Mario Tennis Fever is fun, but I’m still searching for a great realistic tennis sim

Mario Tennis Fever was released this week to a positive reception, with our review calling it “a perfect arcade sports game offering a generous plethora of ways to play it.” Its Fever Rackets make it a delectable pick-up-and-play arcade experience with the ways they can set opponents aflame or ice an opponent’s side of the court.

But Fever also has the juice in that its tennis fundamentals are exciting to play even when Fever Rackets are turned off. While you’ll likely never make an error and most points are certainly won via high-speed winners, it still scratches that itch for a good time with a tennis game. Positioning is as important as it is in any tennis game, and you’ll have to use a variety of shot types to keep your opponent off-balance and create an opening for those winners.

Fever serves as a reminder that tennis translates perfectly to video game form, even if there’s no one must-play tennis game on the market. No one game reigns supreme, with even the best options being flawed in some way. I can only hope that Mario Tennis Fever finally brings us closer to the tennis game I’m still dreaming of.

While Mario Tennis’ arcade style is a popular option for fans of the sport, there are other games out there that skew closer to grounded simulation territory. For example, Tennis Elbow 4 released out of Steam Early Access in January. (Though, the label is a bit nebulous; developer Mana Games said in an update on Steam, “TE4 is leaving Early Access now because I’m no longer working on it full-time.”) It’s often pointed to as having the best shot-to-shot tennis gameplay around, with a realism to its rallies that isn’t found elsewhere. Those who want realistic tennis simulation, and not the light fun of other sports games, often gravitate to the Tennis Elbow titles.

Neither Fever or Tennis Elbow 4 scratch the itch for a fully licensed tennis game, though. Winning the Mushroom Cup as Princess Peach is fantastic, no doubt, but what I really want to do is win Wimbledon as Carlos Alcaraz. (Or, better yet, beat Alcaraz as my created player for the Wimbledon title.)

The best option for a game featuring all your favorite players might be the ATP and WTA’s official game, Tiebreak+. It boasts 90 official tournaments and over 120 real-life pros. It launched in 2024 to a mixed critical reception, though updates since have made it one of the better options on the market, even if plenty of tennis video game fans will point to Tennis Elbow 4 as having superior gameplay. Tiebreak+’s gameplay is often derided as being shallow with unrealistic physics.

Image: Big Ant Studios/Nacon

Tiebreak+ is typically positioned against another 2024 release, TopSpin 2K25. However, 2K25 likely doesn’t have much runway left. It’s possible that TopSpin 2K25’s servers will shut down at the end of this year. As its career mode is tied to the online servers, the clock is ticking on just how much life it has left. Though, that career mode has been chided as players can barely play a few tournaments in a row without getting injured.

TopSpin 2K25 was the first new entry in the series in 13 years, when Top Spin 4 was released. While the series’ return was celebrated, and the game launched to a somewhat favorable critical reception, it has so far failed to truly land with its playerbase. Part of that is due to it feeling like a somewhat barebones offering; you can’t even have a Round of 16 with real male players as it only has 13 in game. Things are slightly better on the women’s side with 15 licensed players.

Image: Hangar 13/2K Games

These aren’t the only tennis games available. Unlike how football games are dominated by Madden NFL because of an exclusive licensing agreement, tennis fans have an abundance of choice when it comes to picking which tennis game they want to invest in as there’s also AO Tennis 2 and Full Ace Tennis Simulator on the market. However, none of them have quite set itself apart as the must-play tennis experience.

Each of these games have holes to poke in them, whether it’s a lack of real-life players, realistic physics, or a worthwhile career mode. None of them stack up graphically to their football or basketball counterparts from EA and 2K Sports. All these up-and-down options have resulted in countless Reddit posts of prospective players wondering which game they should play and YouTube videos of people breaking down the differences between them.

The hypothetical One Tennis Game to Rule Them All would be a fully-furnished offering that’d combine the best parts of what players already have on offer. Slam together Mario Tennis Fever’s charm, Tennis Elbow 4’s gameplay, and Tiebreak+’s abundance of licensed content, and you’d have a pretty damn good tennis video game. Until then, though, you’re going to have to sift through some Reddit posts and YouTube videos analyzing the differences between all these games to figure out which one is right for you.