Fun for a bit... but we might turn them off for some seriousness.
Mario Tennis Fever is the long-running sports franchise’s debut on the Switch 2, and really is all about new Fever Rackets which will change up players, balls, and even courts. Whether you dig that will certainly be different from player to player.
Treated to some hands-on time with Fever just ahead of the game’s launch next week, I got to go down and (literally… at least, digitally) dirty with all that Fever Rackets entail. I used them in singles matches, doubles matches, and throughout Fever‘s Adventure and Trials modes, which I’ll get into later. First, traditional tennis with a chaotic twist.
Fever‘s chopping 38-character roster, which includes a host of new players including Baby Wario and Baby Waluigi, are almost matched by a roster of as many Fever Rackets. They’re generally accurately named — the Bullet Bill Racket will turn your shot into a Bullet Bill when activated, whilst the Spiny Racket throws Spinies down on the court. To be able to trigger the racket, you’ll first need to build up a meter; when activated, you’ll have the chance to aim your specially-charged ball and fire it down onto the court.
The Spiny Racket is just one in a series of useful Fever Rackets which not only propel the ball at a dangerous velocity, but leave area of effect traps on the court which will harm your opponents. Each player has a stamina meter that will decrease when a hazard is touched; lose too much stamina and you’ll need to sit the game out for a bit.
What really makes the Fever Racket system interesting is that shots can be used against you — if you launch a special shot and your opponents return the ball before it bounces once on their side of the court, that shot can be used against you (provided you don’t return it under the same guidelines). When playing the CPU on expert difficulty or above, be prepared to suffer your own moves being turned against you more often than not. That, or having the ball fired directly into your face, prompting (a slightly too aggressive, slightly too repetitive) announced to declare a body shot and point for the other team.
The Fever Rackets can be very fun at times, but wildly too much at others. When playing doubles, there was too much happening on-screen to properly understand what was going on, let alone track the ball. The Shadow Racket, which creates a shadowy clone of your character, means that each side of a doubles match could potentially have four players on it, which only adds to the chaos.
What’s worse, the triggering of multiple Fever Rackets, one after another, by players generally means that the camera will basically break trying to keep up with what’s going on. If you’re planning on playing with Fever Rackets on — and you can elect to turn them off, I must add — I’d recommend using the pulled-back camera view to try to balance some of those issues.
Playing with Fever Rackets off shows just how polished a Mario Tennis game can be, with the ability to perform flat shots, shots with topspin, all enhanced by charged shots, or powered shots. You can get quite technical if you so choose, and that’s where I’ll likely find the most fun with Fever.
As is the case with a lot of newer Mario Tennis titles, Fever adds a bunch of modes and gimmicks which may not enhance your own experience. I found Adventure mode to be tedious, and mostly because the mini-games it forces you to play as it drip feeds exposition have hardly anything to do with tennis. Trial mode is far easier to stomach, as it at least forces you to show off your technical skills in some of the challenges it places upon you.
Mario Tennis Fever is nigh, heading to Switch 2 on 12 February.
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Mario Tennis Fever12 February 2026Switch 2
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