Verdict
Mario Tennis Fever is the best Mushroom Kingdom sporting spin-off in years. Its reinvigorated solo offering has hours of fantastic content, while its character unlock system keeps you engaged right from the start. Combine all that with more multiplayer modes that don’t just revolve around competitive gameplay, and I honestly don’t know what else I could ask for.
I'll be honest, I was worried about Mario Tennis Fever. While I spent a lot of time playing its predecessor, Mario Tennis Aces, that game represented a change in tact for the series, one that pushed online ranked gameplay above all else. For a one-off, it wasn't the end of the world, but it still left me feeling a little concerned for what the future might hold with the dawn of the Nintendo Switch 2.
It's for that reason that I was almost a little hesitant to offer myself up for our Mario Tennis Fever review. Much like a final set rally, it felt like there were only two ways this game could go: a continuation of Aces' competitive emphasis or a second wind for the series I grew up loving, with meaningful options for solo gameplay. After just over a week of spending every spare minute serving, slicing, and picking up grand slam victories, I now know where the ball has landed. Mario Tennis is back, baby.
Let's start with the character roster, as, after all, that's the most important bit. Mario Tennis Fever features 38 playable Mushroom Kingdom residents, from icons such as Mario, Luigi, and Peach to the likes of Goomba, Spike, and Kamek. You don't start with all of them, though, and in this instance, that's a good thing. Much like last year's Mario Kart World, most of the playable characters require unlocking, forcing you to try different game modes, challenge yourself at a greater difficulty, or simply play a lot of matches.
With Mario Tennis Aces, it felt like Camelot, Nintendo's trusted development partner, had forgotten almost entirely about how much progression relates to how we engage with a game, or at least how I do. A character unlock system creates a gameplay loop in itself; you unlock a character, test them out, and unlock another option before long, and it goes round and round for at least 30 cycles. That, dear readers, is simple but effective game design, and as I'll come back to relatively often throughout this review, it's something this game has in abundance.
As for the tennis gameplay itself, Fever is more authentic to what you'd expect from a Mario Tennis game than Aces, which I always thought was trying a little too hard to be a realistic sports sim with some gimmicks thrown in for good measure. While the courts feel a bit tighter, or more constrained, the experience of rallying and serving is free-flowing and responsive. Speaking of courts, there's more variety there, too, so just like the real-world sport, you can feel the difference between a grass court and a clay court when playing on them.
This game's unique mechanic - almost all of Mario's sporting spin-offs have them - is the Fever racket. Instead of each character getting a unique power, like in Aces, Camelot has adjusted the formula here, so it's the racket that affects your super-powered shot. Your Fever shot charges as you rally, so there's a timing element there, as you wait for the best moment to take advantage of your opponent's positioning and unleash it. The effects vary from filling your opponent's side of the court with hazards with the Fire Flower Racket and the Mud Racket to improving your character's skills with the Swerve Racket and the Golden Dash Racket.
After unlocking all the available Fever rackets, I started experimenting, and there's so much to try. Take, for example, the Mud Racket, which creates a puddle of bounce-resistant mud that also damages the opposition player on impact. You can pair this racket with a technical character, such as Peach or Toadette, to score some easy points with precise drop shots that gently float over the net and stick to the court. Then, once the other player catches wind of the technique and starts playing closer to the net, you can blast a lob shot over them.
That's just one example of the seemingly countless synergies between different characters and Fever rackets. I'm not going to list every combination I tried, though I will say that pairing the already semi-broken Boo with the curve-boosting Swerve Shot borders on cruel in online matchplay. My point is, this is exactly the sort of smart gameplay design that I want from a Mario Tennis game.
In my Mario Tennis Fever preview, I had some concerns about whether some Fever rackets might feel overpowered or too difficult to deal with. Fortunately, that isn't the case. I've since discovered that if you don't let your opponent's Fever shot touch your side of the court, you can avoid any negative effects entirely, passing them back to the opposition. Not only that, but once you get your head around each Fever power, you can try to counter it accordingly. Both these factors add yet more nuance to the gameplay, making for an experience that feels surprisingly technical.
