Virtua Tennis 2009

This not being a family knockabout, but an arcade game with mini-games that demand razor-sharp shot placement, they included an optional shot indicator that shows the exact relationship between timing and placement. A bar representing the width of the court appears over your character's head when you're about to hit the ball; a pointer moves across it (faster the harder the ball's been hit at you); the ball goes where the pointer is when you strike. You can see that a forehand struck early will go down the line, a fraction later cross-court, and later still, out. It's a marvellously clear system that helps you get great results out of the basic remote.

It's a handsome enough game on Wii, eschewing Grand Slam Tennis' toons in favour of realistic representations of the stars (now including the likes of Andy Murray and Ana Ivaonvic, as well as legends Boris Becker and Stefan Edberg) and the familiar, hard, bright, arcade-machine look of Virtua Tennis. And here's the best part: controls and graphics aside, the Wii version has 100 per cent of the content and modes of the PS3, 360 and PC releases, online included.

That means all versions get the massively overhauled World Tour mode that's been integrated with ranked player matches and tournaments, allowing you to earn prize money and improve the ranking of your custom player online or offline. There's a much-improved character editor (the results of which can be undone by buying cosmetic surgery, for a price); and a new amateur tour populated with no-name characters to work your way through before you get a shot at the big names. The arcane unlocking system has been stripped out and replaced with a store bulging with clothes and accessories both realistic and outlandish.

Five new training mini-games have been added, some by SEGA's original Virtua Tennis developers in AM3, some by Sumo (you can tell which, the Brits contributing 9-ball pool, the Japanese a game where you have to feed zoo animals appropriate foods and something involving cardboard pirate ships). Building your core skills - ground strokes, volley and serve - in the mini-games feeds into the all-new system of play styles.

Intended to introduce more variety and strategy into the online game - and bring it closer to the Virtua Tennis culture in Japanese arcades, where players hot-swap characters they've built with different styles - there are 23 set styles you can build towards and use brief mini-game training regimes to switch between, with various strengths and weaknesses against each other. They include categories like All Rounder, Fast Runner, Strong Forehand and Rocket Serve, and should introduce welcome clarity online, as well as levelling the playing field some.

Smaller tweaks include a much more effective lob (Virtua Tennis 3's was, by admission, "tactically useless"), less over-the-top diving, more nuanced player-specific animations, some low-slung over-the-shoulder camera options - but sadly, no licensed courts or tournaments. The blessing of Wimbeldon and the other Opens bestowed on Grand Slam Tennis will undoubtedly be a mass-market draw for that game. There's naturally a casual network-multiplayer mode too, aimed at your Friends list.

Playing the PS3 version raised nothing at all to concern the VT fan or casual tennis enthusiast. It's as crisp and accessible as ever, presenting a slightly more natural, flowing game of tennis. The high-contrast, over-saturated graphics are maybe on the gaudy side, and the players' faces are muddy masks that shift between recognisable and alien like the clouds that ostentatiously pass across the court - but presentation is superb, with a plain, clear-cut, Rez-influenced graphic design for the front-end.

There's no reason to suspect this won't automatically be the best tennis game available on PS3, 360 and PC when it launches in May. On Wii? We're not going to call that before the match with Grand Slam Tennis begins in earnest. But with a handsome, full-featured conversion and excellent controls - with or without MotionPlus - SEGA is certainly putting its best foot forward.