The original Top Spin was one of a slew of first-party sports games for the first Xbox that conspicuously disappeared once EA got on board with Xbox Live. Yet unlike Microsoft's baseball and football franchises, which also disappeared, Top Spin was actually a pretty fun game, with intuitive gameplay that was addictive in the same vein as a next-gen Pong.
Top Spin has since moved under the watchful eye of 2K Sports, which has in turn brought it to the PS3 and Xbox 360. At the same time, much of the original game's arcade-inspired fun has also moved, and it's in fact safe to say that with 2K Sports involved, Top Spin 3 is a tennis simulator much more than it is a Pong-like game. Now in its third match, is Top Spin still fun? In a different sense, yes. But it's definitely a changed game, and not without one big growing-pain fault.
OPM: Thousands of Brits will be inspired to pick up a racket this week on the back of Andy Murray’s success at Wimbledon – but in this heat, and given our hand-eye co-co-ordination, we’ll be sticking to the virtual type. Looking to fill your week with some ace-smashing antics? Then join us in revisiting PlayStation’s finest tennis efforts…
Not really, most of those games were available on multiple platforms.
Just so happens that the PS magazine wrote the article so makes sense it would be 'Playstation's greatest games' :)
Gamepyre writes: "When Virtua Tennis 2009 first came out I was very excited about the game; I was so excited that I actually went and got it on release day.
Virtua Tennis 3 has been one of my favorite PSP games, and I could not wait to see what the 2009 Xbox 360 version of the game brought to the table. After playing the game, I was very disappointed in Virtua Tennis 2009; not because it was a bad game per say, but because it wasn't anything new from the previous release."
Another week and another episode of Distributed Failure is here for your listening pleasure. This week's "What They've Been Playing" features discussion on Top Spin 3, Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood, Fight Night Round 4, Battlefield 1943, Final Fantasy IV: The After Years, and much more! They follow that up with some gaming news including the latest update on EGM, the addition of prizes to 1 vs. 100, and the announcement of a new Mechwarrior game.
