Mario Tennis Fever - Review
Mario playing sports is nothing new to the world. Mario has teed off in golf, dunked basketballs, hit home-runs in baseball, and even competed at the Olympic Games. While we’ve never seen the plumber with the ‘stache up against the best athletes in the world, the Mario crew have definitely showcased some serious sporting skills over the years.
Now Mario and friends are back on the court in Mario Tennis Fever, this time with a number of new fancy racquets called Fever Racquets. Designed to pull tricks on your opponents, these racquets all come with a single special ability, such as setting the court on fire, freezing the ground, summoning a clone of the racquet holder and more. It was a lot of fun to experiment with which characters work with what racquet the best.
The number of characters in the game is massive. You can play as any of 38 different characters from the Mario universe. Some new faces to Mario Tennis games include Goomba, Nabbit, Piranha Plant and Baby Wario. My favourite character who is also totally new is Baby Waluigi. There are a lot of characters you need to unlock, but it is worth the effort.
Baby Waluigi and Wario star in Adventure Mode. This mode is designed to give the game a story. Princess Daisy has fallen really ill, so Mario and Luigi go off to a remote island with the help of Wario and Waluigi to get some golden fruit to cure Daisy’s illness. Of course, Wario and Waluigi are there to steal treasure instead, and end up accidentally cursing themselves and the Mario Bros. to be babies.
In a strange twist, the only way for the babies to return to their adult selves is to build their tennis playing skills. As you go through the adventure, you can level up and build your skills so you can eventually be a super powered tennis toddler. The annoying part of Adventure Mode is that if you already know how to play Mario Tennis, the mode keeps pretending like you don’t, and keeps teaching you things that you already know.
Other areas of the game include a number of fun new ways to play tennis. There’s a Waluigi Pinball court that keeps pulling out pinball machine parts for you to watch out for, and the Wonder Court has you collecting Wonder Seeds from Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and then producing special Wonder effects to keep you on your toes.
You can also play in challenge towers that have you completing ten challenges in a row, if you fail three times, you need to try the whole tower again. There are special rules you can have in your tennis matches as well, such as Ring Shot mode, where aiming for the rings gets you points.
If you don’t like sitting down to play, Nintendo included a Swing Mode which lets you swing your Joy-Cons instead of pressing buttons to play. If you have a friend or family member who has a Switch, you can use GameShare to send a version of the game to their console and play it multiplayer that way.
Mario Tennis Fever is a fantastic looking game, whether in handheld mode or docked to your TV, the colours shine brightly and the characters and courts look amazing. The soundtrack is packed with catchy tunes that add to the whole game.
Mario Tennis is back in a big way. While the Adventure Mode is a bit of a let-down, the rest of the game is a lot of fun, especially with friends. This one is definitely worth a serve.
The Score
8.0
Review code provided by Nintendo
The Pros
Tennis gameplay is tremendous
Fever racquets are a cool addition
So many fun ways to play tennis
The Cons
Adventure Mode is a bore
Not as fun playing solo
