Mario Tennis Fever has to serve up a smash to undo the damage done to the series
2026 preview: Recent Mario Tennis games have failed to live up to the series’ high standards
As anyone playing since the GameCube and Game Boy Advance days will tell you, there was a time when Mario sports games were guaranteed quality.
These days they’re more of a mixed bag, most notably when it comes to the Mario Tennis series, which in recent years has delivered some half-decent offerings and suffered one notably dismal low point.
I say “recent years”, but for the sake of my mental well-being as I pretend my bones aren’t turning to dust, let’s pretend Mario Tennis Open on the 3DS wasn’t released 13 years ago.
That did a great job with online multiplayer and character customisation – most notably the ability to unlock a bunch of fun outfits for your Mii – but stumbled with the gameplay, putting more of a focus on powerful Chance Shots.
Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash on the Wii U was perhaps one of the most disappointing Mario sports games ever, with a bare bones presentation, barely any modes and a game-breaking Mega Mushroom mechanic.
The most recent in the series was Mario Tennis Aces, which was released seven years ago and did a better job than the 3DS and Wii U games, serving (ahem) some quality multiplayer gameplay. Its only let-down was Adventure Mode, which promised to deliver a great solo Mario Tennis experience for the first time since the glory days of the RPG-like Story mode in Mario Tennis: Power Tour on GBA, but ended up being disappointingly short.
Developer Camelot will be hoping to finally nail the formula with Mario Tennis Fever – the ninth Mario Tennis game – which is set to release on February 12 as a Switch 2 exclusive. While I’ve been burned enough times to know not to buy too much into the hype, so far the signs are positive.
For starters, there’s a Story mode in here again, and it has the potential to be more involving this time. Mario and his friends are transformed into their baby forms by a bunch of monsters, so they have to learn all their tennis skills from scratch again if they want to defeat the monsters and return to their adult forms.
Given that the idea of ‘learning from scratch’ could cover anything from a sprawling 20-hour grind to an hour-long tutorial, I remain curious to see what form the Story mode will take in Mario Tennis Fever. With any luck, though, Camelot will have listened to the feedback bemoaning how short it was in Mario Tennis Aces, and will deliver a lengthier adventure this time.
“Mario and his friends are transformed into their baby forms by a bunch of monsters, so they have to learn all their tennis skills from scratch again”
Other aspects of the game appear more likely to be a success. Nintendo has confirmed that Fever will feature 38 playable characters, which is the most in any Mario Tennis game to date, and not even having the annoying talking flowers from Super Mario Bros Wonder in there is going to dampen the party atmosphere such a large roster commands.
Camelot is also attempting to mix up the gameplay with Fever Rackets, a collection of 30 different rackets which each have their own special powers that can be activated by building up a Fever Gauge. Using the Bullet Bill Racket, for example, turns the ball into a Bullet Bill when you hit it, making for an extremely fast and straight shot.
There are still so many variables – the stroke mechanics, the variety of courts, how easily exploitable certain Fever Rackets are online – that will determine whether Mario Tennis Fever is an ace or a net fault, but based on what’s been shown so far this has all the potential to be great as long as Camelot – if you’ll allow one more tennis metaphor – doesn’t drop the ball.
