Over the years, the Mario sports games have seen somewhat of a mixed response on the Nintendo Switch. Their general mechanics are just as much fun and deep as they’ve always been, but a lack of engaging content or satisfying new gameplay hook split opinions. Me? I’ve found them to be fun arcade-style sports experiences that thrive best with three friends joining in on the fun. While not as strong as the original Nintendo 64 and GameCube entries, they’ve still delivered an unmistakably Mario-flavoured take in genres you rarely see too many games released nowadays.
Mario Tennis Fever marks the first sports effort for the plumber on Nintendo’s shiny new system, with initial trailers promising plenty of goodies from wacky modes and a single-player story mode to an army of characters and an intriguing new mechanic involving Fever Rackets. So, how does Mario’s latest entry on the courts fair?
Firstly, let’s talk tennis. Just as has been the case with past entries in the series, the game offers a wonderfully satisfying blend of accessible but layered action, each face button corresponding to a topspin, slice or flat shot, while different combinations of presses can trigger an arching lob or gentle drop shot. Furthermore, players can charge up their shots by anticipating the ball’s movement and planting their feet in place, ready to receive. Lofted balls, meanwhile, offer an opportunity for a vicious smash.
Matches can be played in tie breaker format, short matches or even full-on best-of-five sets with both singles and doubles supported.
You’d really struggle to find at least a handful of favourites from Mario Tennis Fever’s extensive 38-character roster, ranging from your usual assortment of heroes and villains to lesser-expected faces like Goomba, Nabbit and a baby-fied Waluigi. Each has their strengths and weaknesses on the court, Chain Chomp, for example, putting some awesome power behind his shots but unable to put any real spin on the ball, while Dry Bones is on the weaker side but fairly nippy on his feet and able to produce a devastating curve on his drop shots. Experimenting with each proves a fun process as you soon gravitate toward those that match your playing style.
The biggest new element is the Fever Rackets, 30 in all and each offering their own unique ability. Executable when you’ve filled enough of your Fever Meter (this gradually filling as the match continues), your character will unleash a powerful smash alongside some kind of wild effect from the opponent-hindering to perks for your own character. The Flame Racket, for instance, will leave burning embers behind where the ball bounces, setting your opponents ablaze if they accidentally run into them. The Ice Racket, meanwhile, freezes a large patch of the court, making it rather slippery for your opponents to deal with. It’s not just attack-focused perks, though, with the Swerve Racket giving your shots added curve for a short period of time and the Golden Mushroom Racket letting you make reality-defying dives for the ball even if it’s on the other side of the court. I won’t spoil the rest as testing them out for the first time proves a lot of fun, but suffice to say the amount of variety and chaos on display here is truly awesome, especially when you have four different rackets powering up in a game of doubles.
While it’s hard to say how the balancing of these rackets fares right now, at least from my twenty or so hours hitting fuzzy yellow tennis balls with friends, we haven’t come across any that truly stand out as being unfair. Even the Shadow Racket – a devilish racket that summons a shadowy doppelganger to help – did seem tough to contend with, especially if both players on a team chose it, struggled to maintain that dominance as our team started to experiment with different combinations.
Interestingly, each character has their own health meter, chunks knocked off with every fireball, Spiny and crushing Thwomp making contact. Empty your bar, and you’ll suffer. In singles play, that means seeing your character lose speed due to exhaustion. In doubles, meanwhile, you’ll be given a ten-second timeout, leaving your poor partner to deal with things on their own. It’s a cool idea and one that adds extra tension as you try extra hard to avoid taking too many hits.
Tennis courts are kept fairly simple this time, your typical grass, clay and hard courts taking centre court, whilst those just outside the stadium throw in more unusual surfaces like slow sand and slippery ice. While lacking gimmicks, this makes sense given your Fever Rackets do a more than satisfying job delivering in that department.
