Mario Smash Football isn't your ordinary friendly Sunday morning five-a-side football match; get ready to join Mario and other well-known Mushroom Kingdom superstars like Donkey Kong, Wario and even Princess Peach and Daisy (both wearing rather skimpy sports numbers), as they put past friendships behind them and battle it out for first place and bragging rights.

Nintendo and Next Level Games have released a new Mario game to add to the long list of Mario spin-offs. Like every Mario game that Nintendo releases, there's always explosions, super moves, jaw-dropping graphics, explosions, wacky weapons and power-ups, explosions (and don't forget explosions). Get ready to create havoc and mayhem while at the same time teeing up a super strike that will land your team a well needed two points. The big question is: can Mario Smash Football be good enough to compete against the likes of FIFA 06 and Pro Evolution Soccer 5?

Where do I start? Well, just like in Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, as soon as you press the Start button on the controller, you're pulled straight into the action. You have the choice of picking five different main game options; Grudge Match, Cup Battles, Super Cup Battles, Custom Battles and Strikers 101. A word of advice, if you play any game as bad as my sister does (in Halo 2, in a 30 Minute Deathmatch event, she got an overall score of -2 kills, yes, that is a minus sign!) it would be best to go straight to Strikers 101, which gives you the complete low down of the buttons and controls in the game. Here you can play a practice match against a computer controlled team while at the same time learning the buttons until you're ready play real cup matches. The simplicity of the buttons and moves are a godsend and you will find that learning how to do a perfect pass and a super strike only takes a matter of seconds. Just from Strikers 101, you soon understand how very diverse the game is compared to other football games and how easy it is to be totally overcome by the sheer pace and excitement that you will have to keep up with.

The matches are easy to get into. Before each match, you choose a captain from the choice of eight well-known Nintendo characters: Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, Wario, Waluigi and Daisy, and after this you must choose a group of sidekicks that make up the rest of your team. You have a choice of choosing one group of sidekicks from four: Toad, Hammer Bros., Koopa and Birdo (a bit of Nintendo nostalgia comes to mind!) The concept of sidekicks in this game is one thing that many people seem to get confused about before they play (it certainly confused me). The sidekicks that you choose are just three of the same character, for instance, your team would consist of Mario as your team captain and then three Toads (that look exactly the same) as your sidekicks. Why Nintendo and Next Level Games chose to go for this format for teams is beyond me (I was hoping you could create your own team that would have characters like Mario, Luigi, Donkey Kong and Bowser all on the same side) but at least you get to have a crazy crocodile as your Goalkeeper.

Once your team is set up, all you need to do is pick which stadium you wish to play in. At the start of the game you only have the choice of three stadiums, but as you progress more stadiums become available to play in. There are different terrains on each field and although they don't affect the way your team plays, the fact that each field is individually designed is reason enough to praise the efforts that the developers have put into the designs. Every field has a very special and effective electric fence around the edge and these can be a big help if your opponent is looking dangerous in front of your goal. Tactically, if you think that your opponent is in a good position to score, then the best thing would be to hit him/her hard enough so that they're sent flying towards the electric fence - this should give your team possession of the ball and leave your opponent comically fried! Entertainingly, each character in the game has their own sounds of pain when they are hit on the fence, from Luigi's "Mama Mia" to Princess Peach's screams of agony; all of these sounds never fail to make you chuckle!

Probably the most important move in the whole game is the Super Strike. This move can only be performed by your team's captain (unless you have the secret team) and is executed by holding the B button long enough so that a golf-like swing bar with green sections is displayed below the captain. By pressing B twice on the green sections of the bar afterwards, your captain unleashes a powerful shot towards goal. If carried out correctly, the shot will go through to the back of the net and land your team two points. However, if done incorrectly, the goalkeeper will hit it straight back towards your captain, knocking him or her over. This move is great if you need to get an easy two points and also perfect if you're playing catch-up as well.

The game developers have intelligently put in special bullet-time events, where the game slows down when a character on a team is about to take a shot towards goal. These bullet-time events only happen when a character on a team has passed to another character that is close to the goal, either on the ground or in the air. The game slows down as the character on the receiving end charges up to strike the ball straight towards goal. The bullet-time events are great when you are playing multiplayer with friends; it gives you the satisfaction of seeing your captain score an overhead bicycle kick in slow motion against your friend's team!

