TL;DR: Fantastic couch and online multiplayer, wildly fun Fever Rackets, huge roster, but a dull, forgettable Adventure mode keeps Mario Tennis Fever from being a full-on ace.

There’s a very specific feeling I get when I boot up a Mario sports game and immediately start grinning like it’s 2004 again. It’s the same low-grade joy I used to feel dragging a GameCube across the house to a friend’s basement, arguing about character picks before the TV even finished warming up. Mario Tennis Fever taps directly into that muscle memory. Not subtly, either. This thing doesn’t just nod to the past, it sprints at it screaming, racquet raised, ready to cause problems.

After a couple dozen hours with Fever, I keep circling back to the same thought: this is the most complete Mario Tennis has felt at launch in a very long time, and also one of the most frustratingly uneven. When it works, it’s pure couch chaos bliss. When it doesn’t, it feels like the series once again forgot how to make a compelling solo experience. That contradiction defines almost every rally, menu, and mode here.

The heart of Mario Tennis Fever is, unsurprisingly, the Fever Rackets. These things are absolute nonsense in the best and worst ways. Each racket comes with its own special ability that can fundamentally rewrite how a point plays out. One minute I’m setting up a careful baseline exchange, the next I’ve summoned a rotating fire bar that looks like it escaped directly from an NES cartridge and is now squatting on my opponent’s side of the court. I’ve inked the screen, iced half the floor, littered banana peels everywhere like a OSHA violation waiting to happen, and accidentally nuked my own doubles partner in the process.

And here’s the thing: I love it. Experimenting with Fever Rackets is easily the most fun I’ve had in a Mario Tennis game since the GameCube era. They add a layer of mind games that goes beyond just shot placement. You start thinking two or three beats ahead. If I drop an ice patch in the back corner, will they avoid it or assume I’m baiting them and overcorrect? Do I fire my Fever Shot now, or hold it and force them to play nervous? It’s tennis as psychological warfare, filtered through Mario-level absurdity.

Camelot deserves real credit for not letting these powers completely derail the game. Most offensive Fever effects don’t actually trigger until the ball hits the ground, which creates these incredible moments where both players are desperately volleying, trying to deny the bounce. Some rackets that feel busted at first, like the Bullet Bill one that turns the ball into a missile, reveal their weaknesses pretty quickly once you learn to rush the net. When two players bring the same overpowered nonsense, the result is usually a hilarious, short-lived rally that ends in a body shot and laughter.

That balance isn’t perfect, though. In doubles especially, Fever leans hard into party-game anarchy. With four abilities firing off, courts can become unreadable messes of fire, mud, and visual noise. Health bars evaporate in ways that don’t always feel earned, and sometimes you’re punished just for existing in the same zip code as a Fever Shot. It reminded me a lot of turning every item on in Smash Bros. Ultimate and accepting that fairness is no longer the point. Fever is less interested in competitive purity than Mario Tennis Aces was, and more interested in making sure everyone at the couch is yelling.

To support that madness, the actual tennis has been simplified. The game is slower and floatier, dives are more forgiving, and the courts feel slightly compressed. As someone who poured an embarrassing number of hours into Aces’ high-skill-ceiling online play, I do miss the razor-sharp intensity of that system. Perfect blocks, racket durability, and time-bending trick shots gave Aces a fighting-game edge that Fever just doesn’t chase. But I also can’t deny that Fever is far easier to sell to friends who don’t already know what a topspin charge feels like. This is worse tennis and better party tennis, and that trade-off feels very deliberate.

Despite the simplification, the fundamentals still feel great. There’s a real satisfaction in reading a shot, planting your feet, and unloading a fully charged topspin that cracks like a cartoon whip. Camelot has been refining this control scheme for decades, and it shows. The CPU can actually be threatening at higher difficulties, and the roster is enormous. Thirty-eight characters deep, each with their own stats and quirks, it’s the biggest lineup the series has ever had. Online, I kept running into Baby Waluigi menaces, but I personally fell in love with Baby Wario, whose powered-up topspin lets me dictate rallies in a way that feels quietly evil. Seeing the Donkey Kong Bananza redesigns pop up was also a nice surprise.

