Nickelodeon Extreme Tennis: Next!

Genre: Sports (Tennis)

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Local)

The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

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Review:

Nickelodeon Extreme Tennis, originally released on Apple Arcade in 2022 and ported in 2026 to PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch with “Next!” tacked onto the end, is a family-friendly Tennis game starring characters from throughout Nickelodeon’s numerous franchises like SpongeBob SquarePants, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and Invader Zim. This is naturally a cartoony take on the genre, so if you picture Mario Tennis but with Nickelodeon characters, you have the right general idea.

The presentation here has a mix of mostly good and a bit of bad. In the good column, the game’s 3D cel-shaded characters mostly look great and have excellent animation full of personality, and the locations they play in similarly look good and do a decent job of representing the franchises they come from. It’s not quite as polished as a Mario Tennis game, but it’s nevertheless good. Likewise, most of the game’s voices are good too, drawing from the same talent that voices the characters in their respective shows… though older characters like Michaelangelo and Garfield are voiced by actors portraying more modern iterations of those characters rather than the original voice cast, which might throw off some players.

On the bad side of things, the cel-shading used on characters in this game can be a bit overly-prominent, which messes with the otherwise solid 3D character models. Also, while everything else here aims to make good use of the various properties included here, the energetic music sounds completely generic and forgettable. Finally, the loading times in menus and between matches are overly-long and frequent, dragging things down as you play.

When it comes to the gameplay, Nickelodeon Extreme Tennis: Next takes a bit of getting used to at first, but once you do it feels natural and plays really well. Each of the face buttons gives you a different type of shot (direct fast topspin shots, curved shots if you want to get tricky, lobs to get over opponents who stay close to the net, and drop shots to land shots close to the net to mess up opponents who keep their distance). Players hold a button to charge their shot, trying to time it with a concentric circle gauge that appears, with perfect timing resulting in a character-specific bonus action. In addition, players use the right stick to aim relative to where their character is.

In addition to these standard moves, players can also charge up a meter through normal play to use special moves, using one filled meter to make a special dash to the ball in a dire situation, or using three full meters for an ultimate move that guarantees you win the current point. Finally, there are special items you can get by aiming a ball through them over the net as you play.

While the special meter and items add variety to the gameplay, this is mostly a pretty solid and straightforward game of tennis, and one that plays quite well. There’s a “story” mode that adds little beyond extra text in between rounds of tennis and extra goals you can aim to complete as you play like hitting specific types of shots or behaving in a certain way. There are also “minigames”, which is tennis games with different hazards or conditions that change things up some.

When it comes to complaints, it’s disappointing to see that this game doesn’t support online play, and also doesn’t support doubles matches (and in turn has a maximum of two players locally). Beyond this, the main complaints are ones I’ve already mentioned – the long loading times, areas where I feel the presentation could have been improved even more, and a flimsy and underwhelming story mode.

Despite these complaints, Nickelodeon Extreme Tennis: Next! is a solid game of Tennis, and one that I think Nickelodeon fans will thoroughly enjoy. It certainly has its flaws, but the core gameplay here is good, and there’s enough personality in the game’s characters that it shines through the lack of personality in some of the other elements of the game.

tl;dr – Nickelodeon Extreme Tennis: Next! is a family-friendly Tennis game starring a variety of Nickelodeon characters like SpongeBob, Aang, Michelangelo, Zim, and so on. The core tennis gameplay here is great, and the characters are rendered (mostly) quite well, but some other elements of the presentation are lacking, the loading times are too frequent and too long, the story mode is a dud, and the lack of online play and only 2 players locally is disappointing. However, when it comes to the core goal of making a solid Tennis game with Nickelodeon characters, this game absolutely succeeds.

Grade: B

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The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

Nickelodeon Extreme Tennis: Next!

Genre: Sports (Tennis)

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Local)

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Review:

Given that one of my biggest complaints about the Nintendo Switch version of Nickelodeon Extreme Tennis: Next! is its long loading times, I was very curious to see how Nintendo Switch 2 managed to improve things here. And while the game currently lacks a Nintendo Switch 2 version, it seemed like this was something we still might see improvement on in the Nintendo Switch version. Let’s have a look!

Well, as far as resolution and framerate, I see no differences here. Playing on Nintendo Switch 2 may help stabilize the framerate and prevent slowdown in spots, but the overall framerate remains unimpressive.

Okay, well what about the loading times? That was the main thing I wanted to see improved, right? Sadly, while there is an improvement here, it’s a shockingly minor one. On Nintendo Switch, it took me 53 seconds to load to the man menu and 26 seconds to load a match. In Nintendo Switch 2, those times were only reduced to 48 seconds and 23 seconds.

Honestly, this is one of the most pathetic showings I’ve seen for a Nintendo Switch game on Nintendo Switch 2. While there is certainly a small improvement to loading times, overall very little is changed here. That’s all the more disappointing when loading times are really dragging this game down, and they appear to still be doing that on Nintendo Switch 2. What a shame.

tl;dr – Nickelodeon Extreme Tennis: Next! is a family-friendly Tennis game starring a variety of Nickelodeon characters like SpongeBob, Aang, Michelangelo, Zim, and so on. The core tennis gameplay here is great, and the characters are rendered (mostly) quite well, but some other elements of the presentation are lacking, the loading times are too frequent and too long (even on Nintendo Switch 2), the story mode is a dud, and the lack of online play and only 2 players locally is disappointing. However, when it comes to the core goal of making a solid Tennis game with Nickelodeon characters, this game absolutely succeeds.

Grade: B –

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