After a fairly successful journey into the world of team sports with Mario Superstar Baseball, Mario and the usual characters took to the courts with Mario Hoops 3-on-3, which makes sure you know that there are 3 players on each team, not 5. Mario Hoops is on the DS, a surprising decision for a sports game in most cases, but with the transition stage between the Cube and Wii, there really wasn’t much choice but for the game to go to the handheld system. Mario Hoops is a basketball game, and yes, the goal of the game is still to get the ball into the basket… if it’s even a basket. And that’s about as close to resembling normal basketball as this game gets, as this game adds more Mario-related features to a Mario sports game than ever before.

This Review is rated on a 0-4 star scale, with 4 being excellent and 0 being awful.

Graphics: ****
I generally don’t like giving out the four-star rating to graphics of games on handheld systems, even if they’re superb, because most of the time I feel they could still do better. But in this case, I have no choice. The graphics amazed me from the start. They’ve got to be better than any Nintendo 64 game I’ve ever seen, at least from the Mario series. And while I’m not sure where the DS ranks in graphics power, I didn’t know it could make a game look this good. While I may regret this rating if DS games in the future look even better, just about everything in this game- the characters, the courts, the backgrounds, the items- looks beautiful.

Sound: ***
Mario Hoops uses some vocals in its music, which I have sort of mixed feelings about. I’ll make it clear right now: they’re a lot better than the last time I heard vocals in a Mario game, which was the perhaps the worst song in video game history, the Super Mario Sunshine vocal rendition of the Mario theme song. I’m not really sure if the singing of Mario’s name and the “oh-oh-oh” singing really fits into a Mario game. But while I’m wondering this, I can’t help but notice that it sticks in my head, and not in a particularly bad way.

On the whole, there’s a lot of good music in this game, in particular some old songs being brought back (like the SMB3 doomship music… now that’s classic). I think the game missed a golden opportunity on the Luigi’s Mansion court by not having the Luigi’s Mansion music… the music there felt out of place, while the classic LM song would have fit perfectly. The characters’ voices are mostly great, although I’m still in favor of Bowser just roaring a la Mario Kart 64 instead of having this voice that he acquired in Super Mario Sunshine. Why? I don’t really know, given I hate the fact that so many RPG main characters never talk. Anyway, good job overall with the sound in this game.

Characters: ***½
The choice of characters for this game was fantastic. Having guys like Paratroopa and Fly Guy was a nice touch for a basketball game. There are three characters in particular that don’t really fit in with the Mario series; these are Final Fantasy characters, given this game is made by Square Enix. I have nothing against the characters, nor Final Fantasy, but I will admit I have no knowledge of them at all.

Gameplay:
If you have a minor knowledge of basketball, you probably know that most shots are worth two points, while a shot beyond an arched line is worth three points. In this game, those point totals are increased tenfold, giving you 20 points for a normal shot and 30 for a long-range shot. You can collect coins by dribbling the ball on ? Blocks, with red coins being worth 10 normal coins. However many coins you have when you score a basket will be added to your score, at the rate of 1 point per coin, giving you the chance to get a lot of points on just one shot.

This means it’s easy, right? Just go around and collect as many coins as you can, then make a shot, and you’re up by 70. Of course it’s not that easy. First off, you’ll lose some of your coins- and the ball- if an opponent punches it away from you. That isn’t so bad, though- you can still collect some of the coins you lost, very much like in Sonic the Hedgehog, then go and try to steal the ball back.

But it isn’t all just dribbling, stealing, and shooting. Some of those ? Blocks contain items, and when you don’t have the ball, you can use these items. Grab a Star and run over opponents to steal the ball. Get a Mushroom and become faster. I wonder what Shells do… Could they possibly be used to knock over opponents? And so on. These items make things more fun, and a more lot wild than a normal basketball game.

Shooting in itself is a problem in this game. To score in this game, you’ll be heavily relying on dunks, because players are incredibly inaccurate at shooting in this game. In most basketball games, you have to hold down the shoot button and release when your player is in midair, at the peak of his jump, for the best chance at making the shot. I wouldn’t mind having to charge up a shot a little bit, but it’s pretty ridiculous how long you have to charge up a shot in this game. Not only that, but given the fact that there’s so many ways you can lose the ball while charging up, it’s very difficult to charge up a shot and actually get it to go in the basket. Even if you do get it off, it’s not hard to block shots, and the computer will find a way to block them.

Given there are no fouls in this game, players can actually grab a ball off the rim even as it’s bouncing up there- goaltending in real basketball. This often occurs when you don’t get to charge up a shot, as the shot will be inaccurate and end up bouncing up and down on the rim a few times before usually falling off, although occasionally going in. This is why dunking is the easiest way of scoring in this game, except on the Daisy Garden court, where the “baskets” are giant Piranha Plants that attack you on most dunk attempts and knock the ball away.

