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Last week, we learned that representatives from EA Canada were in town and were available to show us the latest build of NBA Street V3 at EA’s Los Angeles offices. So, I made an appointment to fight the 405 freeway to see everything the game has to offer and find out just how Mario wound up playing B-Ball with the NBA.

To start off, we got the full story on how Nintendo’s star characters (Mario, Peach, and Luigi) came to learn the game of basketball on the mean streets against the NBA. Contrary to popular assumption, it wasn’t Nintendo’s idea at all. EA was looking for ways to tighten their relationship with Nintendo and somehow decided that the Mario characters might fit into the NBA Street series since the trick-based basketball game didn’t take itself too seriously. They put the Mario characters into a dunk contest and ran it by Mario’s creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, who liked the idea and gave them the green light.

Over the development of the title, EA brought the characters back to Nintendo multiple times for feedback. To their surprise, Nintendo had few restrictions on how to handle the characters. When designers thought that Nintendo might have issues with some of the fly moves or ask to have some classic Nintendo tunes tossed in, Nintendo instead eagerly responded that they wanted the Mario crew to have all the same cool street ball moves as the other players, and to keep the hip-hop music. One thing that did seem to have EA scratching their heads a bit is that Nintendo wouldn’t describe the characters in terms of height or weight measurements, but instead referred to how the characters should look against the environment. As icing on the cake, EA eventually added a Nintendo court with enormous green pipes and mushrooms in the background and old-school Nintendo graffiti on the buildings.

Because they weren’t made to be too different from the other players in the game, aside from a few classic sound effects, the Nintendo team actually fits in quite well. The team is available right out of the box, without requiring you to perform a list of stunts to unlock them. At this point, it appears that Luigi is turning out to be the best jumper and blocker on the team, but Mario and Peach are no slouches. They do have a bit of a natural disadvantage against the towering NBA players, but that varies from team to team. One minor problem that may not be ironed out before print is that if both players happen to choose the Nintendo team, there are no alternate costume schemes. As such, it can become rather disorienting trying to figure out which Mario you are controlling.

Now that we’ve told that story, let’s move on to the meat of the game. Like the previous games (and now NFL and FIFA spin-offs), NBA Street V3 takes star players and puts them in 3-on-3 games on neighborhood courts (many of them authentic courts from around the country) where the game is more about flash and reputation. As you take the ball to the hole, you’ll also be performing various tricks and combos, including new mid-air combos. You might slide a ball over the shoulder and between your legs, bounce it off the face of your opponent, or kick it against the backboard and catch in time to dunk. These tricks fill your Gamebreaker meter, which gives you an advantage to outside shots, and, when full, allows you to perform a Gamebreaker combo. A Gamebreaker amounts to showing off in full-force with your flashiest set of moves, and can involve passes to each player on the team to add their own set of stunts. Depending on how strong your Gamebreaker combos are, you can walk away with anywhere from two to four points and one point will be subtracted from the opposing team.

Like Nintendo’s sports titles, NBA Street is designed to be easy to pick and play, but with a lot of nuances that are tough to master. As you perform various tricks, they’ll be checked off the list in the menu, and you’ll unlock new “chapters” of moves as you complete your checklists, similar to the way tricks in the SSX series work. The checklists also allow you to look up moves, and if you wish, even rename your favorites to something more your style, like “ROX YOUR SOX”. The game also features a practice mode akin to those in fighting games, for you to get all those new moves down right before busting on your homeboys.

In addition to the two-player game, there’s also a dunk contest mode where you can pass the controller around to eight different people, trying to perform the wildest and highest-scoring dunks possible. You can only squeeze so many tricks in without missing the dunk, and you can even add in various props like tables or speakers to jump over and increase your ranking.

NBA Street V3 lets you customize downright next to everything. There’s create-a-player, and now a full create-a-court mode that has you choosing cities, neighborhoods, court texture, logos, posts, backboards, murals, graffiti, and more. You can make custom teams to pair up Mario with Shaq or whoever you might prefer. You can also customize the rules (like in Smash Bros.) to completely change the game so that only tricks count or only dunks count or that dunks are worth five points or that the first person to perform a Gamebreaker wins. And wouldn’t you know it, the guys at EA have even come up with a shoe creator that lets you pick various styles of shoes from brands like Rbk or Adidas, change panels, colors, text, and do whatever you need to get your shoes just right and cement your reputation on the court. Of course, nothing’s free, so if you want to build courts, players, and shoes, you’ll need to earn Street Points in the single player mode.

The single player Street Challenge mode goes beyond static tournament tree structures to give each person a unique experience every time they go through the game. You’ll start out by creating a player, home court, etc., and hook up with a couple no-names off the street to form your team. You’ll then progress through seventy days and nights of street ball challenges. Each day, a series of courts with different challenges will be available for you to choose from, and once a day is gone, those challenges are gone with it. The game keeps track of the decisions you make and adapts the options accordingly based on your preferences. You can even skip some days if there’s nothing to your liking, but that can hurt your reputation, which is important for wooing NBA players on to your team.

As your reputation builds, and the game progresses, the decisions you make can have very significant effects. For instance, say you’ve been invited onto a team of NBA players and begin playing a tournament that lasts several days. Each day you still have the choice whether or not to play in the tournament, but on the third day, you see that you’ve been given a one-time chance to go into a dunk contest against a legend like Dr. J. Do you pass up that chance and honor your team or do you risk getting kicked off the team for a shot at boosting your reputation? Other decisions might revolve around managing your team. Two team members may not get along and ask you to choose between them. Another team member may demand a high price to stay on the team, only to decide to leave a few days later.

All of this makes NBA Street V3 look like it will be quite a full experience for serious or casual sports fans and Nintendo fans too, now that they can watch Princess Peach trounce all over the NBA. EA also hinted that another star team will be announced later this week for an entirely different set of fans, so keep watching PGC for more updates.