Mario Tennis Fever, at its core, is a great game of tennis. Features this time around add a lot more to the core game than previous titles, and both the online and local multiplayer modes are pretty great. Unfortunately, the lack of quality content makes this hard to recommend to everyone.
Before we get into the different game modes in Mario Tennis Fever, let’s talk about the biggest gameplay change, the Fever Rackets. Each Fever Racket has a different power. For example the Flame Racket will scatter flames across the court where the ball bounces, the Fire Bar Racket creates a Fire Bar, and the Ghost Racket makes the player and balls invisible. This can make the game very difficult for the opposing player when balls bounce into areas of the court with hazards. The Ghost Racket in particular has the chance to become the Blue Shell of Mario Tennis since it’s downright infuriating trying to figure out where the ball went. You can play without the Fever Rackets, but it’s a lot more fun to play with them.
Looking at single player modes, Adventure is the main mode. In this campaign, Mario, Luigi, Wario, and Waluigi have been turned into babies on a quest to find magical fruit that can cure a sick Princess Daisy. To get back to normal, the crew has to go to the Mushroom Tennis Academy. It’s a glorified tutorial at best, but the more you play it the more you can unlock different rackets. The baby characters are fine. I don’t have any strong opinions about them one way or another.
Next up are Tournaments, which are bracketed tennis matches with various difficulties. The difficulty here is actually pretty challenging and makes this my favorite of the single player mode.
Then you have Trial Towers, where you clear different challenges. Again, this is a fun single player mode where you have some tasks to accomplish in addition to playing tennis, and doing so unlocks different characters and items.
None of the single player modes are very substantial, but you can unlock different rackets, characters, and courts the more you play them. There’s an Achievements menu where you can see the conditions for unlocking different items, and it’s a nice quality of life feature to have so you know how far you have to go to unlock your favorite character.
One disappointing thing about the unlockables is that the character selection pales in comparison to Mario Kart World. There are different color variations you can unlock of Shy Guy, Yoshi, Koopa Troopa, and Luma, but that’s it. Gone are all the fun costumes in Mario Kart World. It feels like we went backwards when it comes to how Nintendo is leaning in more on the distinct personalities of their classic characters. This is a great looking Mario game, but it feels so low effort that we just get the bare bones when it comes to the characters here.
The online experience in Mario Tennis Fever worked really well for me. I didn’t have to wait long for matchmaking and I didn’t encounter much lag. The tennis matches I played were intense and exciting and they all played very well. We’ve come a long way since the days of Nintendo’s online multiplayer experience being bad.
Mario Tennis has always been a great couch multiplayer game, so from here on out these were the impressions I had playing local multiplayer with my. Here’s a quick runthrough of the various modes.
Ring Shot, where you hit balls through rings, was a fun local multiplayer experience and so was Forest Court Match, where Piranha Plants will pop up to intercept your shots. There’s a two-player and four-player Co-Op Ring Shot mode too, but this felt really easy for us and wasn’t particularly challenging.
In Pinball Match, in-court bumpers pop up and players and balls bounce off them, and it was more confusing than anything.
In Racket Factory Match, you hit the panels that light up on your opponent side to get rackets. I thought it was okay but it was hard to tell exactly what was going on. My favorite of the Special Matches was Wonder Court Match, where you hit the Wonder Flower and transform the match. My sister and I both love Super Mario Wonder, so this was great.
The next mode that we tried was Swing Mode, where you use a Joy-Con for motion controls. I don’t like motion controls at all and here, I especially felt like I was just waving around the Joy-Con and the game was mostly playing itself. We both agreed that the motion controls here were better than Wii Sports, but that’s about it. Neither of us thought that was fun, but I think this might be enjoyable for younger or older players who aren’t used to a typical controller. We also tried GameShare, which mostly worked. The quality on her Switch 2 joining my GameShare wasn’t very good. I think this might be a fun way to share a Switch 2 game with an owner of an original Switch, but this game is at its best when it’s split screen.
The most fun that we had in Mario Tennis Fever was playing standard games of tennis with the Fever Rackets. Everything else, though I’ll admit the Wonder Court matches were fun, felt unnecessary.
There’s great games of tennis here, but so much of this is fluff and that it makes it hard to justify the $70 price tag unless you really enjoy tennis or have people who want to play it with you. It’s frustrating because the core game is outstanding, but Kirby Air Ridersshould’ve established a standard for the breadth of content that should be in $70 games. Even Mario Kart World at $80 feels like a better value with its focus on racing. If Nintendo would’ve scrapped the Adventure mode and added more characters to unlock just by playing tennis, then this would be easier to recommend.
So who’s this game for? The Switch 2 library has far more essential multiplayer titles like Mario Kart World and Kirby Air Riders. If you don’t like those titles, then this might be for you. If you have younger kids or older adults in your life who might be put off by more complex controls, then the motion controls here are very enjoyable but you might not get much time and depth out of them. If you love the Mario Tennis series in general and just want a great game of tennis, then this is an easy recommendation despite the single player mode being shallow.
Mario Tennis Fever, at its core, is a great game of tennis. Features this time around add a lot more to the core game than previous titles, and both the online and local multiplayer modes are pretty great. Unfortunately, the lack of quality content makes this hard to recommend to everyone.