Moving on to game modes, your likely first port of call is either free play, which offers what it says on the tin, or adventure mode. Now I'm not going to say that adventure mode is perfect - for me, the pacing is pretty whacky, and there's more dialogue that I want to pay attention to in between challenges and matches - but it is some good old-fashioned fun. The first hour or so acts as a bit of a bloated tutorial, but from there on out, it finds its feet as you take control of Baby Mario on his quest to return to adult Mario - or just Mario, I'm not sure I like the sound of 'adult Mario' - while fending off Baby Wario and Baby Waluigi.
Outside of the adventure and tournament modes, Fever is much more generous with its content compared to Mario Tennis Aces. My favorite addition is the Trial Towers mode, in which you take on a gauntlet of ten themed missions with three lives across a trio of different difficulty levels. Even for a series veteran like me, the third level of difficulty, Tower of Trickery, lives up to its name, and for the first time outside of online play, I felt like the game was putting my skills to the test. Better still, as difficult as it gets, it never feels unfair - yet another hallmark of top-quality under-the-hood work from the developers.
Once you've had your fun with Trial Towers, there's also the Mix It Up menu, where you can find special matches and score challenges. You've got a bunch of different special matches to try, each with its own spin on the traditional tennis gameplay. My current go-to is Pinball Match, featuring a court with five bobbing pinball bumpers on either side to create some matchplay mayhem, but Wonder Court Match and Racket Factory Match are also a lot of fun. Score challenges are a welcome addition, too, and serve as a great way to train your skills outside of endlessly replaying tournament mode.
In terms of multiplayer modes, ranked online matchmaking is back, and you can play with or without Fever rackets, much to the delight of any tennis purists. There are more options for casual or cooperative multiplayer gamers this time, including some Game Share goodness, so you can sneakily convince your friends, who, if they're anything like mine, aren't the biggest tennis heads, to pick up the racket and play without having to buy their own copy.
While I don't feel like I've got much of a right to complain about the content, I wish there were a little more depth to the tournament mode. There are three difficulty levels for both singles and doubles formats, but you can clear these in just a couple of hours. I'd love it if there were an option, as there is for online play, to try the tournaments with regular rackets to properly test my tennis skills without relying on the gravity-defining curves of the Swerve Racket. Still, you can't have everything, and I'm basically nitpicking here.
As for the visuals, Mario Tennis Fever feels authentic to the world of Nintendo's iconic platforming plumber. It's a bit more quaint than Aces, and though there are some stadium venues for big matches and tournament play, they still feel like they're within the Mushroom Kingdom. Outside of that, it's what you'd hope for from a Mario Tennis game: colorful, chaotic, and chock-full of animations that highlight the distinct personalities of every playable character.
Performance on Switch 2 is, as you'd likely anticipate, essentially flawless. I've played for about 20 hours in the last week or so and didn't experience any issues in terms of frame rate or performance, either in handheld or docked mode. The loading times are nice and snappy, too, so you're rarely waiting for more than a couple of seconds to jump into your next match. Again, this is what you'd expect from an esteemed developer such as Camelot, but it's still worth pointing out.
All in all, Mario Tennis Fever is a return to form for the long-running series. Unlike its predecessor, this game doesn't rely on multiplayer matches to extend your playtime, and making the Fever racket, rather than the characters themselves, the star of the show means there's much more scope for different play styles. I've spent the last week or so playing with different character and racket combinations, and while I've already got my favorites, I still feel like I'm only just scratching the surface.
Ultimately, there's no better compliment I can pay Nintendo and Camelot than saying that Mario Tennis Fever genuinely has me excited again for the future of sports games set in the Mushroom Kingdom. If the developer can apply the same formula to Mario's golfing, baseball, and soccer spin-offs, then there's plenty to look forward to in the Nintendo Switch 2's lifetime.
There you have it, our Mario Tennis Fever review ahead of the game's February 12 release date. If you're looking for more Switch 2 greatness, we've also got a Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade review and a Resident Evil: Requiem preview you can check out. Or, there's our list of the best Switch games, brimming with options you can pick up and play today. Now, if you'll forgive me, I'm off to practice my service game, so Boo and I can get back to bringing online opponents to their knees. That's the stuff right there.