Mario Tennis Fever Review

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Fast Facts

Serving Up Something New

Originally announced back in September 2025, we finally have the arrival of the third Switch 2 Exclusive Nintendo game Mario Tennis Fever. When it comes to Mario based sports games they have a long pedigree across Nintendo’s modern era of consoles. Since 2000 they are typically games that Nintendo outsource to one or two trusted developers. When it comes to Golf and Tennis this always falls squarely in the Lap of Camelot.

As a developer they’ve always felt dedicated to layering deep, rich RPG elements into the story of its sports games. Mario Tennis Fever although a little lighter in this space than usual still packs a little chaos and a little more fun than you could ever truly ask for from a sports simulator.

An Ace?

There are an abundance of game modes on offer, with the initial Adventure mode providing the perfect starting point. This 4 hour long RPG follows our daring protagonists Mario and Luigi, as they travel to a remote island in search of a magical golden fruit. A fruit that is rumoured to be the cure for Princess Daisy who has taken ill.

Upon discovering this fruit, a mysterious monster transforms them both (and our usual antagonist duo of the W kind) into babies. They manage to escape this island on their sky ship and arrive at the most obvious refuge for new babies, The Mushroom Tennis Academy!

A Grand Slam

The next 4 hours are a combination of RPG story elements, Mario Party like mini-games and a deeply layered tutorial that teaches you everything there is to be an excellent tennis player. I found this really enjoyable, light hearted fun. Honestly it felt like a better Mario Party game than Mario Party, even if all of life’s solutions seem to be to fix it with a game of tennis.

Once the Adventure has met its conclusion you have the opportunity to explore both Single and Double Tournaments, as well as a Trial based activity called Trial Towers. All of these game modes get steadily more complex. The AI is excellent, and although absolutely conquerable if you’ve put the work in to build your skills it always feels a little challenging on the most difficult modes.

A Perfect Match

The flagship addition to this particular Mario Tennis game of course is the Fever Racquets. These are a huge variety to unlock, and as you build up your special meter you can get to a point where you can use a special move that corresponds with the elemental powers equipped. For example, there are Ice, Fire, Ink, Electric and multitude of other racquets available. If you launch an Ice shot across to your opponent it will leave a slippery ice rink on their side of the court.

Each player also has a life gauge, so they may miss the returning shot, but also it could affect their health bar. If you lower a players health bar all the way down in single player, they will become sluggish on court whilst in cooldown, and if the same happens in doubles the player actually has to sit out for 10 seconds.

Rallying The Troops

What’s clever with this addition, is there remains elements of risk/reward in utilising Fever racquets, as if a player returns a fever shot on the volley they are also returning the elemental impact to your side of the court, so the precision and aim of your strike is crucial to be successful.

With four players on the court, each with their own Fever Racquet things can get incredibly chaotic. There are a couple of insanely overpowered fever shots. With ink splatters on screen, gloopy mud that poisons and slippery bananas that can drop all over both sides of the court the game can become less about tennis and more about survival.

No Strings Attached

The game is packed to the rafters with options of customisation, with 38 different unlockable players from across the world of Mario, 30 different fever racquets and 14 different court surfaces. It rewards your play time with unlocks, and encourages social play with online options as well as gameshare.

Graphically the game is stunning, textures are razor sharp and colours vibrant. For me similarly to Donkey Kong Bananza it’s a game that excels through its independence from the original Nintendo Switch. Nothings holding back the performance in its development and it truly shows. There are a mixture in cutscenes with fully voiced elements, as well as text based story developments and I loved the levels of comedy and humour included in the narrative.

Sharing The Experience

Where things have become a little more frustrating for me, is poor matchmaking and server issues in Online play. I have almost entirely abandoned trying to play online as I’m often sat waiting for 5 minutes with a loading screen and then an error screen. Hopefully this can be patched and resolved as I’m super keen to try my skills out against the best.

Locally however I think Mario Tennis Fever will firmly take up the mantle alongside Mario Kart World as the best couch family play game we have. Its clever mechanics, addictive gameplay and bonkers strategic elements keep bringing me back and the family to play more and more.

Rapid Reviews Rating

4 out of 5

4

Mario Tennis Fever is available to purchase from the eShop here