Super Mario Galaxy

May 10, 2006

I had to be physically restrained and the controller wrestled from my hands after the ten-minute demonstration of Super Mario Galaxy, a game platform fans have been waiting for since Super Mario Sunshine. The demo begins on a grassy island, where Mario can perform his regulation jump-to-doublejump-to-triplejump antics like he never left Super Mario Sunshine island.

But wait a moment and produce the Wii remote, and point it at a trio of bells on an overhead arch, and waggle the remote furiously. When all three jingled, a series of 20 rainbow notes appeared on the pathway, granting a fabled 1up mushroom for my troubles. Naturally, there's coins hiding in the grass, but there was a ten minute timer running during the demo, and I needed to shift some Italian butt -- sharpish.

The Wii remote wrist-flicking is surprisingly intuitive, and becomes second nature around five minutes after the time you finish grinning from ear to ear at the boot-up screen. The sample zone I traversed was the equivalent of visiting a small Super Mario Sunshine stage, but with the various zones fragmented into dozens of planetoids, each with a star gate, and a choice of three bosses to face. More on those later.

For now, I ignored the instructions given by a Toad and launched myself through the star gate at the top of the grassy island, using the Wii Remote in an exaggerated scribble to gain additional speed. I soared upwards on a pre-set trajectory, into the heavens, and a series of floating space zones. Think of each as its own mini-game en route to a final boss battle and a Star collection.

A quick note on the "scribbling"; there's a friendly star cursor that follows you throughout your journey, and by pressing a button on the remote you can trace blue arcs through the air, which deliver a variety of responses. These included the spin attack (great for tackling Goombas waddling around the space rock I landed on), and the collection of all-new gem-like objects that float around the planets or in space. As you zoom through the air, or head towards a planet, you trace through groups of these objects essentially lassoing them into Mario as you progress.

Then you can jab the B-button and grab bright blue stars in a bubble, and encase yourself, darting across the void of space from point-to-point without losing grip and plummeting back to a previously visited spot. Naturally, there's multiple ways to maneuver through each zone. For example, I climbed a tower not by using the "bubble" move, but by triple-jumping and grabbing a ledge to pull myself up onto. Old-school Mario playing is hard to forget, and isn't forgotten here, it's simply supplemented by a host of wildly entertaining new moves.

The variety of planetoids on display was a great indication of the final game to come. With nothing like slowdown to worry about (perhaps the only problem was some slight graphical moiré shimmering on certain textures), you could pick a path and plummet through space. Tiny double asteroids with Goombas on them lead to a double-sided bigger piece of space rock with a grassy courtyard and cute house on one side, intersected by two bridges.

By following two white rabbits, I raced around the underside of the courtyard (with the camera keeping up perfectly) to a small, gloomy tower with floating. The gravity is strong on each planetoid's surface, and as you can cover most of them in seconds, there's sometimes some crazy sections where you run upside down which can be disorientating. Nintendo would argue this adds to the fun.

Other planetoids included a galleon floating through space, where Bob-ombs in bright blue attire fired off coconuts that you bounced back at them with a Wii remote swipe. Another was a tiny beach planet with a palm tree, coconuts, and a Pokey you needed to lob objects at, then butt-stomp on his head. Classic stuff! Yet another zone was a planet of glass with an inner core. To locate the star gate, you needed to find the hole, then run along a series of passageways beneath the glass to launch into the star gate. Even the flying was varied, with Mario spinning through asteroid belts and zones covered in gems to collect.

The various planetoids lead in three different directions to a boss battle, of which there were three. I landed on a giant metal ball with a huge Bob-omb like metal machine striding around its circumference. When one of his three giant feet landed, I climbed up them, dashed up his shiny leg, leapt over his cog joints, and jogged up to the top of his head. Here, I had to lead some Bullet Bills up and into a cage and explode it, releasing an interior cage. Repeating the plan, the star was mine.

Another boss was a giant spider with a terrible throbbing redness on all his extremities. Running around his circular (and vertical) domain, I jumped onto a sticky web strand and used the Wii remote as a bow-string. I traced a star on Mario, pulling the strand back and launching the plumber into the critter, bouncing it onto its back. Three pustule explosions later, the spider's web broke, vanished in a distance puff of smoke, and the second star was claimed.

The last boss in the demo was a giant squid-like foe with a moustache to rival the Italian Stallion himself, and a penchant for blowing flaming coconuts out of his nozzle. Dodging them, and ricocheting the ripe coconut he emitted infrequently, I was able to combo the same coconut into the squid continuously until he yielded to my scribbling prowess.

Those with previous experience of Super Mario Sunshine should know what to expect; you've got slightly more detailed visuals, crazy new planetoids that range from the tiny to the immense, a variety of new maneuvers thanks to the controller, and most importantly, that sense of wondrous enjoyment you had during all previous Mushroom Kingdom adventures. Super Mario Galaxy is quite simply out of this world.