Mario Tennis Fever Leans Way Harder on the ’Mario’ than the ‘Tennis’

Pickleball may be slowly taking over tennis courts across the country, but in the Mushroom Kingdom, tennis is still on top, as hundreds of Toads and Koopas flock to sold-out stadiums to watch Mario and friends compete in the superior sport. As a lifelong tennis player and Mario fan (who is only slightly bitter that my favorite local court is now covered with obnoxious, highlighter-yellow tape denoting pickleball lines), I’ve always been drawn to the crossover between these two passions of mine, so I was very excited to check out a few short matches of Mario Tennis Fever at a Switch 2 preview event last week.

I led off discussing the crowd because that was one of the first things I noticed when my character (cursed newcomer Baby Waluigi, of course), trotted out to the court. The fans in the stands look fantastic, with fully detailed character models who react to the match by intensely following the ball as it’s rallied back and forth. Fever is a noticeable visual improvement from its predecessor, 2018’s Mario Tennis Aces on the original Switch, and that was immediately apparent when looking at background features like the spectators, or the more nicely detailed character models with improved texture on clothing and more lively facial features, including the far more expressive Donkey Kong redesign as seen in Donkey Kong Bananza and Mario Kart World. It’s nice to see developer Camelot’s Switch 2 debut looking so clean, especially after 2021’s Mario Golf: Super Rush was downright ugly at times.

The last couple generations of Mario sports games have seemed rushed – or even unfinished. The Wii U’s Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash was one of the most barebones games Nintendo has ever shipped. While Aces was certainly a more finished product, it still took years of updates to reach the amount of content many people thought it should’ve had at launch, and basically identical complaints were lobbed at Super Rush when it was released. So all eyes have been on Fever to see if it can break the trend of Mario sports games launching with an underwhelming amount of stuff to do, and based on my time with it so far, I think Camelot heard the criticism and packed Fever with the most content and variety we’ve potentially ever seen in a Mario Tennis game. I’m just hoping all the shiny new toys don’t water down the core tennis gameplay too much.

I’ve Got a Fever, and the Only Cure Is More Rackets

Much of that variety comes from the new Fever Rackets, this entry’s core mechanic that hugely transforms the way each point plays out. There are 30 to choose from, each with a special ability that can be unleashed when your Fever Gauge is full. There’s a Bullet Bill racket that transforms the ball into the recognizable missile and blasts over the net at high speed, or the Lightning Racket that summons damaging bolts of electricity to your opponent’s side of the court.

The Fever Rackets add a lot of Mario Kart or Party seasoning to the classic tennis gameplay, and it was a lot of fun to pick a different power each time to see which one worked the best. They aren’t carefully competitively balanced: the Chargin’ Chuck racket that morphed the tennis ball into a football moved so slowly that it appeared to help my opponent more than it helped me, while the Bullet Bill shot moved so fast that deploying it usually resulted in an instant win. I only played a handful of matches in total, so there’s obviously lots of nuance to uncover with each racket type, but I think there are definitely a few that will emerge as early favorites online.

What’s really cool is that there’s a built-in mechanic that works to even the playing field even if the powers themselves are unbalanced. When someone launches a Fever Shot, it only activates in most cases when the ball hits the ground, leading to a tense back-and-forth volley where you do everything in your power to hit the ball before it bounces, like one instance where my opponent and I must have hit a wicked fast Bullet Bill back and forth at least 10 times before it finally hit the ground. This means you can turn the tables on your opponent and launch their self-selected ability back at them, and I really love the added risk-reward wrinkle you have to consider when choosing your Fever Racket.

Getting hit by an effect like lightning or fire lowers your HP, and when it hits zero, either your movement speed is reduced (in singles) or you have to sit on the sidelines until you recover (in doubles), giving your opponent a huge opportunity to win the point. Health bar management in a tennis game is a neat idea in how it gives you more to keep track of during the match, but it leads to one of my biggest concerns so far, which is how the presence of Fever Rackets completely dominates the point-to-point action. The gauge charges up quickly enough that at least one player activates it pretty much every single rally, and the effects are so impactful that they usually have a hand in deciding who wins the point. It was almost like a waiting game of hitting the ball back and forth until someone had their Fever Shot ready, and then the point would truly begin. It’s still fun, but as someone who loved the competitive nature of Aces that resembled a fighting game at times, the more party-focused approach here is going to take some getting used to.

Mid-Range Floaters

In line with that party game approach, the tennis mechanics themselves felt somewhat simplified compared to prior entries, likely to keep things manageable due to the added chaos Fever Rackets bring. Serves, returns, and lobs are slower and floatier than Aces, and it felt harder to put shots away on pure tennis skill alone. Again, I’ll need to sink a lot of time into the full game to see if those feelings stick, but so far, Fever succeeds far more as a party game than a tennis game, which I’m honestly fairly mixed on. In doubles, for example, four different Fever abilities constantly in play was just too chaotic for my liking, with fire bars, banana peels, ink, and more completely obscuring the court. While I didn’t get to try it myself, it appears you can play without Fever Rackets as an option too if you’re looking for more classic tennis competition.

And, I did enjoy several parts of the tennis itself. Each character in Fever’s huge roster of 38 choices still has their own strengths and weaknesses, like Boo’s aggressive backspin that can catch opponents off guard. There are also different types of tennis balls to select before the match begins, including a higher speed ball that leads to slightly more competitive matches than the standard one. And if getting drilled in the face with the ball wasn’t embarrassing enough in past games, body shots deal damage now, adding even more insult to injury.

The biggest remaining questions surround Fever’s single-player content, like its adventure mode and challenge tower that will hopefully provide plenty to do. I wasn’t allowed to check out those modes, but I did get to play on the Super Mario Bros. Wonder-inspired Wonder Court, which was another great sign for the amount of variety Fever has in store. Here, we were competing to earn the most Wonder Seeds, which could be won through either standard tennis points, or by scoring during the Wonder Effect that took over halfway through the match. This time, Wonder’s iconic singing Piranha Plants marched onto the court, and you could add to your total by hitting the ball at them to expose the seeds they were protecting, and then hitting the seeds to score. This was really fun, and a highlight of my demo, as it was a great blend of Mario flair and more focused tennis aiming and skill that I look for in this series.

It won’t be long until we see how the rest of Mario Tennis Fever shakes out when it comes to Nintendo Switch 2 on February 12. Fever was just one game I saw during an extended preview event last week, be sure to check out my impressions of Resident Evil Requiem and Pragmata on Switch 2, the ridiculously great Virtual Boy accessory for Switch and Switch 2, and why I’m tired of Nintendo Switch 2 Editions after playing Super Mario Bros. Wonder’s new content.

Logan Plant is the host of Nintendo Voice Chat and IGN’s Database Manager & Playlist Editor. The Legend of Zelda is his favorite video game franchise of all time, and he is patiently awaiting the day Nintendo announces a brand new F-Zero. You can find new episodes of NVC every Friday on the IGN Games YouTube channel, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app.