At first, I had mixed feelings about Super Mario Strikers. The influx of Mario-branded sports games had me pretty worried about where this game might be headed. So far, most of those doubts have been unfounded.

A simple demo made its way to the E3 floor, with only a versus match available. One to four players can choose either the Mario team (which consists of him and koopa troopas, of all things), or the Donkey Kong team. Obviously, more teams are going to be available as the game progresses, so this is good enough for its first E3 showing.

Controls are fairly straight-forward, with A passing and B shooting (or tackling when you don't have the ball). X seems to be a special move of some sort, but I haven't seemed to quite figure that out yet. There are weapons to be found here, which cause major chaos. Huge chain chomps and koopa shells wreak havoc with the playing field. The rest of the game is just simple soccer. Hopefully, we'll learn more about this game as it progresses.