There's something about Wimbledon time that reminds me of my adolescence. Maybe it's the long hot summer days when nothing much appears to happen. Or perhaps it's the sulks and tantrums. There again, maybe it’s the sight of untouchable teenage girls in short skirts… er, moving swiftly on, this week 15 years ago saw computer owners playing the first tennis simulation which could lay claim to a modicum of accuracy.

It was called Match Point and it ran on the Sinclair Spectrum in glorious black and green vision. The player characters would be laughed out of court* today, being primitive little stick men, but as an implementation of tennis, Match Point was ace*. With a 3D view of the court, just like on the telly, different shots could be played depending on the character's position relative to the ball. A net* benefit was that the confusing scoring system of the real thing could finally be understood, as it adhered completely to the game's rules (yes, that was unusual in sports sims of the day), and for several years it set the standard for the genre despite having no sound at all – so you could hardly be accused of making a racket* when you played it.

It later appeared on the Commodore 64, with 'proper' player graphics, Amstrad’s CPC and the microdriven Sinclair QL, which hardly anybody saw. Match Point was this particular publisher's last real link with the games industry and all future software development was geared towards rather dull business analysis programs. Some of us, at the time, thought this was a big mistake as they could certainly code it with the best of 'em – their version of Scrabble on the Spectrum was tremendous – and who's interested in using computers for boring business purposes anyway?

Having the balls* to change focus may have paid off for the company's founders, who are now included in The Sunday Times Rich List of the most wealthy people in the UK, but who knows what gems us gamesplayers have been deprived of by them canning games development? Ah well, like Psion care… (yes, it was them all along!).

*These are standard puns which The Bumper Book of Journalism insists all writers must use when mentioning any aspect of tennis, especially in headlines. Sorry. It's the rules.