There's a moment with Drag x Drive that I'm just getting to grips with. I think there's potentially a lot of strategy in this moment, a lot of gamesmanship. But Nintendo's latest multiplayer confection is new and quite nuanced and so the entire playerbase is currently getting to grips with it too. I am genuinely fascinated to see, in a week or so, how it's all playing out.

Drag x Drive is wheelchair basketball - three-on-three most of the time but the best games I've had have actually been two-on-two. Anyway, this moment I'm talking about comes just after your team score, and a sort of seismic nudge pushes all rival players - that's you if you've just scored - away from the hoop so the team that just lost a point can get the ball and do something with it.

All great. But what this means is that you've just been shunted out of the shooting area (I am not a basketball fan, as my somewhat vaporous terminology should have made clear) but you're still right by the enemy hoop. You can turn around quickly and be in a perfect position to face the action when your enemies are coming out with the ball. What do they do about this? What do you do about it? What do they do about what you're doing about it? I am excited to see how really good players shake this all out.

After a very brief afternoon with the game, I'm broadly on board with Drag x Drive. For one thing, Nintendo has been very slow with accessibility over the years, which means players with disabilities have been neglected when it comes to the company's games. On the Switch 2 you have an interesting attempt at closing the accessibility gap with some console-level button-remapping options, and here in Drag x Drive you have legit representation too. It's lovely to see. It's a start, albeit a belated start. (Although even then, as one wheelchair user rightfully pointed out on reddit, there's a profoundly disappointing irony in a game based on wheelchair sports still being unplayable for many of those who use wheelchairs themselves, thanks to the nature of its control scheme. Nintendo still has quite some way to go here.)

As for the game itself, it's both bare-bones and fascinating so far. I'll deal with the fascinating stuff first. Nintendo's clearly using the game to get people used to its mouse-style controls, where you place the Joy Cons flat on a surface and generally move them around to direct a mouse-pointer. You do that in the menus here, but in-game you use each Joy Con as an arm, left and right, and you use left and right arms to propel your wheelchair around.

It's simple, but it takes getting used to. Just use the left arm and you'll steer to the right. Just use the right and you'll steer to the left. To move forward you need to use both, basically pulling and then lifting and pulling again. One of the triggers on each Joy Con allows you to grip the wheel it's controlling, which means you can do very sudden turns. You can also grip the wheels to tilt the wheelchair, and you can do a bit of fancy gripping and lifting to pull off a deeply satisfying bunny hop by tilting one way and then the other.

These higher level things build into the game's spare but fun trick system, which gives you more points for baskets when you did something cool on the way there. The trick system is also the reason the edges of the playing area curve upwards: it's so you can get air and do tricks while you're up there. Otherwise, it's pretty straight three-on-three wheelchair basketball, albeit with the odd tweak. You can pass to team-mates, you can ram enemies who have the ball to try and get it off them and once you have the ball you have a countdown of 14 seconds in which to make a shot, which you do by lifting and flicking a Joy Con. It's lovely stuff.

It's also surprisingly knackering. Wheelchair sports have always struck me as being supremely hardcore and cardio based, and even this digital one still takes it out of me a bit. By the end of a few games I'm often sweating a little and my forearms hurt like they do after a swimming lesson. On the court it's properly brutal stuff too. Collisions have real heft to them, and the game's wonderfully deft at making you develop rivalries. There are also ways to be nice, though, with buttons that allow you to shrug off sleights, and a lovely system where you can wave your hand and someone else can give you a high five.

I'm not surprised by how bloodthirsty the matches are because it's wheelchair basketball and that's a fearsome thing. I'm also not surprised by how technical this game already seems to be. Within a morning of playing there are people out there who are thunderously good at Drag x Drive. Just to watch them, to be flattened by them, is a thing of beauty. I can see this going the way of Splatoon a little: I'm enjoying it now in the early days because I think I'm going to be pushed out in terms of skill very soon. Unlike Splatoon, however, I think the player base is going to be as small as it is obsessed. The deeply physical control system alone means this is not a game for everyone and the offline mode against bots is a bit rubbish, although at least the bots pass!

I'm reading reports that the fun is fairly thin in Drag x Drive, and I don't think that's quite right. I think the meta of the matches themselves is going to be deep and fast and fascinating. But I do agree that outside of the matches it's a slim suite of things to do. There are mini-games to play between matches, but I don't love their waypoint races or skipping challenges from my limited exposure to them. I do love the setting more than I thought I would: it's one of those liminal sports centres with a retro-futuristic tinge to it. It's no Nintendo Switch Sports - throw me a bookstore that's also a coffee shop - but I love the echoey feel to the hall.

It's still early days for me with Drag x Drive, and again, I think in a week I'll be too useless to have a great deal of fun. But there's something here I really like. It's the kind of basic template that could turn into something quite special if it's allowed to.

A copy of Drag x Drive was provided by Nintendo.