Nickelodeon Extreme Tennis: Next!
Developed by Fair Play Labs · GameMill Entertainment
Arcade Sports / Crossover · PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch 2 · 2026-05-28
“A Mario Tennis clone wearing a SpongeBob costume, and somehow that is the entire pitch and the entire product at the exact same time.”
Nickelodeon Extreme Tennis: Next! is the third or fourth time this exact game has been made this decade, depending on how generous you want to be with the word "different." We have had Nickelodeon Kart Racers, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl, Nickelodeon Slime Soccer Whatever, and now we are doing tennis again because the licensing department at Paramount apparently runs on a spreadsheet that just cycles through sports until the heat death of the universe. The formula is so well-established at this point that you could probably guess every design decision in this game from the title alone. SpongeBob has a bubble serve. The TMNT have a pizza slice power shot. Patrick is the heavy character with low speed and high power. Aang has a wind serve. You already know. You have always known. The game knows you know, and it does not care, because the game was not really made for you, it was made for the eight year old who got a Switch 2 for their birthday and whose parents saw a familiar yellow square on a box at Target and thought, sure, fine, forty dollars, done.
The genuinely confusing part is who keeps green-lighting these. Fair Play Labs and GameMill have built an entire mini-empire on the strategy of taking a beloved Nintendo first-party formula, sanding off about forty percent of the polish, slapping a cartoon licence on top, and shipping it at full price to a market that will absolutely buy it because the alternative is explaining to a child why they cannot play tennis with SpongeBob, which is not a fight any tired adult is going to win on a Tuesday evening. It is a perfectly legal, perfectly cynical, perfectly sustainable business model, and the only reason critics keep getting upset about it is because they keep reviewing it like it is meant to compete with Mario Tennis Aces, when in reality it is competing with "your kid is bored in the car." It wins that fight every single time.
And here is the part where I have to be fair, because arcade sports with friends on a couch is genuinely one of the best uses of a video game console that has ever existed. Four controllers, snacks, a stupid premise, and a tennis ball flying around at impossible speeds while a sponge yells nautical nonsense at a turtle is, honestly, a good evening. The game does not have to be Federer to be fun. It just has to have responsive controls, readable hitboxes, and enough character variety that nobody fights over who gets to be Leonardo. By all accounts and from everything Fair Play Labs has shown so far, Next! clears that low bar. It looks colourful, the courts have gimmicks, the roster is wide, and the netcode probably works on Tuesdays. That is enough for a 4.5. Not a recommendation. Not a warning. Just an honest acknowledgement that this exists, it will do exactly what it says on the tin, and somewhere a kid is going to have the best summer of their life playing this with their cousin while the adults question why we are still doing this in 2026.
- 01
Couch multiplayer with four controllers and a familiar cast is, against all odds, still a legitimately good time and this game absolutely understands that core appeal.
- 02
The roster is wide enough that every kid in the room gets a favourite character without anyone having to argue over Mario again.
- 03
Arcade tennis controls are pick-up-and-play in about ninety seconds, which is the correct difficulty curve for an eight year old at a birthday party.
- 04
Court gimmicks and power shots give the game enough visual chaos to hold attention spans that have been sandpapered down by ten years of TikTok.
- 01
This is, mechanically, a Mario Tennis clone with the serial numbers filed off and a Nickelodeon sticker placed lovingly over the scratch marks, and nobody involved is pretending otherwise.
- 02
The animation budget visibly stops about three frames before Nintendo's would, and you can feel it in every transition between hits.
- 03
Single player is a checklist of tournaments and challenges that exists purely so the back of the box can say "single player content," not because anyone wanted to make it or play it.
- 04
Forty dollars for a game whose entire design document is "what if Mario Tennis but Patrick" is a pricing decision that only works because parents do not read GameFAQs.
Families with kids between six and twelve, group households who actually use four controllers, and anyone who genuinely does not care that this is the fourth Nickelodeon sports game this decade because their cousin is coming over Friday and that is all that matters.
Adults playing solo, anyone who already owns Mario Tennis Aces, people allergic to licensed crossover games on principle, and anyone expecting the production values to match the price tag.
Your website, CV, or whatever you made. I'll roast that too.
A full teardown from €2,99. No mercy.