Trends in the Mario RPGs?

There is really no way to make fingers pop up in Mario's model without eating into DS processing power. Hands are fairly complex models (still easier to create than faces, though), and the model is simplified to be a simplistic block with finger textures to make it resemble a closed fist. It's possible to create a model where two fingers jut out, but I don't think it'll look very good. In the N64 version, Mario's hands has only one color in the textures, so he can just get away by simply adding two blocks on top of his hands to give the illusion of fingers. I don't think the DS version has the same degree of freedom.