Reasonable facsimile

NEW YORK — It looks like Anna Kournikova. From the sinfully short skirt to the dangling knots of her signature ponytail, the computer-generated image on the screen is a near-perfect ringer for the face that launched a thousand downloads.

In fact, there’s only one way to distinguish the real Kournikova from her virtual counterpart.

The digital Anna is always agreeable.

“Anna was a little difficult to work with,” said Microsoft software producer Matthew Seymour, laughing as he recalled an awkward motion-capture session with the pouty-lipped Russian tennis star. “She was just in a foul mood that day. To her credit, though, she’s been great since.”

Indeed. The simulated Kournikova, blonde locks and all, appears alongside Pete Sampras, Lleyton Hewitt and 13 other tennis pros in the upcoming Microsoft video game Topspin.

As for the actual Kournikova, the one who gave Seymour a hard time and missed the U.S. Open with a back injury? She was all smiles two weeks ago, holding a control pad and perkily promoting the game during an afternoon appearance at a Manhattan software store.

Set to release this October for the XBox game console, Topspin is in part an attempt to do for tennis what the well-known John Madden football series has done for the NFL: Create a video game that both enhances and capitalizes on the popularity of its real-world inspiration.

“We had a studio that was really motivated by the fact that if a tennis game came out well, it could do very well in the market, be a big hit,” said Ben Arndt, the game’s product manager.

Easier said than done. While sports simulations account for one third of the $9billion-a-year video game market, software sales charts are dominated by football and basketball games.

To wit: EA Sports’ Madden NFL game was the top-selling sports game and the second-best selling game overall two years ago, popular enough to make EA Sports the NFL’s No.2 licensee, behind footwear and apparel manufacturer Reebok.

Still, Microsoft believes the time is right for virtual tennis, even in an era of stagnant television ratings and financial uncertainty for the actual sport.

“People understand tennis,” Arndt said. “It has the fast-action fun that makes a great video game. At its root, it’s a simple concept: Our game is a super-glorified and thousand times more expensive Pong.”

With more than two years of development time and a production budget exceeding $2million, the makers of Topspin aren’t playing around — despite giving game players an opportunity to toy with a virtual Kournikova. The goal? Create a fun-yet-realistic game that captures the nuances of the sport.

For Seymour, who played tennis for San Diego State in the 1980s, that meant a trip to Park City, Utah, where he hooked up with Warren Pretorius, a South African tennis coach and former ATP pro.

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