Visually, the characters are the clear highlight. Fabric textures, facial animations, even Mario’s increasingly detailed mustache all look fantastic. As a Switch 2 exclusive, though, Fever doesn’t exactly blow the doors off. It’s clean, colorful, and usually hits 60fps, but it doesn’t scream generational leap. I did notice some brief dips in split-screen doubles before serves, though rallies themselves stayed smooth even when the screen was exploding with Fever effects.

I was genuinely happy to see progression and unlockables tied to offline play again. Characters, courts, rackets, and costumes are earned through challenges and modes rather than being drip-fed through online requirements. That goodwill lasted right up until I started the Adventure mode.

If you’re buying Mario Tennis Fever primarily for its single-player campaign, I’m sorry in advance. Adventure mode once again feels like the series’ weakest link, and this might be the most underwhelming version yet. The setup has promise: Mario and friends get turned into babies, early cutscenes look surprisingly polished, and for a brief moment I thought Camelot might finally crack the code. Then the game locks you into an absurdly long tennis academy tutorial that treats you like you’ve never seen a controller before.

For the first chunk of this already short campaign, you slog through simplistic minigames, painfully easy matches, and endless text boxes that repeat basic concepts ad nauseam. You’re quizzed on tennis fundamentals in ways that feel almost parody-level obvious. It’s clearly aimed at very young players, which would be fine if the writing had any personality. Instead, it’s bland, instructional, and joyless. Compared to something like Golf Story, which remains the gold standard for how to build a funny, inventive sports RPG, Fever’s Adventure mode feels like a missed opportunity wrapped in a tutorial checklist.

Once you finally leave the academy, the world map opens up just long enough to remind you of Mario Tennis Aces’ campaign before abruptly ending. There are a handful of bosses and light puzzles, but shockingly few actual tennis matches. Just when it feels like it might be getting interesting, the credits are already looming.

Other solo modes fare better. Tournament mode exists, but it’s dragged down by an endlessly chatty Talking Flower announcer who comments on every single shot. It wears thin fast, and bizarrely can’t be disabled in Tournament or Adventure. Trial Towers, on the other hand, is excellent. These bite-sized challenges throw wild scenarios at you and ask you to solve them efficiently, sometimes under optional difficulty modifiers. It’s clever, satisfying, and honestly feels like a blueprint for what a future Adventure mode should be.

Multiplayer is where Fever redeems itself completely. Online play ran smoothly in my limited testing, with ranked singles and doubles both with and without Fever Rackets. Rankings reset monthly, and the structure feels familiar but functional. Locally, the flexibility is great. You can mix couch co-op with online friends, set up private lobbies, and tailor matches however you want. The various special modes are a mixed bag, some fun diversions, others tedious gimmicks, but I kept coming back to standard matches anyway. With this many characters and rackets, the core mode has enough variety to carry the experience.

Still, after about twenty hours, I felt done. Not burned out, just… satisfied. Mario Tennis Fever isn’t the kind of game that wants to live on your console for years. It’s the thing you boot up for half an hour while friends arrive, or when you need a chaotic palate cleanser between bigger games. Compared to Nintendo’s other recent multiplayer-heavy releases, it feels a little light on lasting hooks.

Verdict

Mario Tennis Fever is at its absolute best when it’s embracing chaos with friends, leaning into ridiculous Fever Rackets and accessible, satisfying tennis mechanics. It’s one of the most feature-complete entries the series has launched with, and its multiplayer moments can be genuinely hilarious. Unfortunately, the single-player Adventure mode is once again a letdown, feeling more like an overextended tutorial than a real campaign. As a party game, it’s a win. As a solo experience, it’s hard to recommend.