Mario Tennis Fever preview: Mario's sports game curse might finally be over

Mario is serving

The Nintendo Switch generation sent many long-running Nintendo series to new heights, but it wasn’t quite as kind to Mario’s athletic ambitions. Mario Tennis Aces, Mario Golf: Super Rush, and Mario Strikers: Battle League were all varying degrees of fine; each one played well enough but struggled to evolve familiar gameplay. If that’s going to change in the Switch 2 generation, Nintendo will need to come out swinging with the console’s first Mario sports game: Mario Tennis Fever.

It might just pull that overhead smash off. Ahead of its Feb. 12 launch, Polygon went hands-on with Mario Tennis Fever, trying our hands at a few singles and doubles matches. While the full scope of its content suite is still a question mark, long-time developer Camelot is poised to deliver a strong serve for its Switch 2 debut. The fundamental play of a Mario sports game hasn’t felt this good in over a decade. It will just be up to the rest of the package to keep a good volley alive.

The basics of Mario Tennis Fever aren’t all too different from previous games in the series — after all, how many ways can you really pull tennis apart? You serve, return balls, and use the face buttons to deliver special shots like lobs. The first to seven points wins. Volleys are as responsive as they should be and there’s a good sense of weight in my hands when I smack a ball with my racket. Characters also have health bars, and dropping to 0 health either slows you down in singles play or temporarily knocks you out in doubles. Everything that should be a layup for Camelot feels right.

There’s one big twist that goes a long way: Fever Shots. When you begin a round, you don’t just pick a character with their own stats, but also a racket. Each one has its own unique Fever Shot that can be activated at any time during a match when a chunk of your Fever meter is full. They aren’t just strong shots that are hard to counter; they can seriously change the game. The Mini Mushroom Racket’s Fever Shot spawns three Mini Mushrooms on your opponents’ side of the court, and it will shrink whoever touches them. The Banana Racket spawns slippery banana peels, the Mud Racket leaves a splotch of sludge that’s hard to trudge through, and the Shadow Racket adds a clone of your character to your side of the court.

It may sound like your average Mario Tennis gimmick, but Fever Rackets add a lot of strategy to basic volleys. It can also make them delightfully hectic. In one match, my partner utilized a Tornado Racket to spawn cyclones on the enemy’s side of the field. While those were active, I used my Shadow Racket’s Fever Shot to create a clone of my character, Donkey Kong. Those two effects paired quite well, as the extra body on the field sent the other team into a panic as they tried to account for which one of us would return the ball. They got sloppy and walked into the path of the tornadoes, knocking one of them out and letting us capitalize.

Finding the right synergy between Fever Rackets and character stats already felt satisfying in just a few matches and led to a variety of hero moments that had my teammate and I hollering. My favorite little touch is duo Fever Shots. If you and your teammate both activate your Fever Shot at the same time, you’ll jump up and hit a devastatingly fast smash together. There’s some great strategy that comes from knowing when to reserve your energy and when to spend it to get out of a bind.

Mario Tennis Fever has a few more tricks up its sleeve, too. One round I played happened on a court themed around Super Mario Bros. Wonder. Midway through the match, a Wonder Flower activated, putting a bunch of warp pipes of varying heights in the middle of the court. Wonder Seeds popped out, and both teams scrambled to hit them to rack up points. I imagine those courts won’t be much more than charming sideshow gimmicks, but it shows that Camelot has some creative ideas in the tank — something that bodes well for the mysterious Adventure Mode.

Maybe I’m just high on what I played because my colleague and I absolutely trounced our opponents in all four of our doubles matches. (Though we both got embarrassed in singles play). But I don’t think it’s just a case of ego stroking here. Mario Tennis Fever’s core volleying balances fast reflexes, sharp strategy, and cartoon silliness quite well. If those core elements can hold up across multiple modes, it should hopefully be the game to get the Mario sports series out of its slump and back into championship contention.