Mario Tennis Fever Review – Switch 2’s First Great Sports Game

Mario Tennis has been stuck in a rut since the GameCube era. The Wii U entry was forgotten before it launched, and 2018’s Aces was a solid foundation undermined by thin content. Now Mario Tennis Fever arrives as an early showcase for the Nintendo Switch 2, promising to recapture what made Power Tour on GBA one of the best sports RPGs ever made. At $69.99 with 38 playable characters and a new Fever Racket system, here’s our verdict on whether this is the Mario Tennis comeback fans have been waiting for — or an overpriced warm-up volley.

If you’re just getting started with your Switch 2, make sure to check out our Switch 2 setup guide to get everything configured before jumping in. You can also see the full list of confirmed Switch 2 games to plan your library.

The Fever Racket System: More Than a Gimmick

Nintendo’s headline feature is the Fever Racket, and it’s the best mechanical addition to Mario Tennis in years. As you rally, a Fever Gauge builds. Once filled, your next shot becomes a Fever Shot — a powerful, character-specific super move that’s harder to return and can shift momentum in a single swing. Peach’s Fever Shot curves with exaggerated top-spin that nearly reverses direction mid-flight. Bowser’s is a flat cannonball that knocks opponents back on their court. Waluigi’s — naturally — is the most obnoxious, a drop shot that barely crosses the net with deceptive spin.

What makes the system work is that Fever Shots aren’t automatic wins. A well-timed return can counter them, and building meter requires consistent rallying rather than defensive play. This creates a risk-reward loop: do you play it safe and build meter slowly, or go aggressive to end the point before your opponent reaches Fever? In multiplayer, this tension elevates every rally beyond the simple back-and-forth of previous Mario Tennis games.

38 Characters, Meaningful Differences

The 38-character roster is the largest in series history, and Nintendo deserves credit for making each character play differently. Characters are divided into six playstyle categories — All-Around, Technical, Speed, Power, Tricky, and Defensive — but individual characters within each category have distinct stats and Fever Shot types that create real variety.

Rosalina (Technical) uses a Luma-assisted shot that bounces at irregular angles. Diddy Kong (Speed) has the fastest court coverage but the weakest power, rewarding precise placement over brute force. Chain Chomp (Power) — yes, Chain Chomp is playable — hits the hardest ball in the game but moves so slowly that any angled return is almost unreachable. The roster balancing isn’t perfect (some Tricky characters feel outclassed by Technical ones at high-level play), but the variety is genuinely impressive for a sports game.

Adventure Mode: Promising Start, Disappointing Finish

This is where the cracks show. Mario Tennis Fever’s Adventure Mode was marketed as a return to the RPG-lite structure of Power Tour, with a story mode where you level up a custom Mii character through a tennis academy. In practice, it’s a 3-6 hour guided tutorial that teaches you game mechanics through a thin narrative about joining a tennis academy and eventually challenging the tennis masters.

The mode has its moments. Mini-games that task you with hitting targets while navigating obstacle-filled courts are genuinely fun, and boss encounters against oversized enemies (a tennis match against a giant Piranha Plant is a highlight) add spectacle. But the mode ends abruptly just as it feels like it should be opening up. There’s no post-game challenge, no new-game-plus, no reason to replay. CBR’s comparison to “GameCube glory days” was generous; Kotaku’s “definition of a meh video game” assessment, while harsh, isn’t entirely wrong about the Adventure Mode specifically.

Online Play: Fun When It Works

Online multiplayer is where Mario Tennis Fever will live or die, and the results are inconsistent. When connections are good, the gameplay sings — quick matches, ranked ladders, and tournament brackets give competitive players structure. The day-1 patch (v1.0.1) improved matchmaking speed and addressed some connection stability issues.

However, lag remains a significant problem. Tennis games demand precise timing, and even minor latency turns the satisfying rally-and-counter gameplay into a guessing game. There’s no way to block or report players with consistently poor connections, so you’ll repeatedly match against opponents whose lag makes the game functionally unplayable. Nintendo’s historically weak online infrastructure is the bottleneck here, and no amount of game-side optimization can fully compensate for it.

The $70 Question

Let’s not dance around it: $69.99 is a lot to ask for Mario Tennis Fever’s content package. The Adventure Mode is short and shallow, the character roster — while excellent — is somewhat offset by the fact that several characters feel like minor variations of others, and the online experience is compromised by lag issues. Compare this to something like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which launched at the same price with a massive track roster, robust battle mode, and years of DLC content that expanded it further.

What’s here is polished. The Fever Racket system genuinely improves the core tennis gameplay, the presentation is gorgeous (Switch 2 running Mario Tennis at 60fps with detailed court environments looks fantastic), and local multiplayer remains the definitive way to play. But “polished and fun” doesn’t automatically justify $70, especially when the single-player content can be exhausted in an afternoon.