Mario Tennis Fever Review

Prior to falling in love with ice hockey a few years back (Go Kings Go), I was borderline apathetic towards sports. AFL looked messy, soccer bored me to tears, and no amount of pomp and circumstance could get me to care about a single Olympic event. Yet still, despite this disinterest, I’ve often gravitated towards the athletic outings of Mario and friends. Whether it was golf, baseball, or track and field against a certain Blue Blur, I was always happy to hop in. My first-round draft pick from Mario’s extracurricular outings, since 2004, has been Mario Power Tennis on the GameCube, but it might be time for a young gun to come in and upset the system. Camelot is back with Mario Tennis Fever, the ninth game in the long-running racket-swinging series, and with exciting new mechanics and a wealth of modes and match types, it’s a prospect that’s ready to set the scene on fire.

As this is the ninth time Mario and co. have hit the court, you would expect the core tennis action to be pretty dialled in by now. And dialled in it is, with every shot feeling responsive and every movement deliberate and important. Being a Mushroom Kingdom spin on the sport, there are plenty of modifiers and abilities that turn matches into a spectacle, but it’s the perfectly tuned foundational mechanics that keep everything running smoothly.

Standard topspin, slice, and flat shots make up your basic arsenal, with each hit sending the ball across the net in a specific way and in a particular direction depending on where you’re positioning the left thumbstick. Lob and drop shots can be utilised to force your opponent to reposition, and more powerful versions of each shot can be thrown out by holding or double-tapping the corresponding face button. Learning the fundamentals is simple enough that you can pass a controller to a friend new to the series, and they’ll immediately pick it up, but there’s also enough depth to keep you invested if you’re keen to master the court.

Shy Guy is my guy

The 38-character strong roster is split into five categories: Speedy, Powerful, Tricky, Technical, and All-Around. These attributes will determine how the character plays, whether they are faster on their feet, hit the ball harder, or return shots with a curve. The differences between the archetypes are impactful enough that you’ll quickly find a preferred playstyle, but not drastic enough to keep you from playing as your favourite character. The huge roster also allows for some less obvious characters to join in on the fun, like Blooper and Wriggler, because where would we be without a squid and a caterpillar playing in a doubles tennis tournament?

The gameplay gimmick for this iteration comes in the form of the Fever Rackets. Doing away with character-based abilities, the Fever Rackets add a dose of chaos to each match, with powerful shots that alter the court, buff your player, or impact your opponent. There are 30 rackets to choose from, each offering different abilities to mess around with. The Shadow Racket creates a gloomy double of your character, turning a singles bout into a brief handicap match, the Banana Racket scatters peels wherever the ball bounces, and the Fire Bar Racket spawns the classic blazing obstacle on the court, threatening to burn whichever player touches it.

Making a Fever Shot requires you to fill a bar at the top of the screen by continuing a rally, ensuring that these game-altering powers aren’t used too frequently. While powerful and often strategic, the Fever Shots aren’t a press-to-win option. When used, the receiver has a chance to intercept most Fever Shots before it hits the ground, firing the ability straight back over the net. Not only does this make the mechanic more balanced, but it also injects a layer of tension into matches, with a close-quarter rally often occurring whenever a Fever Shot is used.

This Fever Racket is fire

The only issue with having such a stacked roster and deep collection of rackets is that you’ll need to unlock them all. This isn’t inherently a bad thing, if unlocking them was fun, but certain characters and rackets are locked behind tedious challenges that feel like busywork.

While Mario Tennis Aces was a blast to play on the sticks, the main criticism was its overall lack of content, with post-launch updates coming in far too late to correct the course. Thankfully, that same talking point won’t be leveraged against Fever. In addition to Free Play matches and bracketed singles and doubles tournaments, Fever features four modes to choose from: Adventure, Trial Towers, Swing Mode, and Mix It Up.

Swing Mode is the most straightforward, as it strips back many of the game’s complexities in favour of motion controls. As simple as you would expect, this mode limits the Fever Rackets to the six most straightforward of the bunch and asks nothing more of you than to flail the Joy-Con when the ball is in front of you. It’s barebones and feature light, but it’s a nice alternative for those with kids, so it’s hard to complain.

The Mix It Up matches are quirky, messy, and a lot of fun

Mix It Up is where things start to get ridiculous. This mode is where you’ll find the modified game types, like Pinball Match, where bumpers and flippers bounce the ball violently around the court, and Racket Factory Match, where you go in blind and collect random Fever Rackets mid-game. The standout, for me, is the Wonder Court Match, which leans on the acid trip Wonder Flower mechanics from Super Mario Bros. Wonder to completely transform a match while it’s in progress. Trying to keep a rally going? No worries, just be sure to dodge the warp pipes that have replaced the net, or swat away the inflated purple elephants that now cover your screen. You’ll do just fine. These modes, when combined with the Fever Rackets, result in matches that are confusing, chaotic, and most importantly, always fun.

Trial Towers doubles down on the whacky-equals-fun equation by offering silly scenarios, like one massive Bowser versus three babies, and whacks it into a fighting game tower format. The challenge matches found within these three towers aren’t all made equal, but the sheer absurdity you’ll find while you climb to the top will make the experience worthwhile.

Unfortunately, Adventure mode, which is positioned as the big single-player option, is anything but worthwhile. Through whimsical shenanigans, Mario, Luigi, Wario, Waluigi, and Peach are transformed into babies, and the only reasonable solution is to tennis your way back to adulthood. This plays out in a short, four-hour campaign filled with minigames and micro matches that raise one of a few attributes, such as agility and power. While it may sound like a light dusting of role-playing, don’t be fooled, there are no challenge gates to speak of, so the stats are completely redundant.

It looks like an academy, but it’s really a prison

There is a smattering of fun enough situations that appear, and some novel boss fights, but the opening hour and a half of this story mode is set in a tennis academy that acts as a long, drawn-out, and painfully dull tutorial that could have been an email. It took so long to slog through this segment, walking back and forth between different coloured Toads, reading tips and tricks, and partaking in pointless quizzes, that I thought this setting was the Adventure mode. Still, even once school was out, there wasn’t much to enjoy.

Final Thoughts

Until the Mushroom Kingdom decides to build a rink, it’s likely that Mario Tennis Fever is going to keep its spot as my favourite sporting venture to date. The core gameplay has been tightened and perfected by years of iteration, and the new Fever mechanics are the best ability-based gimmick that the series has ever seen. Adventure mode, being a glorified and uninteresting tutorial, is a missed opportunity, and the wonky unlocks caused some frustration early on, but it’s the gloriously joyful moments I’ll spend playing Fever with friends that will keep me coming back time and again.

Reviewed on Nintendo Switch 2 // Review code supplied by publisher

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