Article By: Sam Davies

The TopSpin series has been as close as gamers have ever been to playing tennis in there living rooms, well that was until WiiSports came out. It had plucky young Federers swinging in front of their TV's non-stop to try and become a tennis pro. It seems 2K sports has found this rather annoying and has decided to release Top Spin 3 on the Nintendo Wii. After the last good tennis franchise, Virtua Tennis, moved into the realms of unrealism and created a mediocre SEGA fest, the TopSpin team has moved in to kick the early comers off their high horses.

First of all, there are the graphics. The Wii is no powerhouse by any means, but the TopSpin team have put it to good use. The only thing holding these graphics back is the game's anti aliasing system, or more appropriately, the lack of a good one. You can see rough edges in all the screenshots, but in-game these should not be noticable. The animation for the characters are very life-like. I'm actually glad they didn't stylize the game for the Wii. If they had, the game would lose almost all of it's appeal, destined to live out it's days in a bargain bin next to its SEGA counterpart.

The Wii's motion control capabilities have really been utilized for TopSpin 3. This even goes down to how you hold the Wii Remote. You place your thumb on the side of the remote and place your index finger on the "B" trigger. (If you've got a Wii Remote lying around, have a go!") This is supposed to simulate the racket grip for a tennis player. And after having a pretend tennis match with it, I can conclusively reveal that it does work! All menus, are accessed by pressing "B", so there is no need to keep changing your grip when you want to alter options.

Let's talk features, and this game has loads! Along with the obvious single player tournaments, multiplayer matches, and singles and doubles, the Wii version includes several minigames. They have been described as "family friendly." Let's hope they don't pull a cooking mama on us and make us play the "Roger Federer high-carbs pre-match pasta game."

The one downfall that I have heard so far is that there is no online play. Whilst this isn't comfirmed by me, it's been floating around the internet for a while. So to play some multiplayer, you'll be stuck next to your friend in your living room. Let's just hope she doesn't get to into the game and starts to make the Sharapova grunts.



A notable accessory that can be used with this game is the Wii tennis racket. If you were lucky enough to get one of these (If "lucky" is the appropriate word) you will have either used it with wii sports or SEGA super stars. Whilst this doesn't electronically enhance the Wii Remote, it will give you an extra sense of using a racket. This will either immerse you further into the game, or just cause serious property damage. My hope is that the latter doesn't happen that much, but If youre playing two player with these periphirals, you might just unleash your best backhand on your friend. (You have been warned!)

TopSpin 3 looks like it's shaping up to be a potential Wii Sports replacement. But if we're all honest, who still plays Wii Sports anyway? Will this Game bring a new lease of life to Tennis on the Wii? We'll all find out when it's released on June 20th 2008.


Sam Davies is an 18 year old Writer/Artist who lives in Liverpool, England. Who is currently enjoying college life and a low drinking age!