The Special Games dial up the chaos massively with four different spins going beyond your traditional tennis match. Forest Court sees Piranha Plants popping their heads up throughout a match, hitting the ball inside their mouths extending the size of the court on your opponent’s side or shrinking yours. Messing with the court’s sizing is a neat twist, especially in moments where you find yourself defending on a court double the size as normal. The Waluigi Pinball court is particularly chaotic (just like a game of pinball then), players able to trigger bumpers, flippers and even multi-ball play. In Racket Factory, single-use Fever Rackets are randomly handed out if a player is able to bounce the ball within a quadrant of the court, meaning you’ll find all sorts of powers unleashed through the span of a single match. Lastly, you have a court set in the Flower Kingdom from Super Mario Bros. Wonder, the aim to collect seven Wonder Seeds first by scoring points or collecting them as they show up at the net. Partway through your game, a Wonder Flower will appear, striking the ball at this kicking off a Wonder Effect like having to contend with giant bouncing Hoppos or laughing your way through a group of singing Piranha Plants. All prove a uniquely fun time with the only downside being that you’re limited to a ‘first to seven points’ game, something that feels over all far too quick.
For the single player, you have a few options available to you. Tournament mode presents you with a series of three-round tournaments growing increasingly tougher in both singles and doubles variants (the latter playable with a friend). Trial Towers pits the player against ten different scenarios, each one a short burst of chaotic fun from dealing with a volley-hungry Luigi to contending with multiple balls on the court at the same time. With just three lives, players try to make it to the top of the tower, unlocking the next slightly tougher tower and so on. While these didn’t pose too many issues (only the third and final tower costing me a life or two), what you unlock for besting all three towers was a pleasant surprise: 100 further challenges, each with three stars to earn by completing tasks. So, instead of simply winning a match against a Goomba whilst dealing with flaming embers on your side of the court, you’ll also need to try to win without losing a single point or getting caught in one of the embers. These additional tasks provide ample challenge and will keep you busy for quite some time.
The final notable single-player mode is the game’s story, a shortish three-to-four-hour journey that sees Mario, Luigi, Peach, Wario and Waluigi turned into babies, the player then tasked with taking them back to the tennis academy to train them up and figure out how to get back to their adult selves. Honestly, this is likely the part of the package that will disappoint most. While I’m not opposed to the idea of a story-driven mode, what we have here feels less like a grand adventure and more like a glorified tutorial. Of my time spent in this mode, I’d say roughly half took place at the academy, slowly working through simple minigames and drills, learning the basics of topspins and slice shots. There is a levelling system of sorts, but even that is kept extremely limited, your stats improving at a scripted rate. And sure, things do pick up a bit after you leave the confines of the tennis academy, but even still, the adventure never truly feels super exciting.
Other modes include online play, motion-controlled tennis and a bunch of minigames involving returning shots past your opponent, firing balls through rings for points and placing shots about the court whilst avoiding dead zones.
Mario Tennis Fever looks delightful, boasting bright and bold colours with characters full of… well, character. Though I did notice the odd hiccup in slowdown here and there when the court was busy with baddies and fire, importantly though, they weren’t during a rally but rather just as I was about to serve.
One other thing I wanted to highlight is the sheer number of unlockables offered in the game; its approach feels very old school in that all you need to do is simply play the game. No microtransactions. No promises of downloadable content down the line. Instead, you have characters, colour swaps, courts and Fever Rackets gradually given to you that not only give you a nice sense of progression but also just generally feels good. If only more games did this.
Perhaps the greatest compliment I can give the game, though, is that it reminds me of my youth, taking me back to my school days, all of us gathered round the television for back-to-back doubles matches of Mario Power Tennis. Those were some truly fun gaming sessions, unrivalled in many sports games that followed, but met in terms of competitive excitement from Mario Tennis Fever. Standing from our chairs in a fifth deciding set after a gruelling hour of play. Laughing at your opponent as you shrink them down to the size of a figurine, a cheeky lob an impossible feat courtesy of your Mini Mushroom. There are plenty more and likely many more to come over the next year, that’s for sure.
Mario Tennis Fever is the best sports entry we’ve had from the plumber since his GameCube days. Packed with content, crammed with unlockables and introducing a racket system that offers the sort of competitive chaos you want from Mario’s take on sports, Fever proves to be an absolute ace and a great start to the year for Nintendo Switch 2.
Version Tested: Nintendo Switch 2
Review Copy Provided by Nintendo
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