It’s that time of year again, there’s a slight wind in the air, strawberries and cream are abundant and play is about to be interrupted by rain. Yes, it’s that time of year again for all tennis fans – Wimbledon. With Robinson sponsoring the event yet again, it’s the perfect time of year for SEGA to release their latest version of the famous Virtua Tennis. Facing stiff competition this year for the top spot, with EA releasing EA Sports Grand Slam Tennis, Top Sin 3 and even Wii Sports to a degree. Back in the day Virtua Tennis stood out on the Dreamcast, mostly due to the fact that it was one of the only Tennis games around at the time.

The crux of Virtua Tennis hasn’t changed at all; it’s still all about creating a tennis player, training them, entering them into tournaments and slowly becoming the best tennis player in the world. Just like many a sports anime and game, the main premise of the game isn’t centred on the storyline – after all, if it had one it’d be questionable at best.

To keep players interested, there are mini-games that involve feeding animals, item collecting, training at the academy, buying “upgrades” at the local shop and all sorts of other little things to keep people entertained. During these small events there’s little difference between using the Wii Motion Plus and the standard Wii Remote. After all, they don’t require the competitive edge that the Wii Motion Plus that the main tournaments need.

When playing the tournaments it’s clear that the Wii Motion Plus is a brilliant tool to have. Raise the Wii remote a tiny bit, and the character will move their arm in response to the remote; it’s almost 1:1, which is what many wanted from Red Steel back when the Wii first launched. To return a serve you have to aim in the direction you want and swing at exactly the right time. Naturally this means that the learning curve is very steep and some people will be inclined to simply not use Wii Motion Plus, but this method is not only cheating, it does the game a disservice as for the most part once the usage of the Motion Plus has been mastered, and there’s help to learn in game, it’s accuracy is solid.

Unfortunately it’s not perfect; sometimes a serve down the centre of the court will veer off in a random direction. At first the player would be fair to assume it’s their own poor aim, but after multiple times it becomes clear that it’s just the game being a little inaccurate. This can be forgiven as most of the time the accuracy is very good and it is one of the first games to use this new accessory from Nintendo.

For those who aren’t fortunate enough to have the Wii Motion Plus yet, Virtua Tennis has a built in aiming system. Naturally it’s no where near as intuitive as Motion Plus, it’s essentially a little metre above the player’s head, to make the ball head left the ball must be hit when the metre is on the left hand side and the rest is pretty easy to figure out from there. Unfortunately this makes the title nothing more than an expanded Wii Sports in many respects.

Virtua Tennis has a brilliant online mode, which allows the player to compete online against anyone else with a simple lobby based system to navigate through. With over twenty different cups, with various court surfaces and lengths of tournaments it’s easily one of the best features of the game. Not to mention the fact that there is no friend codes.

Unfortunately the title is let down by the hideous voice acting, which is lifeless and soul destroying and graphics that reek of PS2 port. The textures and character models are poor at best and it’s clear that the Wii has more than enough power to create decent character models and good textures when this is compared to other games. There’s also a fairly noticeable slowdown when playing in doubles matches, so for those who enjoy speedy games single player is the best option.