Pat Cash is an Australian professional tennis player who won the Wimbledon Gentlemen's Singles title in 1987 and then famously defied tennis tradition by climbing through the Centre Court stands to embrace his family. Cash has been off the pro tennis circuit for a while now, but he was recently inducted into the Australian Tennis Hall of Fame. The goal of Pat Cash Pro Tennis is to take your place alongside him--and you need to win only seven matches to do it! Unfortunately, the lure of the Hall of Fame isn't worth suffering through seven matches of this game.
Although the game bears his name, Pat Cash makes little more than a cameo appearance. If you perform an exceptionally good or bad play on the court, his head (wrapped in his signature, checkered bandanna) will briefly appear at the top of the screen with words of encouragement--such as, "You're angry" and "That's top stuff, mate"--or discouragement--like, "You gotta try harder."
The gameplay choices are quick game, a solo match that allows you to practice against opponents of varying difficulty, and tournament, which is composed of seven matches that get progressively more difficult. Both modes offer singles and doubles play, the ability to set the length of the match, the ability to choose to play as either a male or female tennis pro, and the choice of manual or automatic movement. None of these choices provides much of a gameplay shake-up, however, so you'll discover that the limitations of Cash's menu options mirror those found everywhere else in the game.
On the tennis court, you are confined to four-way directional movement and three different shots, each of which you can steer slightly after contact. Maneuvering your character is quite a task, particularly without the ability to run diagonally. Moving laterally is easy enough, although approaching the net takes more time than it should. Fortunately (or unfortunately), your complacent computer-controlled opponent won't hit any challenging drop shots. You can set up camp at the center mark and be well within reach for any shot that comes your way. Needless to say, this isn't very fun.
Although most of the game's opponents don't present challenges, using the automatic control option makes it tough to play aggressively. As a result, the game plays out as a casual rally between two hitters--and not a battle between two champs who are duking it out for a spot in the Hall of Fame. The mere presence of an automatic control mode suggests that Pat Cash's developer was aware that its manual control scheme was woefully inadequate.
The three different types of shots in this game are the standard forehand/backhand, the drop shot, and the lob, all of which can only be made while standing still. As mentioned, the ball's trajectory can be altered slightly by pressing a directional button just after contact, but the effect is too subtle to be strategically viable. Neither player positioning nor shot timing is crucial, either. As long as you swing sometime after the ball crosses the net and before it passes you, you'll hit a successful return.
Since the computer opponent moves laterally just as well as you do, the best way to win a point is by dropping the ball just over the net. On the easy and medium levels of difficulty, all points can be won this way very easily, since the artificial intelligence never expects the shot and, therefore, never returns it. Charging the net does leave you vulnerable should the opponent choose to hit a lob, but the AI uses this shot so infrequently that there's no reason to consider it. Although the semifinals and finals are more difficult (and thus a little more interesting), your control over the action is, in general, so limited that winning isn't gratifying. The end result of your hard work is a picture of a trophy and a trip back to the menu screen. If you're determined to go the distance, you'll be happier setting the game limit to three or five games instead of one or three sets. Shorter matches net the same final result with less suffering.
Pat Cash's graphics and sound are of middling quality. The frame rate drops from time to time, which is a problem that's somewhat offset by decently animated characters and a realistic ball shadow. While the shadow does help to gauge the location of a shot, there are no other visual rewards on or off the court. The audio is tinny and annoying, so it's best left turned off.
Pat Cash Pro Tennis doesn't capture the simple beauty of other tennis games, nor does it even capture the beauty of a simplistic game like Pong. Given that there are significantly better mobile tennis games around--such as the outstanding Super Real Tennis--there's no reason to delve into the world of Pat Cash.
