Mario Tennis Fever review: a bright, high-energy tennis sim

Mario Tennis Fever is aptly named. In parts, it really does feel like a fever dream. This is a brand new iteration in the long-running Mario Tennis series that spices things up with wild, creative ideas and gameplay mechanics.

At its core, it’s a bright, cartoon-ish tennis simulator with opportunities to begin and perfect rallies, eventually winning sets with fast movement and quick thinking.

But there are added layers to make this more than your average tennis game.

Mario Tennis Fever isn’t afraid to get weird

Inspired by Super Mario Bros. Wonder, this game leans into the weird and wonderful, reimagining tennis through a variety of modes, seemingly dreamed up in a limitless brainstorming session.

You can play a normal game of tennis, in singles and doubles.

You can also play matches where the goal is to obtain Wonder Seeds. Once you gather enough, you unleash pseudo-hallucinations onto the battlefield. Pipes spring up in place of nets. The world gets woozy. You begin to question your existence. Still, you play tennis.

You’ll also find a mode where the overarching goal is to shoot balls through hoops, gathering points for victory, and another where you can unlock a falling cascade of rackets.

Unlocking each and every new Fever Racket – new, magical rackets with special abilities, found in all modes – is a joy, because they all unleash some new horror on the battlefield. Players and balls turning invisible, racket hits unleashing Bullet Bills and storm clouds, and plenty more besides. As you play through matches, you’ll unlock new varieties, all of which contribute to wild competitive matches.

There’s a real variety in these matches, thanks to the mix of modes and the number of unlockable Fever Rackets. Sometimes, you’ll win or lose because you can perfect an array of high-speed moves. Sometimes, you’ll win because you’ve turned your ball into a lava missile, and your opponents are too busy being burned on the bum to return your serve.

In Adventure Mode, sometimes victory arrives because you’re a very clever, absurdly strong baby.

Adventure Mode is clever – and bizarre

Adventure Mode is where Mario Tennis Fever gets really weird, taking tennis gameplay and weaving it into a bizarre, world-charting story about Mario, Luigi, Waluigi and Wario accidentally being turned into babies, thanks to a mysterious magic.

Suddenly without their adult strength and abilities, they must begin their tennis journey anew, re-learning their skills by taking part in off-kilter mini-games, before heading off in a skyship to find the cure for their condition.

The first steps of this adventure are, unfortunately, fairly mind-numbing. You enter a tennis academy, and must learn each shot from scratch – even if you’ve already spent hours perfecting your swings in matches against NPCs and other players.

Over the course of a few hours, you’ll interrogate slices and lobs, heading into practice rounds with Toads and mechanical Piranha Plants, answer quizzes and, eventually, regain your strength – although you’ll still be in Baby Mario form.

Armed with knowledge, and buoyed by a dogged persistence, you’ll eventually move from routine matches to more impressive skirmishes against actual enemies.

In the later stages, the game cleverly uses its tennis gameplay to pit players against fire (shoot the water balloon at the flame) and at towering enemies like King Hissocrat, the giant snake. You’ll also face off with Bowser’s Airship, using your tennis balls to clog up its cannons.

There are novel implementations of tennis gameplay here, with neat challenges developed by manipulating the rally system. While it’s all just tennis, in the end, Adventure Mode does a great job convincing you otherwise, providing alternative takes on gameplay to spice up your matches, while still relying on your earned skills.

Just enough variety to keep gameplay fresh

Mario Tennis Fever is a strange little smorgasbord of cool ideas, weaved together in interesting ways. In any game like this, the primary concern is always going to be replayability: how long it stays fresh and whether it encourages you to keep playing, long-term.

Mario Tennis Fever manages to hold interest well, with a robust Adventure Mode to break up rounds of matches, and dozens of Fever Rackets that make every match feel different. The variety is a great way to disrupt the repetition, as no two matches play out the same, and it means there’s plenty to discover as you strengthen your skills.

As a solid tennis simulator, with layers of novelty to differentiate it from its nearest competitors and plenty of unique modes to conquer, Mario Tennis Fever is an absolute racket. While odd in parts, it remains charming and bright-eyed throughout its many rounds.

_{A copy of Mario Tennis Fever for Nintendo Switch 2 was provided by the publisher for the purposes of this review.}

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