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NCS Game Notes
» Square Enix developed the game for Nintendo. Special Square surprises may be unlocked such as Final Fantasy characters.

» A training mode in the beginning teaches players how to dribble and move away from ball stealers by tapping on the touch screen. The dribbling training has the player tapping repeatedly on ? platforms to raise up coin. In the ball stealing segment, a harried Wario grunts and slaps his hand down in an attempt to abscond. The third lesson is tossing a ball by moving the stylus upwards on the touchscreen in a straight line. Doing so forces Mario to leap and throw while grunting "Yah!" The fourth lesson teaches how to power up Mario by tapping and holding the stylus on one point on the touchscreen while whirring sounds reverberate from the DS speaker. After each successful training exercise, Mario yells "Fantastico" and hops up and down on the court. If you leave him alone and come back in an hour, he'll still be hopping up and down while the sound of horses clip-clopping along may be heard.

» The fifth lesson teaches passing. To pass, simply draw a straight line from the location of one player to another player on the court and they'll pass amongst themselves. The d-pad is used to move a player around. To perform a spinning slam dunk, move Mario up to the net and once in the perimeter, draw a straight line up and he'll spin twice and dunk it in like a champ. To steal a ball, run up to a handler and draw a straight line down on the touchscreen and Mario will start slapping at the ball. To block a shot, draw a line up on the touchscreen to smash a score attempt back. To perform a spinning block, draw two lines up in quick succession.

» When running over a ? platform and a koopa shell pops up, grab it and throw it at an opponent to knock him off his feet. Shells ricochet around the court and can hurt the thrower if it rebounds back. Press the L-trigger to toggle between your players on the court - the active player is indicated by an "O" at his feet.

» Before a game, players choose three players from 10 possible players including Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Donkey Kong, Wario, Yoshi, Bowser, and Diddy Kong. To select a player, tap on him/her and drag to the left basketball hoop and their portrait will appear on the top screen.

» When performing a spinning slam dunk, continuing to swish the stylus up and down will cause the jumper to spin in mid-air for a few more seconds than is humanly possible which racks up points and coins - there's a limit of 10 revolutions max. Once a dunk has been made, a replay is shown from three camera angles.

» There's no such thing as fouling in the game. You can run up to an opponent and clobber him by doing the downward stylus stroke on the touchscreen.

» Special moves and ball throws may be performed by performing sequence taps on the touchscreen. For example, Mario's special dunk has him twirling in the air, literally on fire, by tapping the letter M in sequence twice for a total of 10 taps. Start at the lower left and tap out the letter "M" twice and you're golden. For Bowser, tap out the letter B which is also 5 tap points for a total of 10 taps to activate his special power.

» The scoring in Mario Basket bears no resemblance to real basketball. Scores in the hundreds are routine due to the special points awarded for spinning dunks and other special scoring throws. In our first game, we won by 303 to 101 in two periods which last 2:30 minutes each.

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