What's the Greatest Video Game: Top Spin

This is an ongoing list where I attempt to do the following: Play, Complete, and Rank every video game in the known universe in order to finally answer the age old question "What is the greatest game of all time?" For previous entries find the links on the attached spreadsheet.

How did I do?

There is always something inherently fun about Tennis games. Boiled down it is just a slightly more complicated version of Pong. The object is to not let the ball get past your paddle (Racket) and to try and either outlast your opponent or to angle the ball so that it is more likely for them to miss. Obviously this is a very dumb simplification of a game that has a lot more to it, but despite not playing tennis in real life, following it on TV, and unaware of basically any players outside of the BIG BIG names, I do love checking in with tennis games to see just how they have progressed.

Top Spin is not a new game, no. In fact I played the OG Xbox Top Spin that probably came out back when Dinosaurs roamed the Earth, but it still has all the charm and addicting qualities that it did back then. I feel like I don't really need to state what type of game this is to people unaware, it's a tennis game. For the sake of our "completion" level we will mainly talk about the lengthy career mode where you take your created pro and have him/her move up the ranks to become the best around. You do this by obviously playing a boatload of tennis, and while I can't speak to what the newest tennis game is doing today, I can tell you that the career mode that exists in Top Spin exceed my expectation of a normal sports career mode.

Let me set the stage, and say that back in the day, sports career modes were little more than a way to string individual games/matches together. In fairly recent NBA career modes, you alternated between practice and games and that was the crux of the whole career mode. In Top Spin, you are greeted with a world map that will slowly start to populate with locations that you can visit in order to make your career feel more like a choose-your-own adventure novel and less like a string of loading screens to your next match. You are still playing Top Spin to play tennis, there isn't anything radical here, but there are varying degrees of how you approach your world map.

In addition to tournaments (of different sizes) that you can enter as a way to rank up and earn some wins, the world map is also populated with "Coach" locations (training), Shops, Sponsor-ship locations, Airports, and Hair saloons to make the world less just playing one tournament after another. Sure some of these are just locations to dress up or change the appearance of your main character, but shops don't all sell the same gear (as they are region specific) and not all hair saloons offer the same options of haircut.

Coach houses, offer trainings at different levels that when passed will increase your stats in whatever they trained you in. These are essentially mini-games that can be played during the career. Yes, they are all tennis adjacent mini-games, but the involve things like trying to keep volleys going for as long as possible, hitting specific targets, alternating shots (forehand/Backhand) and popping balloons. In order to pass most of these at higher levels, you have to actually spend some time understanding the mechanics of how the game works so as best to tackle the approach. Trying to keep a volley going forever, doesn't mean standing directly at the net and spamming the A button, in the hopes your opponent does the same. Popping balloons isn't just trying to power shot your way to victory, but instead understanding placement of your character and shot options when aiming at specific balloons.

Sponsorship locations allow you to pick which company you want to represent as you rise through the ranks. They will usually have a handful of drills to complete, whether through training, individual matches, or winning tournaments, but they will give you free gear to rep as well as some cash by choosing to sign with them. In an interesting twist, you can't just rep every sponsor. If you already have one under your belt, and you attempt to go to another, the game will warn you that you are basically quitting repping your old sponsor and losing whatever progress you put into them. While it makes sense from a very real athlete sense (nobody reps both Nike and Reebok), its interesting to see that come into play in a video game. My expectation would very much have been, that if you complete all the challenges associated with one sponsor, that you can just move on and do the same for each of them until you become a tennis God.

Tournaments are very much what you would expect, but they vary in size, in difficulty, and whether it is a singles or doubles tournament. You don't always have to play them in the order that is laid out for you. Yes, if you want to "beat" the game you will eventually play them all, but you can skip around and play them in any order (as long as they are unlocked) and skip smaller tournaments, to only play in the bigger ones. Want to avoid playing in any of the North America tournaments, you can do it. You are still presumably playing Top Spin because you want to actually play tennis, but I appreciate what they did for the career that it didn't feel like a Mortal Kombat tower, where you just play each pro 1 v 1 until you beat them all and claim a trophy.

