Mario Tennis Fever is a Good, Weird Announcement
I think a lot of people were hoping that Nintendo would announce another Mario sports title during today’s Nintendo Direct, but if you had asked me to rank the sports I thought would be featured, a brand new Mario Tennis game would have been at the bottom of that list. Yet here we are, anticipating another tennis experience in Mario Tennis Fever.
Mario Tennis Aces has been out for quite a long while now, and while I’ve always enjoyed the Mario Tennis games – and I fully expect Mario Tennis Fever to be a great one – I was actually anticipating Nintendo going down a different road, with a different sport. All three of Mario Golf, Mario Tennis, and Mario Strikers were games I never thought we would be seeing this soon on Nintendo Switch 2. I was expecting another Mario Sluggers or perhaps even Mario Basketball.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty excited for Mario Tennis Fever, and I love that Nintendo is once again incorporating a story element into the game. The new Fever Racquets looks pretty neat, and with 30 different racquets and 38 different characters, the combinations are going to feel pretty endless. I’m guessing that certain characters will work better with certain powerful racquets, but only time will tell if that is true.
But for all the good I see coming out of Mario Tennis Fever, I wonder if Nintendo would have been more successful bringing baseball back to consoles. The Mario Sluggers games are phenomenal, and it’s been WAY too long since we got one of those on a Nintendo platform.
Still, my disappointment that we aren’t getting a new baseball game isn’t going to dampen my excitement for another Mario Tennis entry, and it seems like Nintendo is putting a bit more thought into the defensive side of the game in this release. Only time will tell how Mario Tennis Fever does on the Nintendo Switch 2, but for now I’m pretty excited!
Article By Adam Roffel
