Mario Tennis Fever has the soul of a GameCube game. Its wacky, over-the-top take on tennis is at its best when you have four friends together on the couch. And for the first time since the GameCube era, series developer Camelot has delivered an entry that feels feature complete on day one, with the most unique characters, solo and multiplayer modes, and silly gimmicks we’ve ever seen crammed into a Mario Tennis game. Sadly, that doesn’t mean it’s all good content, as the single-player adventure once again comes up woefully short in terms of both its length and quality. But when playing locally or online, Fever’s tight, responsive controls and crazy abilities result in a chaotic party game that’s a lot of fun in short bursts.
The headline twist this time around are the mighty Fever Rackets, which dominate the action. There are 30 to choose from, and each comes with a unique special ability that can swing the game in your favor. Those powers are activated by pulling off a Fever Shot once your gauge is full, and they range from offensive, like planting a rotating Fire Bar straight from Super Mario Bros. on your opponent’s side of the court, to defensive, like creating a shadow double of yourself to cover more ground. They can also block your screen with ink, litter piles of banana peels on both sides of the court, or grant time-limited buffs, like making your shots curvier for the next 20 seconds.
The Fever Rackets are a blast to experiment with, and their inclusion adds a different flavor to each match. At their best, they force you to think about all the special quirks in play. If I place a slippery sheet of ice on one quadrant of my rival’s turf, we both know I’m probably going to try and hit my next shot right at it to force them onto the uncomfortable terrain. Or… will I? Shot placement in tennis is full of mindgames, and the Fever Racket’s transformative effects enhance that dynamic.
There are also checks and balances to each that are fun to uncover. The Bullet Bill Racket transforms the ball into a wicked fast line drive that appears overpowered at first glance, until you learn it can be easily neutralized by playing up close at the net. And when both players use this racket, it can result in a hilarious, rapid Bullet Bill rally that usually ends with a demoralizing body shot. Mixing and matching racket types to see what happens is great, which is why it really bothers me that there’s no way to randomly select your Fever Racket for either human players or CPU opponents, as it would be fun to try to make the most of the cards you’re dealt. You can randomly select characters and courts, just not rackets, so that feels like a prime candidate to be added in a post-launch update.
The Fever Rackets are a blast to experiment with, and they add a different flavor to each match.
Some Fever Rackets are definitely stronger than others, but Mario Tennis Fever adds a smart mechanic to somewhat balance them out. When a player initiates a Fever Shot, most offensive effects don’t take place until the ball hits the ground, leading to a tense back-and-forth volley where both players desperately try to hit the ball before it bounces. You have to be confident in choosing which one to bring into the match and when to unleash it, because the wrong decision can see your opponent sending your big shot right back at you.
On the flipside, Fever Rackets can also make things feel more luck-based at times, especially in doubles. Four separate powers in play can lead to courts that are completely covered in mud, fire, and unregulated chaos, similar to playing Super Smash Bros. Ultimate with all items cranked to the max. When your health hits zero – which forces you to sit on the sidelines in doubles or move at a slower speed in singles – it often doesn’t feel like your fault because of how unavoidable taking damage becomes. Even your doubles partner’s Fever Shot can hurt you. This isn’t necessarily bad; Fever just leans harder into the party game side of things than its predecessor, Mario Tennis Aces, which almost resembled a competitive fighting game with high-level mechanics like bar management and perfect blocks.
Rally Time
To account for all the mayhem that Fever Rackets entail, the actual tennis is a bit simpler. The overall speed is slightly slower and floatier, last-second dives for the ball make mistakes less punishing, and the court is a little smaller, meaning it’s easier to reach cross-court shots and keep a point going. I understand this choice: Aces’ intense pace combined with Fever’s increased madness would probably be too much to keep up with. On one hand, I miss the more hardcore version of tennis Aces provided. I played that game online for years because of its high skill ceiling and rewarding mechanics – it was a truly inspired take on the sport. On the other hand, Fever is way more fun to invite friends over to play for a casual game night since it’s easier for newcomers to pick up. It’s worse as a competitive tennis game, but better as a party tennis game. Plus, most modes let you use a high-speed ball that leads to a more upbeat rhythm, even if it doesn’t entirely resolve my disappointment that Aces’ thrilling trick shots, racket health, and time-bending abilities have been replaced.
That said, it still feels really good to anticipate where the ball is going, get in position, and release a fully-charged topspin shot, complete with great, punchy sound effects. Camelot has been refining the same control scheme of drop shots, lobs, and angled smashes for decades, and it’s still fun to return to, especially with CPUs that actually put up a fight at higher difficulties and the largest roster the series has ever seen. There are 38 characters to choose from, each with their own stats and unique traits. Newcomer Baby Waluigi has been a breakout star online, but I’ve actually gravitated towards the overlooked Baby Wario, whose powered-up topspin shot helps me control the pace of each point. I’m also happy to see the Donkey Kong Bananza redesigns of DK and Diddy Kong show up.
The character models are probably the best-looking part of Fever, with detailed clothes and facial animations, like the texture on Luigi’s shirt or even more bristles in Mario’s mustache than before. However, it doesn’t blow me away visually as a Switch 2 exclusive. Its cartoony art style looks good, as Mario games generally do, but it doesn’t feel like a significant leap forward. It targets 60 fps and usually hits that, but I noticed a few times in splitscreen doubles matches where it dipped before the ball was served. At least it’s always consistent when it matters most during the point, even with all the wild Fever effects on screen.