There is no out of bounds in this game, and invisible walls surround the court, meaning a great way of stalling when you’re at your own end is to toss up a full-court shot, not caring whether it goes in or not, but realizing that it’ll bounce back and give your team a chance at getting the ball in a better position, either by grabbing the ball as it bounces back, or getting a quick steal. It’s almost like a punt in football.

There are also some special shots, which you execute by tapping the stylus in a certain pattern. These, of course, are awfully hard to pull off, especially considering it’s hard enough to get off a normal charged shot! If you do get it off, it’s automatic points, but it doesn’t happen often- for you, that is. The computer finds a way to get these off at a ridiculous rate, especially the Final Fantasy characters.

So what do I actually think about the quality of the gameplay? I think it’s good for the most part. It’s certainly a whole lot of fun to play, and it can be really exciting. There’s not just offense, and not just defense, but both, which I was glad to see, after fearing that the game would be too offensive-slanted after breezing through the Mushroom Cup. Somehow another sport was able to become Mario-ized… and RPG-makers Square Enix made this game!

However, shooting jump shots should not be as hard as it is. The game is basketball, believe it or not, and in basketball the majority of points are scored by jump shots, not dunks. I wouldn’t even mind if dunks were to be scored more often than jump shots in the game, but for it to get to the point where my offense relies nearly totally on dunks- as does the computer’s- well, that’s just ridiculous. You could use the excuse that Mario and pals haven’t had enough time to practice their jump shooting- they’ve been too busy racing go-karts, swinging golf clubs, rackets and bats, and every once in a while, taking part in an adventure. But what is there to make then of the easy dunking? And besides, why am I trying to make a fantasy-based excuse for real game makers?

Oh, you wanted a score for the gameplay. Fine, then, here it is…
Gameplay Score: ***

Controls: ***
The game gives you an option of controlling the action with the stylus or with buttons. Buttons, of course, would be the safe route, the way most sports gamers are used to playing. But I realized that this was a DS game, after all, so I might as well try using the stylus instead of just chickening out from trying perhaps more challenging controls. And as it turned out, at first, I found the controls to be spectacular.

I was nervous when I read in the instruction manual that dribbling was controlled by tapping the stylus continually- would that mean you’d be tapping the stylus nearly non-stop in order to move anywhere? That was not the case- dribbling is automatic most of the time, except when you want to dribble on a ? Block to get a bunch of coins, so the control made perfect sense. The other controls also seemed fine- stroke up for a shot, stroke towards a teammate to pass, stroke down to steal, stroke up while on defense to block.

However, while I do find the controls good for the most part, I did start to have major problems with the passing controls as I went along. Unfortunately, sometimes you want to pass to a teammate who’s in front of you, or more like most of the time. And this means that in order to pass, you stroke in their direction. However, sometimes the game will read it as a shot, and your character will shoot a jump shot without charging, which of course has low accuracy. In short, it’s a turnover. This can be quite frustrating in tight games with the computer. The stylus controls work well for the most part, but this problem in particular can give you trouble.

Difficulty: **½
There’s not much to complain about with the difficulty. It starts out incredibly easy, then begins getting difficult starting with the third match of the Flower Cup. I did not lose a single game in any of the four cups on Normal difficulty, though I won one match with a dunk with 13 hundredths of a second to go in the game. Hard difficulty? That’s quite a step up in difficulty. Don’t expect to have an easy time with this.

Replayability: **
This game does offer the four cups on Normal difficulty, plus the four cups on Hard difficulty, if you want to unlock everything. It will take better performances to get more than just the bronze cup, too, so you may have to replay cups. However, unless you can play multiplayer, it’s going to get boring just playing the computer all the time. I can’t, hence the two-star rating.

Fun Factor!: ***½
It’s a Mario sports game, and a brand new sport that Mario hasn’t played before in a full-fledged game. Okay, okay, I’m not counting his cameo role in a NBA Street game, or that Bob-omb basketball mini-game in the first Mario Party. Not only that, but it is executed very well, and I’ve had some very close, exciting games. It’s a whole lot of fun.

OVERALL: ***
Mario Hoops 3-on-3 succeeds in integrating Mario-related gameplay into a basketball game. I shouldn’t be that surprised, though it is somewhat of a surprise that it was Square Enix who worked on this game… I didn’t know they could make sports games. Apparently they can. This is a great sports game, and if you like Mario sports games, this one’s definitely one you should get. (Let’s see… golf, tennis, baseball, soccer, basketball… what sport are we missing here? Is Mario [American] Football possible? I can only hope…)