Top Spin 3 [Wii]

Serious tennis sims are an incredible rarity on Nintendo systems. We've had the Mario Tennis series, and Wii Sports, and the recent SEGA Superstars – but all of those are the cartoony kind of tennis, with over-the-top animations, simplified rules and forgiving controls. It's rare that a Nintendo home console sees the release of a more realistic simulation, especially something like Top Spin. Fans should take notice.

In a way, though, this edition of 2K's well known tennis brand is only playing at realism here on the Wii – Top Spin 3's Wii version is an altogether different game than what you'll find on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It shares its console cousins' realistic look, starring virtual renderings of real world players and arenas, but it backs off from the strict control structure applied to those on competiting systems. Here, instead of the tough and unforgiving button-based controls featured elsewhere (and explained in detail in Nate's recent review) you get a more Nintendo-fan-focused motion-control set-up that is much more accessible.

It begins with your Wii Remote held sideways. With the D-Pad turned to face toward the screen, your index finger resting on the B Trigger and your thumb placed on the edge between the two, it's a unique controller grip that hasn't been seen before in any other Wii title. It simulates a racket grip well – but the game won't penalize you for not being perfect in your racket-motion miming as you swing the Remote to execute forehands and backhands on-screen. You'll find that they're actually pretty easy to do, and you're given a lot of leeway in how you swing your hand.

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All the while you'll be moving your chosen tennis superstar across the court with the analog stick on the Nunchuk. And, if you want to get slightly more complicated, you can use a combination of the Nunchuk's buttons and specific Wii Remote arcs to trigger drop shots, lobs and the titular top spins.

It's a pretty pick-up-and-play control style, one that feels like a natural progression from the simplified fare of Wii Sports. And that seems to be exactly the point – whereas 2K has honed its Xbox and PlayStation editions' controls specifically for the hardcore tennis sim fan, here on the Wii Top Spin 3 remains a game that anyone could comfortably jump into with little previous experience.

The small cross-section of fans who'd consider themselves both hardcore tennis fans and sole Wii owners, well – they might feel a little left out in the cold by the design decision.

Unfortunately, while the Wii Remote and Nunchuk control scheme works well, the rest of the Top Spin 3 package fails to be quite as inviting. The current Wimbledon champion, Rafael Nadal, is nowhere to be found in this version – he's exclusively a part of the PS3 package. The rest of the expected greats are here – Federer, Sharipova, Roddick – but their models and animations leave a little something to be desired here on the Wii. And the character customization and career mode featured in the other versions completely get the ax for Nintendo's white box.

What we're offered instead, as consolation, are a handful of "party games" and a mode called Road to Glory. These are only small consolation, though, as none are truly compelling – the Invincible Man multi-player option offers you a quick way to strive for supremacy in a group of four players with fast, three-round matches, but it's more of a curious extra than a must-play mode.

So what we're left with is a bit of a mixed bag for the Wii edition of Top Spin 3. It's much more accessible and easy to get into in this version, which is a positive – but it lacks the visual flair and depth featured in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 editions, which is a negative. Overall that translates into a decent somewhat-serious tennis experience for Nintendo's console, which is certainly worth a look for fans of the sport. But the truly hardcore would be better served to look at the same game on a different system.

Closing Comments
Browsing through the IGN review archives, it looks as if Top Spin 3 is the first realistic tennis sim to hit a Nintendo system in over five years – the last was the completely forgettable WTA Tour Tennis for the GameCube. And, before that, you have to go back almost another half decade to find the next most recent was Ubisoft’s All-Star Tennis ’99 on the Nintendo 64. Clearly there’s an opportunity to capitalize on an untapped audience here, and Top Spin 3 does a good job at that – the definitive Wii tennis experience yet to come, though, will marry the accessibility of control 2K has found here with the true depth that this attempt lacks.

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