Well, it looks pretty interesting, I think. I'm planning on picking up a DS sometime soon; maybe this will be one of the games in my collection. NBA Jam style dunking sounds really cool.

This game looks fucking terrible. How are you supposed to even play it? With the DS Lite's dpad? Oh please. Since the bottom screen is used for a little (and very, very, extremely useless) map, there's no way you'll be able to control your character with the stylus. It won't even get used.

My money says that bowser will be overpowered, as will donkey kong, as will wario, and mario and luigi will be balanced. They'll come up with something so peach can play. Probably better aim.

This is just another predictable, worthless mario rehash. They had mario's soccer earlier this year, and now this. By the end of the year we'll be seeing mario badminton and mario volleyball.

That yellow blog looks like Pac-Man to me. At least in the screenshot.

The touch screen seems to be used for multiple things. Like passing, turning, and so on.

It looks more like a Paratroopa to me..I dunno, it looks to be a lot of fun though, can't wait till the little dents start appearing in my DS screen after playing for a while. I wonder if those versions of Mario and Luigi will be unlockable from the commercial as well. <_<

D-pad + stylus motions/tap

http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ds/ab3j/index.html

Click on the DS to watch the video on how to play.

Nice random flame btw :p

Oh, that's much better, then. I'm glad they're making good use of the stylus in this game.

I still stand by most of what I previously said, though.

I like how that ad and the announcement of Square characters completely killed any interest I had in this game. The controls look truly awkward and no WiFi? I will only even consider this if it gets terrific reviews.

They took out wifi? I thought that was one of the big reasons why SE wanted to make the game. Where are you guys hearing this?

Yeah, you're right. There is WiFi multiplayer, I guess I had my facts wrong. Oh well, the controls still look awkward.

All the sites I found say WiFi is in. I did try to babelfish the japanese site and the translations are as wonderful as always.

YES!

The controls definitely do look awkward... but I have a feeling they may not be that bad once we get our hands on it. I just hope they don't sacrifice quality controls to make fit the DS-type gameplay people expect now.

Aww, there's moogles and cactuars in it, but no moombas? Nuts. I must be the only one who likes those felines. Can't imagine a chocobo playing basketball though...

It'd be too weird if the game has actual Square characters (not stuff like moogles) playing against Mario and the gang, but then again, we have Kingdom Hearts.

so, has anybody picked this up?

HOW IS IT?!

I've played it VIA download play and you do NEED 2 carts to play
VS in basketball mode (exhibition) so me and my cousin just played
the downloadable "Coin Chaser" game where it's basically everyone
runs around and gets items to attack others until they lose all their coins...

So... It's just Mario Kart battles without the karts ^_^''...

Though it was pretty fun~ Only 2 stages selectable through DL play.

As for the basketball game itself, didn't try it out~ My cousin said
he liked it. That is all i know.

I just got this game and I really like it. As usual, I always think I won't get used to using the stylus to move but Star Fox Command and now this game have proven me wrong. The gameplay is great in my opinion and the music quality is way more clearer than most DS games. Overall, this game deserves a thumbs up. :)

This was fun to play, though not worth the $30 price tag IMO. :/ I unlocked everything pretty quickly, and the multiplayer isn't all that great. First of all, no Nintendo Wi-Fi. Then, with one cart, you're limited to two modes of play, neither being an exhibition game. The available modes are fun for a bit, but I grew tired of it pretty quickly. Mario Hoops 3-on-3 now sits away back in its case on my DS shelf. Actually, I think my brother's been playing it on-and-off lately.

Yeah, the lack of wi-fi and download play really crippled what could've been a pretty fun, lasting experience. Hopefully this will be a lesson to other developers thinking of excluding these feautres in order to meet a deadline.

Yeah, I was thinking this game would have done better if it had wi-fi like it was originally designed to have. I wonder what exactly prevented them from including a feature they so proudly touted when the first presented the game. We're talking 6 person only play here. That would have been great!

I was very disappointed about the exclusion of wi-fi as well. I was looking forward to playing other people around the country b/c there is no better challenge than to play another person, not the AI.

I got this game for christmas and it wasn't in the top of my list but I should have, because wow this game if so fun! I didn't expected to like it that much XD

the control are very fun to execute and it's pretty interesting^^ but controling the character with the d-pad really hurt my thumb XD I didn,t notice how uncomfortable the d-pad of the DS is before XD Is the d-pad of the ds-lite better? because I might consider buying one just for that XD

and yeah the exclusion of wi-fi is really a let down, it would have been perfect to play online.

I was a little worried about Square-Enix making this game, but they did a very good job ^^

now I just need to have that gold cup on rainbow to unlock whitemage and blackmage XD

I got this game about 2 months ago, but I only opened it today. It's a lot funner than I thought it would be, but playing defense against the computer is wierd to me. My right hand also hurts a bit when I play it from holding the stylus too hard.

Hope I don't have too much of a hard time unlocking everything.