Play top-down arcade tennis with real scoring: 15-30-40-game, deuce, advantage. First to 4 games takes the set. Three difficulties. Free in browser.
Drag, swipe, or move your mouse to position your paddle along the bottom baseline. The ball bounces off side walls; paddle edge hits redirect more sharply than centre hits. Pick easy, medium, or hard before pressing Start.
Tennis is the racquet sport that grew from medieval European real tennis (jeu de paume) and was codified into its modern lawn form by Major Walter Wingfield in 1873. The scoring — fifteen, thirty, forty, game — predates the game itself and likely refers to clock-face quarters used in mediaeval scorekeeping, with the awkward "40" being a clipped form of forty-five.
Our version is a top-down arcade interpretation. You and the AI hold positions at opposite baselines, the ball rebounds off the side walls, and a paddle hit angles the ball based on where on the paddle it landed — paddle physics straight out of the 1972 arcade hit that started home gaming. Scoring is full tennis: 15-30-40-game, with deuce and advantage when both players reach 40.
Three difficulty bands cover the AI's reaction speed, prediction accuracy (does it forecast wall bounces?), and inherent error. Easy lets you build rallies; medium punishes lazy positioning; hard plays close to optimally. Win four games with a two-game lead and you take the set.
The most common explanation is that medieval scorers used a clock face: a point moved the hand a quarter turn (15, 30, 45). "45" got clipped to "40" over the centuries, possibly to make room for advantage scoring in the deuce position.
When both players reach 40 (4 points each), the score becomes "deuce". The next point gives the winner "advantage" (AD). If they win the following point too, they win the game; if their opponent wins, the score goes back to deuce. You need two points clear to win.
In real tennis, six games with a two-game lead. We use four games with a two-game lead so matches fit a casual session. A typical set in this game runs 3–6 minutes.
No. On hard difficulty it predicts the ball trajectory including wall bounces, has 1.05×W/second tracking speed, and only ±8 pixels of random error. It's strong but not superhuman — its imperfection lets you outplay it with creative angles.
We use simplified arcade serving: the ball spawns near your baseline and shoots toward the AI at a small random angle. Service boxes are drawn on the court but only as visual reference, not enforced.
Yes. If both players reach 4 games and aren't two clear, play continues. We don't have a tiebreak at 6-6 — the set goes until someone gets two games ahead.