As with every single Mario spin-off game, there are wacky, crazy, gigantic, annoying and explosive power-ups to play around with, and MSF is no exception (the Bob-Ombs are back and with a mighty vengeance!). The game allows you to use an array of power-ups that can cause absolute chaos on the pitch and can really turn the tides of a match. There are banana skins, mushrooms, green, red and blue shells, bombs, the famous Mario Stars and the infamous Bowser Chain-Chomps. These power-ups are great to use but can only be obtained if a player on a team has been tackled or hit without the ball, or if the goalkeeper saves a charged up shot from an opposing team. Like in Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, power-ups such as the Mario stars or Chain-Chomps are rarely obtained, and the team that gets these power-ups are the team that is usually struggling to score. Power-ups should most often be used tactically, as they can really be helpful, especially if your team has lost possession of the ball and you need to get the ball back quickly and easily. However, weapons like the banana skins, shells and bombs should always be used carefully; you don't want your own team to trip over your own banana skin, get hit by a rebounded shell or be blown up in the air by a giant Bob-Omb. Really, a Mario game isn't a Mario game without the power-ups!

Where's Bowser? Unfortunately, our loveable adversary didn't make the cut as a team captain in MSF (this was more of a shock to me than it was to anyone else that I know; I love Bowser!) but don't worry Bowser fans, he still makes a menacing appearance in the game. In every match, at random times, you will often see Bowser drop from the sky onto the match field and cause all kinds of havoc for both teams. This havoc can include unleashing giant shells everywhere, breathing fire from his giant mouth or even tilting the whole field, which makes it a harder task for one team to score and an easier task for another team to score. His presence, though temporary, can be a real thorn in any team's game plan, so anticipating when he will drop from the sky is one thing you should really look out for. Viva La Bowser!

Once you've come first, second or third in all the normal Cup battles in Novice difficulty, your next objective is to come first, second, or third in the Super Cup battles. Super Cup battles are just cup battles with more teams and this time, you're forced to play in the Professional difficulty. Before I played in professional, I didn't lose any matches in novice (in fact, I was able to win 32-2 against Donkey Kong's team in five minutes), so I felt confident that playing in professional would be an easy walk-over for my team. How wrong I was! There is a huge gap in the difficulty between Novice and Professional and if you're not prepared, your team will end up losing matches quite easily. In professional mode, it is harder to keep possession of the ball and if your captain tries to perform a Super Strike, a nearby defender on the opposing team will run up and tackle him or her before they can strike the ball. The other modes of difficulty in this game are Superstar and Legend (Legend being the hardest difficulty in the game). Unless you're a thrill seeker and love challenges, I advise you to never attempt at even trying to play against a computer-controlled team in Legend difficulty - when I played against the computer in Legend, the computer's captain was able to score five perfect Super Strikes in the space of a minute!

Bonus trophies and unlockable cheats are obtained when certain objectives have been completed. The bonus trophies are given to your team when they do a certain thing a certain amount of times in a match. For example, your team will get a bronze Sniper Trophy if your team scores 75 goals in cup battles and get a Gold Veteran Trophy if you play 100 matches or more in Cup battles. Cheats are unlocked when a certain gold trophy is obtained or a certain cup battle cup is won. These bonus trophies and cheats are there to lengthen the game and give each player an incentive to keep on playing.

Mario Smash Football has no red cards, no injuries and no referees; it's just complete and pure mayhem and you would be hard-pressed to find someone that hasn't wanted to hit Princess Peach so hard that she is sent flying towards an electric fence that will surely knock her out for a few seconds (or maybe that's just me!) The graphics and characters are beautifully rendered (though the crowds in the match backgrounds looked lifeless sometimes) and the comic voices of each character in the game are a great bonus. The buttons and the controls are very responsive and easy to learn, so I was able to quickly get into this game. The gameplay is exciting and electric and the multiplayer matches are the most fun that you could possibly ever have in a Nintendo game. Unfortunately, the amount of things to do is very limited. Apart from the secret levels and teams that you can get, plus the bonus trophies and cheats to unlock, you are left with nothing else. It took my brother and I just three days to complete this game and we got bored with it soon afterwards. This came as a major disappointment, as the likes of Mario Kart just last and last. We thought that a new Mario game would be another welcome addition to our growing games collection and we are both FIFA fans as well, so the concept of a Mario football game excited us. It's still a great game, but a lot more short lived that I was hoping for.

If you love the film Shaolin Soccer and you love a game that mixes fast paced gameplay, great multiplayer excitement and Mario, then you'll love Mario Smash Football. However, if you can't get enough of FIFA 06 or Pro Evolution Soccer 5 and it's another football sim you're looking for, then this is definitely not the game for you! Mario Smash Football isn't trying to be a simulator, it's an all-out arcade style game that's huge fun while it lasts, and while it will make a great addition to your collection, the novelty and fun might wear thin a little sooner than you'd hoped. At the end of the day though it is a Mario game, and as per usual Nintendo have pulled out all the stops to make it as colourful, fun and exciting as the rest of the range, so if you love Nintendo's style, you really can't go wrong with a bit of football, Mario style!

Reviewed by Nathaniel Folayan for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).