For those unfamiliar with the Super Dodgeball series, it began with Super Dodgeball on the NES in 1989. As part of the infamous Kunio-Kon series (which also included titles like River City Ransom and Renegade), it sparked several Japanese sequels but didn't rear its head in North America again until an unofficial sequel came out for the Game Boy Advance in 2000. Now, after eight years on the shelf, the series comes to the DS and returns to its roots, although it may be adhering to those roots a little too strongly. As a fan of the original Super Dodgeball on NES, I can vouch for the fact that this game brings back everything from the original game; the problem is that it doesn't bring much with it besides the original game.

Basically, Super Dodgeball Brawlers is a ridiculous form of dodgeball. There are two sides of the court and seven players to a team, but only four players are in play at any one time. The other three patrol the three boundaries of your opponent's side of the court. Each player has a certain amount of stamina that they lose every time they are hit. Once every player on a team is knocked out, it's game over. There are also special shots, weapons, and melee attacks that add to the mayhem and arcade feel.

You can play a single game of dodgeball if you so desire, but the game’s main mode is Career mode. Career mode allows you to take a team of your choosing – either one of the game's country-specific teams or a team of your own creation - and play through approximately ten games of dodgeball until you are world champion. While this mode is where the bulk of your play time will probably reside, it can be beaten in an hour. However, the game encourages you to replay this mode over and over again for the sake of a fairly pointless team level-up system. For each game that you win, you earn experience points and money. The experience points level-up your characters, but this process offers no real advantage besides bragging rights. The money allows you to buy equipment that can make your players more proficient in one of the game's numerous statistical categories. Each player can only wear one piece of equipment at a time, and equipment deteriorates if its owner gets hit hard.

Returning from the original Super Dodgeball is Brawl mode, an eight-player game with no court. A dodgeball is thrown into a screen with eight players and only the strongest survives. The Locker Room feature allows you to create your own teams from scratch; you can either create your own players, or pick your favorites from all of the other teams of varying nationalities.

The controls and gameplay, however, are where Super Dodgeball Brawlers excels. The controls are quite simple, and actually not all that different from the two-button NES controller setup. There aren't a lot of DS-specific controls used here, but tapping the touch screen lets loose the "Nekketsu Burst", a special meter that increases over time and unleashes a move of your choosing (ranging from hard-hitting throws to added defense). The touch screen is also used successfully as an in-game stat board.

While there is no online play in this game, there is an option for local multiplayer play for VS. mode and Brawl mode. Though I was unable to find anyone else with a copy of the game to test multi-card play, I was able to test single-card play and it really is a bright spot. The fun and intuitive gameplay from single player translates well to the multiplayer mode.

Super Dodgeball Brawlers rekindles some wonderful memories of my time spent with the original game, but it doesn't offer enough new features to make it a must-have or even give it a decent degree of replayability. The new content ultimately consists of local multiplayer, new melee attacks and weapons, and some additional customization options. This game was already done twenty years ago, and anyone besides die-hard fans of the series will find little reason to do it again.