The Mario Tennis franchise may not be one that generates as much anticipation as the others revolving around the moustachioed plumber. But past entries have been solid enough, offering arcade-style tennis action featuring Nintendo's familiar cast of characters.

Playing a preview build of Mario Tennis a few weeks ago and then getting deep into the online beta, I was excited to get my hands on the final version of the game and it hasn't disappointed.

It goes without saying that Nintendo would bank on the success of Mario and the Switch to rake in some new fans of their Mario Tennis series. I have never been a massive fan of the series as I do not like the sport and tennis games just never appealed to me.

a fully-featured if mildly frustrating return to form for Camelot

Aces' new special moves turn the casual back-and-forth into a frantic high-speed chess match, while the story mode offers an ample number of charmingly wacky challenges that help to hone your skills in the process and get you match fit for online competitions. But here’s the problem: you’re only given the option of one-off matches against friends and strangers for online. At launch there are no tournaments, no leaderboards and not even any sort of ranking system, so it’s going to be difficult to find someone on you skill level. Sure, there will be timed events that will see online tournaments become available for select days, but that’s still very inconvenient for the average player. But if you’re happy to just play through the short adventure and reserve competitive matches for your friends, then Aces is undoubtedly one of the best multiplayers on the Switch right now.

The new tennis features give matches frantic fun ; The Adventure Mode is a terrific teacher; Creative boss battles are bursting with originality;

Shallow online features; A couple of of level designs are infuriating in Adventure Mode;

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The new tennis features give matches frantic fun ; The Adventure Mode is a terrific teacher; Creative boss battles are bursting with originality;

Shallow online features; A couple of of level designs are infuriating in Adventure Mode;

Summer is in full swing and Nintendo and Camelot Software are serving up their next instalment in the Mario Tennis series for all to enjoy, even enlisting some famous faces to help with the advertising campaign.

Camelot have been the kings of the Mario Tennis (and Golf) kingdom for some time, after the pure disappointment that Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash on the Wii U was, everyone has been waiting for them to give Tennis another real shot.

Nintendo and Camelot released Mario Tennis Ultra Smash for Wii U in 2015, and it was a shallow impersonation of the other games in the franchise. It did not have a campaign or interesting modes, and the one thing that set it apart, the Mega Mushroom power-up, was lame.