October 21^st, 2005 (8:58pm) - Square-Enix and Nintendo shocked gamers a few weeks ago when Mario Basket 3 on 3 was revealed to be in development for the Nintendo DS. It was a shocking announcement because it cemented Square Enix’s strong support of the Nintendo DS and the game is also the second title Nintendo and Square Enix have created together using the Mario brand (with the first being Super Mario RPG for the SNES). Well, this is besides the point... because new information about Mario Basket 3 on 3 has surfaced.

Mario Basket 3 on 3, like your traditional arcade basketball game, will feature 3 on 3 player action and will utilize the upper DS screen to showcase the in-game action while the lower shows various statistical information in addition to being one of the key methods of control. The D-Pad will be used to control individual characters while the touch-screen will be used to dribble, pass, and shoot. Dribbling the ball will simply require tapping on the screen and the speed of the dribble will correlate with the speed of the users tapping. To pass the ball, players will have to swipe the stylus from either left or right, and to shoot, simply make an upward stroke on the touch-screen.

As expected, like in other Mario Sports games, each character in the game will feature their own unique special moves, but when attempting to pull off one of these special moves to score some points, the chance of someone stealing the ball from you, etc. increases.

We’ll have more on the game at a later time.