Mario Hoops 3-on-3

Mario Hoops 3-on-3 paired characters from the Mario universe with arcade three-on-three basketball, where instead of realistic rules, special abilities, power-ups, and over-the-top flashy shots dominate. The player assembles a team from well-known series characters, each with their own attacking or defensive traits, and tries to rack up as many points as possible in the fast, chaotic pace typical of Mario's sports spin-offs, with coins collected on the court letting players activate special super shots.

Controls rely primarily on the touch screen and stylus, giving the game a refreshing, DS-specific feel at the time of release — passing, dribbling, and shooting are all controlled with swipes across the display rather than just buttons, which takes a bit of getting used to at first but quickly becomes intuitive. Visually it's a colorful, comic-style presentation matching the series, with speed and readability of the action prioritized over a realistic depiction of basketball as a sport. The music is light, in the style of other Mario sports titles, and nicely complements the hectic atmosphere of the matches.

The game was made in collaboration with Square Enix, an unusual crossover between Japanese publishers at the time, and showed that basketball's rules could be successfully bent in favor of arcade fun for the whole family, regardless of age or experience. While it wasn't a title that ambitiously expanded the sports genre, as fast multiplayer fun it worked well and still recalls an era when the DS hosted dozens of similar lighthearted sports spin-offs built on well-known brands. The short play sessions also suited the nature of the handheld well, on which players typically indulged in only a few matches at a time, and thanks to that the game still holds up years later as a pleasant, easy-to-pick-up diversion.