Keeping in line with Fever’s GameCube spirit, you have to unlock a bunch of characters, rackets, courts, and special costumes by clearing specific challenges, playing a certain number of matches, and progressing through the Adventure mode. Recent Mario sport games have tied progression and unlockables to online play, so it was a welcome sight to boot up Fever for the first time and see I had plenty to chase that wasn’t tied to my internet connection. That is, until I booted up the Adventure mode and discovered what I was in for.
Baby Fever
If you’re primarily looking forward to Mario Tennis Fever because of its single-player Adventure mode, I’m sad to share that it’s easily the most underwhelming part of this package. Mario, Luigi, Peach, Wario, and Waluigi get transformed into babies, and Mario must regain his tennis skills to save everyone, for some reason. It starts out promising, with a few gorgeous early cutscenes that throw Mario and friends into unexpected situations. Camelot upholds its reputation for surprisingly great cinematics like this, but the Adventure mode only goes downhill from there.
The first 90 minutes of this disappointingly short three-and-a-half hour campaign take place at a tennis academy, where Baby Mario undergoes painfully drawn-out, simplistic tutorials about the basics. You complete fairly one-note minigames to increase your stats, mash through text that reiterates each shot type, and partake in ridiculously easy qualification matches to move up the ranks. Throughout, you are also quizzed on your tennis knowledge, like one stumper where I was asked which character type was known for its speed: all-around, defensive, or speedy. Take a guess. This is clearly meant for young kids playing their first Mario Tennis game, and “Tutorial” would’ve been a more appropriate name than “Adventure”. It would be more enjoyable if the writing was funny or clever, but the characters all say very vanilla things that essentially only exist to teach you how to play. This is a far cry from Golf Story, which remains the gold standard for how to do a proper campaign in an arcadey sports game that combines strong writing, interesting challenges, and off-the-wall diversions, all of which are missing here.
Adventure mode is filled with drawn-out tutorials and one-note minigames.
You eventually leave the academy to progress through a comically small world map. This part of Adventure strongly resembles Aces’ campaign, where you use your tennis skills to fight a handful of bosses and solve very light puzzles. There are a few challengers to find, but there’s a surprising lack of tennis matches in this tennis campaign – and just when I felt like things were ramping up, it was over, so I shrugged and moved onto the other single-player offerings.
Tournament mode is a staple of Mario Tennis, and this is unfortunately one of its worst forms. Playing through three separate brackets to win trophies is fine as always, but Fever introduces an announcer in the form of a Talking Flower from Super Mario Bros. Wonder who never stops commentating. He reacts to every single shot, and I felt like I’d heard all of his voice lines multiple times before even wrapping up my second tournament. It gets grating very quickly, and I can’t imagine even kids would enjoy the nonstop commentary. The Talking Flower is turned on for all modes by default, but thankfully you can disable it everywhere… except in Tournament and Adventure.
The runaway best single-player mode is Trial Towers, a new addition that reminds me of Super Smash Bros. Melee’s Events. Each trial throws a specific setup at you, like a match where your Fever Gauge is always full or a battle of three babies against a giant Bowser, and it’s up to you to figure out how to exploit the setup and win a brief five-point match. There are even optional, difficult achievements for completionists, like winning without taking damage, or never losing a point. It’s a lot of fun working your way through each challenge, and incorporating this concept into an Adventure mode with unique characters and an interesting story should be the way forward for this series.
As always, Mario Tennis Fever shines in multiplayer, and there’s plenty of flexibility in that department. You can compete online in ranked matches split, between singles and doubles, either with Fever Rackets or without them. Winning boosts your point total as you work to improve your letter grade, with rankings scheduled to reset at the start of each month. I was only able to play online for a couple hours before launch, but my experience was smooth. In addition to playing with up to four people locally, you can bring two people from one console into a private online lobby and set up any type of casual match you’d like.
When you want something besides the standard tennis, you and your friends can pick a special match like the motion-control-focused Swing Mode, the traditional Ring Shot mode where you compete to score the most points by hitting the ball through rings floating above the net, a pinball court that uses bumpers and paddles, or a court that introduces Mario Wonder’s Wonder Effects like floating hippos. These range from decent distractions, like carefully aiming your Fever Shots at Piranha Plants to grow the size of your opponent’s court, to completely uninteresting, like repeatedly lobbing and dropshotting the ball just out of reach of a mindless CPU opponent upwards of 30 times in a row.
It doesn’t take long for even the best special modes to get repetitive, and I found myself quickly going back to the standard tennis matches. Thankfully, that specific mode has more than enough to shake things up thanks to the large roster of characters and rackets, but it ends up feeling like too much of a good thing. Fever is still a lot of fun in briefer sessions, but when I think of the breadth of worthwhile content found in Nintendo’s other recent multiplayer options like Kirby Air Riders or Super Mario Party Jamboree, Fever comes up a bit short. After 20 hours, I already feel like I’ve had my fill, and I see it as more of a fun distraction to play for a few minutes here and there while my group warms up for something else rather than one that’s going to get a serious amount of playtime.
