Mario has been playing tennis for 30 years, since the headache-inducing Mario's Tennis on the Virtual Boy. The most recent entry before this was Mario Tennis Aces on the Switch, which earned a reputation for surprising complexity. Mario Tennis Fever deliberately pivots away from that complexity, lowering the entry barrier while layering in enough depth to keep dedicated players occupied. At £58.99, it sits squarely in the premium Nintendo release tier and broadly justifies the price. The mode selection is the first thing that impresses. One-off matches with up to three other players or NPCs, structured singles or doubles tournaments, and the standout Mix It Up mode — which includes Forest Court (piranha plants gobble balls that get close), Pinball (bumpers and barriers mid-play), and Trial Towers, a tower of increasingly tough challenges where failing more than three times sends you back to the beginning. That last one is, as the reviewer puts it, Mario Tennis: The Roguelike — and it works. The weakest offering is Adventure mode, a four-hour tutorial that transforms Mario and Luigi into babies relearning their moves to save Princess Daisy. It's structurally similar to the Tennis Academy story mode from Mario Tennis on the Game Boy Color, teaches the shot range through minichallenges, and lets you level up Mario and unlock characters — but the narrative is thin and the grind is real. The core mechanics are clean. Top spin, flat and slice shots occupy different buttons; two-press combos produce lobs and drop shots. Timing is the skill axis: hitting your serve at the ball's peak, pressing early on returns to add pace. Double-tapping the topspin button trades directional accuracy for power. The reviewer notes a 'lovely smooth feel to rallies' and the game's ability to make you read opponent movement even when facing an ape or a giant man-eating plant — which is a sentence that only makes sense in this franchise. The central innovation is the fever racket system. Each unlockable racket carries a unique special move that charges as a rally progresses. Effects include setting fire to the opponent's side of the court, covering it in bananas to cause slipping, or adding 'mind-bending swerve' to your shot. The design twist is the reversal mechanic: if your opponent returns the ball before it bounces and you fail to do the same, the effect flips back against you. This creates frantic net battles and is the kind of elegant asymmetric risk design Nintendo does better than almost anyone. The explicit comparison is to Mario Kart's shells, lightning strikes and ink blots — the design philosophy is the same: level the playing field for those falling behind, keep matches competitive, preserve the social contract of multiplayer. The game's honest best-case scenario is a room full of friends. Online play exists in ranked and friendly flavours, but local multiplayer is where the chaos compounds properly. The reviewer's verdict is that the game 'exudes childlike charm while hiding layers of depth beneath its chaotic exterior' — hours of practice are available for those who want to master drop shot timing, spin mechanics and fever racket selection. That's the Nintendo sports formula at its most refined: a five-minute learning curve and a several-hundred-hour ceiling, with the floor and ceiling both genuinely accessible.
