Mario may be the greatest athlete of all time. He's found time between Princess rescue missions to engage in nearly every athletic activity known to man. He's been a pro golfer, a star tennis player, a monster on the pitch, and above all, the, ahem, Mario Andretti of kart racing. New to the Nintendo DS is Mario's latest reason to chug down some Gatorade: Mario Hoops 3-on-3. It's a brilliant-looking game, developed by the artists at Square Enix, and it's great fun to boot. Just be ready for something quite different from the NBA.

For one thing, this is Mario Hoops, so things are going to be a little different on the court. You're going to have red shells flying around, knocking people off their feet, Thwomps are going to bash your head in at inopportune times, and don't get too close to the cannons on the Pirate Ship court -- if the Bob-ombs don't get you, they will. So basically, you'll contend with traps, hazards and enemy weapons at every turn, all while trying to dish out passes and put the ball in the hoop.


At a very basic level, this is simple 3-on-3 basketball. You have a ball, and each team's goal is to send the ball into the hoop (or a Piranha Plant's mouth, for instance) to score. The stylus control is what makes this game so different from anything else you've experienced. To dribble the ball, you simply tap on the screen. Tap on the right, and you'll shift the ball over that way, and you can then tap on the left to protect the ball from an aggressive defender. Passing the ball is cake, just hold the left trigger and make a left-to-right or right-to-left motion, depending on what teammate you want to get the ball to. Shooting is just a swipe from the bottom to the top of the touch screen, and so on. There are even character-specific supershots, like Mario's fireball shot, that are activated by tapping out the letter M on the touch screen twice. That's ten taps in rapid succession, but doing so makes for an impressive dunk or even more impressive alley-oop.

The rules of basketball have been changed a bit for the game's purposes. Scoring is beefed up considerably, scoring a minimum of twenty points for dunks and shots inside what would normally be the three-point line, while long distance goals score a base thirty points. Super shots always net you a minimum of forty. You can score even more points by collecting coins before your shot, which are obtained by dribbling the ball over the question mark-shaped coin boxes that randomly litter the court. So just like a traditional Mario game, collecting coins will net you success here, so it's worth stocking up before taking your shot. You can hold up to a hundred coins at once, so a three-pointer with a full coin bank will net you 130 points. Skilled players can rack up several hundred points per game, but skilled defense pays off as well.