drone’s eye perspective, which is surprisingly non-irritating. The players have suction cup feet, which doesn’t really impact the proceedings but makes every match sound like you’re popping bubblewrap under your desk. Essential! I mean, 5/5.
It’s a simple game – move around with WASD, swing with space – but you can exert reasonably delicate control over the angle and speed of the ball based on your direction and momentum when you strike. It allows for some familiar tennis gambits – he writes, having not played actual, flesh-and-blood tennis for decades. You can rush the net to panic the other player, always at the risk of them calmly lobbing the ball past you. You can try to drive them off-centre by aiming for the opposite corner, then send the ball mockingly in the other direction. Or you can miss the ball completely and feel like a fool.
