Mario Tennis Fever is stressful. So, so very stressful. In Free Play, you’d expect a lush time playing tennis, swinging rackets, and rallying for glory. But with this game’s unique mix of super-powered rackets and high-speed volleys, you’ll be fighting for your life on that court. When victory comes, you’ll have earned it.
Thanks to Nintendo, ScreenHub recently went hands-on with this upcoming tennis simulator, and came away wind-blown and exhausted. Our preview made clear you’ll need to be on the ball and on the ball with Tennis Fever.
Mario Tennis Fever preview – quick links
A variety of options lend strong replayability to Mario Tennis Fever
Entering rounds of gameplay, you’ll pick from an array of popular Mario characters, as well as some deeper cuts – like Dry Bowser, Chain Chomp, Petey, and Boom Boom. What’s more important in this array is which rackets you equip, as each has a special ability that completely changes the game, and shakes up strategy on the court.
These ‘Fever Rackets’ really are a lovely bunch. It’s hard to pick a favourite, but there’s plenty worth shouting about.
There’s the Bullet Bill Racket, which transforms the ball into a raging, fast-moving Bullet Bill projectile for several swings. There’s the Pokey Racket, which spawns a spiked Pokey enemy that gets in the way as you swing. There’s the Ghost Racket – perhaps the most annoying of the bunch – which temporarily turns you invisible (and sometimes, the ball) making it very difficult to hit back.
Both the Fire Flower and Volcano Rackets cause chaos, with these unleashing fireballs and lava you must avoid while running around the court. The Ice Flower Racket unleashes a big patch of ice that makes the ground slippery. The Tornado Racket causes a wind storm that sends you flying. A Banana Racket, when used effectively, will throw slippery bananas across the court.
I can imagine these Fever Rackets being dreamed up in a wild brainstorming session where nothing was off the table. Why shouldn’t players turn invisible? Why shouldn’t bananas spawn from a well-placed shot? It’s all good fun, and keeps Mario Tennis Fever fresh across rounds, in a way that encourages return play.
The chaos really gets started when you enter doubles mode with unique Fever Rackets, as they all create some sort of chaos that must be avoided. Imagine you’re trying to play tennis in the real world, and suddenly you’re dealing with a tornado, a fire storm, and someone’s trying to shoot at you, and you’re being haunted by a ghost. That’s how Mario Tennis Fever goes.
Using motion controls in Mario Tennis Fever
What adds to the chaos in Mario Tennis Fever is the option to turn on motion controls. In standard play, you can engage with smooth, intuitive button-based controls that let you fly across courts, slamming balls as long as you have the wherewithal to follow their (often flaming) path across your screen.
Switch over to motion controls, and you can relive the glory days of the Nintendo Wii, using swings of all sorts to guide your racket, and slam balls over the net again, and again – until you find an opening, or your opponent fumbles.
It’s an arm workout, and entirely chaotic when you’re in doubles mode, attempting not to accidentally hit your comrade – but the thrill and danger adds to the drama, and you’ll feel any motion-controlled victory in your soul.
Depending on how you swing your racket, you’ll end up with a topspin, or a curve, or a power-smash, with the combination of all of these required to shake up your tennis battles, and smooth your path to victory. In practice, what results is you flinging your arms wildly to get the desired effect – and while it looks silly from the outside, it’s silly and satisfying inside.
Let go of your inhibitions, and you can unleash your inner tennis beast.
Adventure Mode is a curiosity
Beyond having access to Free Play mode with single player and multiplayer options, our preview of Mario Tennis Fever also included the first snippet of Adventure Mode. So far, it’s proved to be entirely bizarre, and while slow-moving at first, there’s certainly potential in this mode being a headliner.
That’s largely because the core concept is wonderfully strange.
See, Princess Daisy is sick, and it’s up to the Mario crew to travel to a strange island to rescue a fruit that will cure her. When they get to the island, they’re attacked by ghostly spirits and transformed into babies. Lacking any sort of upper strength, they’re now terrible at tennis.
So, you need to set about fixing the problem… by making your babies incredibly swole.
To kick off Adventure Mode, your primary job is to strengthen Baby Mario, by participating in all sorts of activities – and not just tennis. You’ll need to stomp through ball-catching mini-games, aeroplane-flying games, and more, all of which are in service of increasing your stats, and returning to glory as a tennis champion. Baby bootcamp, if you will.
While the opening stages of this mode take it very slow, with a step-by-step process to regaining strength in all of Mario’s key tennis skills, there’s enough tongue-in-cheek banter, and sparks of more interesting ideas, to keep this mode on our radar.
Keep an eye on Mario Tennis Fever
Stomping through Adventure Mode, and playing through a half dozen matches in other modes, Mario Tennis Fever made a strong impression. This is a very stylised version of tennis, with its primary quirks providing reasons for even non-sports game fans to pay attention.
While Adventure Mode remains a curiosity, and its baby-starring story seems like a wild choice, it may prove to be a shining light of this game.
Sometimes the weirdest ideas are the best ones, and that seems to be the clear thought backing Mario Tennis Fever, overall. We look forward to seeing just how weird the game gets when it launches for Nintendo Switch 2 on 12 February.
Nintendo provided flights for ScreenHub to attend a hands-on preview including Mario Tennis Fever and other upcoming games.
