Super Mario Galaxy Wii

The biggest game of the year for Nintendo keeps on impressing.

After this morning's Nintendo press conference had wrapped, we got a small window of opportunity to take a little breather back at the Leows hotel in Santa Monica for a little one-on-one time with Nintendo's Wii offerings. Needless to say, the biggest reason to be here was to get some quality hands-on time with Nintendo's biggest title of the year -- Super Mario Galaxy. Sadly, our play time was pretty limited, but what we sunk our teeth into was easily the most promising thing to come out of the first day of the show.

Having played SMG at last year's show and on a few other occasions, we were hankering for something new and fresh. That's exactly what we got. With remote and nunchuck in-hand, we dove straight into the first teaser level of the new demo. Mario is a on a quest to proceed through the gateway of heaven. A cute female character called Rosetta (who's official capacity is watcher of the stars) begs Mario to take on the awesome responsibility of saving all of the planets in the galaxy. From what, we're still not too sure, but she offered up the help of a little starlet creature called Tyke who would help Mario on his epic, low-gravity interstellar mission.

Starting out simple, we got to grips with the controls. Making Mario run around over the surface of the little planetoids is really easy. It's a little easy at first to get a bit disorientated, but after less than a minute (and discovering how to quickly center the camera) it was a snap. Jumping, double-jumping and triple-jumping are done with the main A button, while the B button makes Mario crouch down. Backflipping, wall jumping and butt stomping all make a welcomed appearance, but the new cool moves involved shaking the remote or nunchuck which make Mario bust out an awesome spin attack. Tackling an initial barrage of goombas was fun as we spun into them, knocking them upside down, and then running into them automatically caused us to hoof them away using a spiffy new kick attack.

Tyke kept trying to tell us something so we decided to listen. The first planet had a distressed starlet balking at the fact that his precious star ring had been smashed into five pieces and scattered across his area. Being the kind plumber he is, it was easy for us to guide Mario around the 360 degrees of the planetoid to retrieve all five pieces rather quickly. Nailing a few goombas, and spinning into a few ice blocks freed up the five star chips which then magically came together to form a whole star gate.

Urging us to jump into the star gate, the little resident of our current location said that this was the way to jump and fly through space to the next planet that needed our attention. A quick jump later, and Mario was gliding through the outer atmosphere towards a planetoid that had a very, very large Goomba patrolling its surface. It was time to put those moves to good use. Collecting coins allows Mario to boost up his health in case he takes a few hits. Mario can also collect different colored shards of rock that are uncovered as the environments are explored. The rocks are stockpiled, but can be used by a second player with a second remote controller.

This indirect addition of a second player allows a friend to aid and assist the main player in their quest. Not only can player two collect rock shards too, but they can shoot stockpiled shards back down to the surface of the planet to nail critters and help Mario's cause. Further, player two can actually interact with certain aspects of the game such as rolling boulders etc. by temporarily grabbing them and holding them down in place. This means that Mario can concentrate on more strategically important tasks other than worrying about being hit by these moving targets. Of course, the addition of a second controller will be totally optional and those players that don't want that extra help will be able to play through unhindered on their own.

After wailing on the mega-goomba and putting it to sleep, we found another star gate to trip through. This time, the planetoid's goal was to enter the core of the sphere and stop a huge golden grand star from being wrongfully used as an evil power source. The puzzle here involved sprinting around and triggering multiple switch blocks until they had all been changed from blue to yellow. Once this was done, the force field dropped and we were able to grab the valued prize and return order to the planet.

Mario's new bumblebee suit let's him fly around and gather coins.
That saw the end of our hands-on demo, but it was easily enough to boost our faith levels in this triple-A title from Nintendo. Super Mario Galaxy is easily to best-looking game on the system to date and approaches levels of visual fidelity that are close to the 360 and PS3 in many ways. Crisp, clean, vibrant visuals running at 60 frames per second is going to be standard for this one. With Metroid Prime 3: Corruption still to play, and Super Smash Bros. Brawl not showing at E3, we're betting that Mario comes out on top from Nintendo's line-up. It's going to be a classic addition to an already classic franchise. We can't wait for more.

Source From: GameSpy: Super Mario Galaxy Preview

Link to screenshots & Videos: IGN: Super Mario Galaxy Trailer, Videos and Movies

NinBoy's Thoughts: I seriously can not wait for this game. The games screenshots are very impressive and the game looks extraordinary! From what I've heard from different interviews and E3'ers, the game has some amazing gameplay capabilities. Anyway, I can't wait for the game and I'm sure its going to be great.