Everyone knows who Mario is and most are familiar with his brother Luigi and his biggest enemy Bowser. Generally you can bet that a Mario game is going to be great, sometime games like Mario Party or Mario and sonic at the Olympic games are not to everyones liking, but the single player Mario games are some of the best around. An example of this would be Mario Galaxy which was voted by many to be the best game of last year. Here however is a Mario game for the Nintendo DS, which is the handheld console from Nintendo that has sold over 100 million worldwide! In this game you will play not only as The super Mario Brothers but also Bowser and trust me you will not be dissapointed
The gameplay-
As with previous Mario games for the Nintendo DS this game is a RPG. This means you take on the roles of Mario, Luigi and Bowser making them stronger as you progress throughout the game. The characters grow stronger via levels. All three start at level one when you begin the game, as you fight in battles with the characters they gain experiance points. Once you have attained enough experiance points you will go up to level two increasing in power in the process. Going up a level gives you more health, better defence, higher attack power and more! The bulk of the gameplay sees you controling the characters through the world and occasionally coming across enemies. When this happenes the screen changes and you go to battle mode, this follows a turn based strategy format. Rather than a free for all fight each character gets a turn to attack or use an item or a special move. For example on Mario's turn you may decide to jump on the enemies head, you select this from a menu and the attack begins. Here however you have to time button presses to deal maximum damage. The same goes for defending. When an enemy attacks you there is a chance to tactically press a button allowing you to avoid being hurt. This goes on until the enemy has no more health. I really enjoyed the gameplay of this game. Sometimes an RPG can get a bit boring as you simply choose to attack an enemy and then watch your character carry out the commands without any interaction. Here however the involvement in the moves makes the game much funner and more rewarding. The element of growing in levels also means you get different moves as you progress. You get a hammer for example to give enemies a good wack with! I feel that this game doesn't use the touch screen functionality enough but whilst this should be a negative I realised as I played that its addition may not have been welcome. The extra element of the touch screen may have confused things too much. The game does however use the potential of having two screens very well, Bowser in controlled on the top screen, whilst mario and luigi are on the bottom screen.
The plot - The game follows a very familiar style of plt, this timehowever there is a twist. There is a new enemy on the scene who is causing havoc. Marios friends are ill and no one knows why.
After a mysterious character feeds Bowser a "special" mushroom he goes beserk and starts to suck everything in around him like a vaccum. This intevitably leads to Mario and Luigi being sucked up. Here is the twist. Whilst you control Bowser in the main world, Mario and Luigi have been shrunk and you control them inside bowsers body! As you control bowser its possible to have him do things to alter whats going on inside. This can involve drinking water to flood his insides to help Mario and Luigi get to never before seen places! This element has been thought out really well, sometimes you have to stimulate bowsers arm muscles to make him stronger and other such wacky things! The adventure continues with all three charactes trying to work together to restore some normality! What I like most about the story was how funny it was the script was really well written! I was worried it may be too childish but the game was really enjoyable and a joy to play!
Sounds and music - The DS being handheld you do have the problem of small speakers but I felt the music still came through well. There were no memorable tunesbut the scene was always set nicely as you would expect and the sound effects were classic Nintendo and quite nostaligic. Fans of Mario will enjoy this more than newcomers to the series however!
Longevity - This is a reasonably long game with experianced gamers pushing the 15 hour mark. There not many good side quests as with many RPG's but this is on a handheld device and so cannot be as in depth as other similar games! You will probably play it again somewhere down the line or if you like it you could trade it in for the new pokemon game that will be out soon which is also an RPG. There is no mulitplayer mode on this game which may be a dissapointment to some but you really do not need it on a game like this. It is intended to be a single player.
Graphics - You will not graphics like that on the wii but they are still quite pleasent on the eyes. The colours are all rich and the whole game is really bright. The developers have done a great job and have probably got the most out of the DS!
This is without a doubt one of the best games currently out on the DS. I realise a lotof new gamers have bought a DS due to the range of games that are out. I do suggest buying thisgame for an idea of what games can offer. There is a lot of rubbish out on the DS from developers simply trying to benefit from its success. For around 20 pounds this game is also good value for money. In gaming magazines it seems to be getting scores of over 90% and I would agree with that giving it 9 out of 10 easily!
The worlds in danger....call a plumber! 
