SuperPhillip Central's Favorite VGMs - Mario vs. Donkey Kong vs. Sonic vs. Mega Man Edition

This week on SuperPhillip Central's Favorite VGMs we have two new games that have yet to be featured on our long and exhaustive list of games. The first is Super Mario 3D World, while the second is the more recent Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze. There's also some retro goodness inside this week's choices as well, including music from Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Mega Man 10, which technically isn't retro, but it's styled in such a way. If you have recommendations for themes that we've yet to offer for your listening pleasure, give us a comment below! Now, onto the music!

v591. Super Mario 3D World (Wii U) - Staff Roll

We start off with the runner-up to SuperPhillip Central's Best of 2013 Game of the Year, Super Mario 3D World. The Staff Roll theme is an immaculate version of the main theme of the game, as well as having a piece of Bowser's theme thrown in for good measure. It all adds up to a very satisfying theme for your victory against the King of the Koopas.

v592. Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze (Wii U) - Windmill Hills

Another recent Wii U platformer is Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze. This game saw the return of the masterful composer that is David Wise to the Donkey Kong Country series. Windmill Hills is the first level of the second of the game's six islands. Autumn Heights, the island in question, is without a doubt one of our favorites within the game.

v593. Mario Hoops 3-on-3 (DS) - Character Select

It's hard to think of a more catchy character select screen theme in a Mario game than what Mario Hoops 3-on-3 possesses. While the game itself is one of Mario's weakest sports outings, the soundtrack of the game is almost enough to salvage the entire package. It's a wonderfully magnificent series of themes that will get your toes tapping and your mouth grinning.

v594. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (GEN) - Metropolis Zone

Although this three act zone near the end of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on the Genesis can be described as a hellish nightmare of tricky platforming and challenging (sometimes cheap) enemy placement, the Metropolis Zone's theme helps to make the hazardous industrial level able to be suffered through.

v595. Mega Man 10 (Multi) - Solar Man's Stage

With Mega Man 9 and Mega Man 10, fans of the Blue Bomber witnessed a renaissance of the Mega Buster-wielding robot. Both games were made in pure 8-bit form, much like the NES games that made the series popular. Inti Creates were the folks behind the development of these games, and the music provided to listeners in the games sound faithful to the classics.

Mario Hoops 3-on-3 (DS) Review

Today my plan is to post a pair of classic reviews of mine. These were some of my earliest reviews ever written. I think you can tell by the quality, no? Here's the very first of two classics, Mario Hoops 3-on-3 for the Nintendo DS.

Not exactly a slam dunk.

Let's see, Mario's done kart racing, refereeing, baseball, tennis, golf, and now he's entering another sport with Mario Hoops 3-on-3, a title developed by Square-Enix. As the title suggests you play on teams of three on a variety of courts stemming from Mushroom Kingdom lore. After choosing your team of three superstars-- each with their own strengths and weaknesses-- you're ready to school your opponents in a round of B-ball.

Mario takes it to the fridge.

You can play the game simply with the stylus, but I felt that those controls were too confusing so I switched to the help buttons which allow you to play with a conventional control style. You don't just simply score baskets in Mario Hoops. Instead you dribble around the court bouncing the ball over item boxes which will increase the amount of coins you have. This tally goes up to one hundred coins. Then you try to score a basket. The amount of coins you saved up plus the coin score for where you shot the ball equals how many points you earn. Additionally you can perform special shots for each character when using the stylus for more points. Thus games that have scores such as 405-350 are commonplace in the world of Mario Hoops.

Defensive players can pick up items from the aforementioned item blocks to use on opponents. Such items include the infamous invincibility starman, green shells which bounce all over the court, and banana peels to slip up the competition to name a few. Normal basketball moves such as stealing, passing, dribbling, and guarding the net are mainstays in the NBA and are present in Mario Hoops.

DK gets ready to slam dunk that mother.

There are various modes in Mario Hoops. Challenge mode features tasks like dribble races to see how fast you can pick up a certain number of coins to learning how to play the game in Practice mode. Tourney is the main mode of Mario Hoops. This is a three round trial that goes from the Mushroom Cup all the way to the four round Special Cup. Performing specific objectives in this mode will reward you with new basketballs (like the Cheep Cheep and platinum balls) and new players for your team such as the White Mage from the Final Fantasy.

A problem with this game is that your CPU characters never help out. You can simply pass to them, and you'll take over for them. Your teammates will never block for you, help steal from the other team, or use items to assist you. This is all the while you have three opponents who WILL do all of the aforementioned tasks that your own teammates won't ever do. Not fair at all, and it will cause you to get frustrated in the later stages of the game combined with the steal-hungry CPU players. The confusing stylus controls don't offer anything intuitive either.

A handful of Final Fantasy characters
are included in Mario Hoops.

Mario Hoops isn't a horrible game though. It retains a lot of charm of the Mario franchise with some beautiful courts and catchy tunes. However, the difficulty of the game and your lackluster AI friends will only aggravate most gamers. Those expecting an easy game should look elsewhere as Mario Hoops is definitely not cake.

[SuperPhillip Says: 5.25/10]