You know that feeling you get when you play a classic Nintendo game for the first time? Well youre going to get that high when you pick up Mario Basketball 3 on 3 and let me tell you that it wont go away for many hours, especially if you have friends to play with overall local WiFi. The development of this game must have been heavily supervised by Nintendo as Square Enixs track record for non-rpg games isnt all that great, but hats off to them though as this is the best arcade style basketball game thats been made in a long time.
When you start up the game for the first time youll be taken through a tutorial training session split up into bite sized easy to swallow gaming chunks. Thank goodness for this as the gameplay is so different its necessary to learn everything you can before you ever enter a game. The controls pan out much like Metroid Prime Hunters as you hold the DS with your left hand, using the d-pad to move and the left trigger to switch between one of your three teammates. The rest of the controls use only the touch screen and your right hand via the stylus. To pass you make a line to the left or right, to shoot you make a straight line up, and to attack on defense you make a straight line down. These simple yet elegant controls give way to exciting and deep gameplay on the court.


Dunk Mario, Dunk!

Dunk - Video
In these trials youll also learn about playing an actual game. During a game you initially jump for the ball at center court by drawing an upward line and if you happen to not grab the ball you can draw a downward line while in the air to smash the ground and stun your opponent. When you have the ball in your possession you can tap the screen to dribble faster. This is useful when youre standing on top of the question mark boxes that float around on the turf of the court. These boxes allow you to collect coins and power-ups as you dribble on them. Anywhere from 0 to 100 coins can be collected before you make a shot at which time the coins you have collected will be added on to your shot score. The minimum shot score is 20 points so if you collect 100 coins and make a shot youll get a whopping 120 points.