Now I have made it nearly to the end of the write-up without actually talking about the playing of tennis. There isn't an underlying reason why, but most tennis games have controlled the same for eons. Each face button hits the ball differently, from Lobs, to Top Spins, Drop shots, and curve shots. While you can survive most of the game just swapping between a couple of these shots, and worrying more about placement (making your opponent run side to side) obviously mastery of the other shots opens up your repertoire to do more in game. The biggest wildcard is the Power shot, that pops up a slider on the screen that you try to land directly center in order to make the most use of the power shot. If done correctly (and landed correctly) this allows you to hit some monster smashes that the opposing player has no chance of catching up to. Used on serves is probably your best chance to land Aces (scoring without a rally), however the power shot is very tough to master, because the timing is very fickle. If you don't land the slider directly in the middle, its very likely your power shot will either get buried in the net or sail out of bounds costing you a point. Depending on how close the match is, it can either give you an edge or cost you the game. I found that when I was playing this game pretty regularly my muscle memory allowed me to land more power shots then I missed, but any time away from the game, meant that I was going to be well off my timing.

Top Spin is a really good tennis game, but by playing it you are signing up for a lot of actual playing of tennis. The career mode can be long and grueling as you can't save mid tournament, and in order to climb the ranks you basically have to clear the whole map. Now when I talked about Mario Tennis for this series, I complained about how each character felt the same despite the stats. All the cool special powers resulted in different animations for the same result. While if you are just playing expedition games in Top Spin, that critique still plays here. However, you can really feel the difference in the career mode. Starting off as a nobody with barely any skill, you can feel the difference as you grow. This game isn't going to have wacky over-the-top power shots, or slow down timers, but you can certainly feel the difference between the character you start the career with, vs the one you are playing with 5 hours into the game. Go through the training on backhands or forehand shots, and you will then want to utilize those shots in tournaments to help you win, continue trying to brute force your way through, and watch your fledgling nobody whiff and struggle to control everything they hit.

Is this the greatest game of all time?: No

Where does it rank: No matter how much I enjoy it, sport games have a hard hill to climb when trying to be the greatest game of all time. I mean there is probably at least 50% of the population that just doesn't engage with or care about the sport in particular. Again, this isn't a popularity contest, but if you hate the sport of tennis, you will hate this game and that has to mean something. For what it is though, Top Spin is a really fun and addicting sports title. It's career mode, while doesn't have a story or cut-scenes, is far more engaging then recent Madden or NBA career modes. I had fun working my way up the ranks, completing classes, and repping my brand wherever I could. It's a very favorable middle of the pack as I have it ranked as the 42nd greatest game of all timeout of 99 games. It stands below "Empire of Sin" and right above "Toad's Treasure Tracker"

Up Next

1. 100th game spectacular

2. Old Man's Journey (Switch)

3. Dicey Dungeons (Switch)

Anyone looking for it: here is the link to the list and more if you are interested in following along with me (this is not a self promotion). Here. I added links on the spreadsheet for quick navigation. Now if you missed a blog of a game you want to read about, you can get to it quickly, rather than having to scroll through my previous blogs wondering when it came up.

Thanks for Listening.

Very nice piece. I sank more than my fair share of time into this game. I can still hear the map music in my head when I think about it. This blog made me incredibly nostalgic and sad that they just don’t make these anymore.

Oh yeah. I remember riding my stegosaurus while playing this game.

@paliv: thanks for the read and nice comment.. I know there were future iterations of top spin, but yeah this one was just a different breed.

@ginormous76: you joke, but I remember vividly escaping the hungry maw of a t-rex while I was in the middle of the Russia tournament. That's the stuff that sticks with you forever.