Mario Hoops 3 on 3/Mario Slam Basketball, low-res pixel style!
This game already has adorable pixel art, but here it is even more pixelly. Or less pixelly I guess, because there’s less overall pixels? Anyway I thought it had a pretty great roster. Some generic drone filler, but also Dixie Kong, and White and Black Mage (who are apparently Shiroma and Kuroma from the Chocobo games maybe?). I drew them grouped into kinda-appropriate teams of 3. I’ve done some of these characters before but for this one I tried to make the Mario Bros, Bowser, and Yoshi fit better into my humanoid template. I think it turned out pretty well!
AKA Mario Slam Basketball in my area, but I imported a US copy because that’s all I could find. A weird localisation choice, because the theme song has audible vocals saying “3 on 3”.
So I’m following up the visually daring Strikers with this entry, which at first glance seems pretty conventional. It’s got all the Mario staples, but the courts are well realised and varied, each with their own hazards to be aware of. There’s also the novelty that later on you can unlock some Final Fantasy players and courts, a crossover element that comes due to the game being developed by Square-Enix. This was a selling point for me, along with the surprising inclusion of Dixie Kong; an all-Kong team is possible, and glorious!
So this is a 3D basketball game controlled entirely with swipes on the DS touchscreen (and the L button). This works fairly well, and the mechanics are robust enough to reward skill (or at least exploiting the AI, which I found necessary to unlock the elusive Ninja). At times the challenge was high enough to get me in quite a tizzy, but it kept me trying again with its quick-fire matches and my eventual triumph was quite satisfying.
As expected of a Mario sports game, it’s no vanilla simulation. Panels can be run over when not in possession to grab items like shells and banana peels; you know the Mario Kart drill. When you’re dribbling though, the game is keeping the ball and bouncing on those panels to accrue coins. Baskets don’t just give you 2 points; no, 20 is the baseline, and each coin adds points. A full load of 100 with one of the special shots (unique to each character) can give you 140 points in one basket. Beating the opponent is not hard, but to get a tourney’s unlocks you need to stay 200 points ahead.
It was fun getting through these unlocks, changing up my team, and braving the dangers on each court. The game’s well made and it looks very nice. Lovely pixel art sprites bounce on the select screen, the portraits are attractive and expressive as is the game’s official art, and the courts have a nice visual identity with lots of detail on the sidelines. Have a scroll through this page, it’s neat. Even the Final Fantasy characters were made to fit right in, which can be an issue when worlds collide. It’s a gem on the DS, another reason why it’s one of my favourite consoles ever.
