Mario Hoops 3 on 3 – Second Play

At the end of my first play with Mario Hoops 3 on 3, I had completed the tournament mode at normal difficulty. I had done so without too much trouble considering that I was using only the basic skills covered in the introduction tutorial. Coming back to the game I decide that I should now learn all of the other fancy moves that I sometimes catch the computer doing but that I have been oblivious of.

Going through the full set of offense and defensive actions makes me realize how much I was missing with only the basic moves. I was passing, shooting, dunking, and stealing, but now I’m faking, dunking rebounds and alley-oops, blocking, and even doing fancy tricks and unblockable power shots with beautifully rendered animations. Obviously believing that learning through doing is a very successful method, the developer has made sure that every single move has its own interactive tutorial. Very quickly I am feeling comfortable with my new repertoire of basketball skills.

Eager to test my new tricks out on the computer, I launch a new tournament - this time in hard difficulty. At first I don’t really notice that the computer has improved, but slowly with each new series of matches I start feeling the intensity being ratcheted up. The other teams start launching unstoppable attacks and I quickly find myself seeing “game over” and retrying matches several times before I can get a break and win.

Honestly, I wanted to complete Hard difficulty, but the final match seems nearly impossible. I struggle and struggle, and finally I understand my weakness; we aren’t really playing 3 on 3, we’re playing 3 on 1. The problem is that I can only control one of my teammates at once, and the other two don’t actually do anything other than follow the opposing team’s players. That means that although they may happen to pick up a red shell or a banana, they won’t use it. It also means that if the player my teammate is covering has the ball then that player will have a free run to the basket unless I switch to control my teammate and do something about it myself. In theory this is fair because the computer does the same thing, it also only controls one player at a time, but in reality it can switch between players so fast that it might as well be controlling all of them at once. I decide to give up on the final match for now and try with a fresh pair of hands later.

Although I am taking a break from the tournament, I have honed my skills with the computer and now I am itching to try them out on a human opponent. Luckily for me a business trip brought me within an hour’s train ride of a DS owning friend and I am ready to hit the court.

I bring my DS up and my friend starts his, I have the game and he doesn’t so he sets his for download play. I navigate through the menus for multiplayer, only to discover to my great disappointment that the only multiplayer we’re going to be able to experience is a couple of mini-games that involve a basketball. To get the real 3 on 3 basketball game working multiplayer, you both need a physical copy of the game in your DS. That was a surprise to me because the back of the box said “single card multi-download” and I assumed that we’d be playing 3 on 3.

We play the two available mini-games, “Dribble Race” and “Coin Hunters”, and still have fun, although I am not satisfied with being unable to play an exhibition match. Dribble Race is a simple mini-game where you race to the end of a straight field while trying to collect 100 coins by dribbling your basketball on top of the question mark boxes in the ground. You cannot finish the race without all 100 coins, so it isn’t so much a running race as it is a “how fast can you tap the touch pad” race. Coin Hunters on the other hand holds greater depth of gameplay as it plays more like a deathmatch of sorts. Opponents hunt each other down on medium sized arenas with standard Mario items, like bananas and shells, in order to steal the other player’s coins. The download play games are entertaining but we both agree that it would be much more fun with more than 2 people.

As I return to single player with many more hours of intense play, using every move available to me, I am still struggling in the final match of Hard Difficulty. I really hope that a cool reward is waiting for me once I do manage to clear it, because I’m definitely working for it. It is disappointing that Nintendo was not clearer with the “single card multi-download” designation on the game. They should explicitly mention that every player needs the game in order to actually play a game of multiplayer basketball. I’m still hooked on this game although I think my hands need a break before I give Hard Difficulty another shot.