Mario Tennis Fever, at its core, is a great game of tennis. Features this time around add a lot more to the core game than previous titles, and both the online and local multiplayer modes are pretty great. Unfortunately, the lack of quality content makes this hard to recommend to everyone.
Before we get into the different game modes in Mario Tennis Fever, let’s talk about the biggest gameplay change, the Fever Rackets. Each Fever Racket has a different power. For example the Flame Racket will scatter flames across the court where the ball bounces, the Fire Bar Racket creates a Fire Bar, and the Ghost Racket makes the player and balls invisible. This can make the game very difficult for the opposing player when balls bounce into areas of the court with hazards. The Ghost Racket in particular has the chance to become the Blue Shell of Mario Tennis since it’s downright infuriating trying to figure out where the ball went. You can play without the Fever Rackets, but it’s a lot more fun to play with them.
Looking at single player modes, Adventure is the main mode. In this campaign, Mario, Luigi, Wario, and Waluigi have been turned into babies on a quest to find magical fruit that can cure a sick Princess Daisy. To get back to normal, the crew has to go to the Mushroom Tennis Academy. It’s a glorified tutorial at best, but the more you play it the more you can unlock different rackets. The baby characters are fine. I don’t have any strong opinions about them one way or another.
Next up are Tournaments, which are bracketed tennis matches with various difficulties. The difficulty here is actually pretty challenging and makes this my favorite of the single player mode.
Then you have Trial Towers, where you clear different challenges. Again, this is a fun single player mode where you have some tasks to accomplish in addition to playing tennis, and doing so unlocks different characters and items.
None of the single player modes are very substantial, but you can unlock different rackets, characters, and courts the more you play them. There’s an Achievements menu where you can see the conditions for unlocking different items, and it’s a nice quality of life feature to have so you know how far you have to go to unlock your favorite character.
One disappointing thing about the unlockables is that the character selection pales in comparison to Mario Kart World. There are different color variations you can unlock of Shy Guy, Yoshi, Koopa Troopa, and Luma, but that’s it. Gone are all the fun costumes in Mario Kart World. It feels like we went backwards when it comes to how Nintendo is leaning in more on the distinct personalities of their classic characters. This is a great looking Mario game, but it feels so low effort that we just get the bare bones when it comes to the characters here.
The online experience in Mario Tennis Fever worked really well for me. I didn’t have to wait long for matchmaking and I didn’t encounter much lag. The tennis matches I played were intense and exciting and they all played very well. We’ve come a long way since the days of Nintendo’s online multiplayer experience being bad.
Mario Tennis has always been a great couch multiplayer game, so from here on out these were the impressions I had playing local multiplayer with my. Here’s a quick runthrough of the various modes.
Ring Shot, where you hit balls through rings, was a fun local multiplayer experience and so was Forest Court Match, where Piranha Plants will pop up to intercept your shots. There’s a two-player and four-player Co-Op Ring Shot mode too, but this felt really easy for us and wasn’t particularly challenging.
In Pinball Match, in-court bumpers pop up and players and balls bounce off them, and it was more confusing than anything.
In Racket Factory Match, you hit the panels that light up on your opponent side to get rackets. I thought it was okay but it was hard to tell exactly what was going on. My favorite of the Special Matches was Wonder Court Match, where you hit the Wonder Flower and transform the match. My sister and I both love Super Mario Wonder, so this was great.
The next mode that we tried was Swing Mode, where you use a Joy-Con for motion controls. I don’t like motion controls at all and here, I especially felt like I was just waving around the Joy-Con and the game was mostly playing itself. We both agreed that the motion controls here were better than Wii Sports, but that’s about it. Neither of us thought that was fun, but I think this might be enjoyable for younger or older players who aren’t used to a typical controller. We also tried GameShare, which mostly worked. The quality on her Switch 2 joining my GameShare wasn’t very good. I think this might be a fun way to share a Switch 2 game with an owner of an original Switch, but this game is at its best when it’s split screen.
The most fun that we had in Mario Tennis Fever was playing standard games of tennis with the Fever Rackets. Everything else, though I’ll admit the Wonder Court matches were fun, felt unnecessary.
There’s great games of tennis here, but so much of this is fluff and that it makes it hard to justify the $70 price tag unless you really enjoy tennis or have people who want to play it with you. It’s frustrating because the core game is outstanding, but Kirby Air Ridersshould’ve established a standard for the breadth of content that should be in $70 games. Even Mario Kart World at $80 feels like a better value with its focus on racing. If Nintendo would’ve scrapped the Adventure mode and added more characters to unlock just by playing tennis, then this would be easier to recommend.
So who’s this game for? The Switch 2 library has far more essential multiplayer titles like Mario Kart World and Kirby Air Riders. If you don’t like those titles, then this might be for you. If you have younger kids or older adults in your life who might be put off by more complex controls, then the motion controls here are very enjoyable but you might not get much time and depth out of them. If you love the Mario Tennis series in general and just want a great game of tennis, then this is an easy recommendation despite the single player mode being shallow.
by Kayla Merritt
