GC'07: Super Mario Galaxy Preview

The cultural Icon is back, and you're going to fall in love all over again. There really isn't any other game that has quite the same magical feel to it that a Mario game does. Like a good Pixar movie, Mario games can be enjoyed equally as much by young children and adults. Is it looking like Super Mario Galaxy will live up to the rich heritage that precedes it? As if I even had to ask that question! Of course it is.

At the Leipzig Games Convention recently we had the opportunity to play demos of four different levels: the Gateway Galaxy, Egg Planet Galaxy, Honeybee Galaxy and Stardust Galaxy. Of these four, perhaps it was the Honeybee Galaxy that was the most interesting, due to the novel way Nintendo have got Mario reaching for the sky on the Wii.

In Super Mario Bros. 3 on the NES it was a racoon's tale which allowed Mario to get airborne; in Super Mario 64 he took to the sky with a pair of angelic wings attached to his hat and in Super Mario Galaxy it's a brown and yellow striped mushroom that does the trick. When you get Mario to gulp down one of these fungal oddities he dons a bee suit and some translucent insectoid wings. Successfully kitted out as one of the hive, Mario then proceeds to stick his butt in the air and buzz away. The result is the usual limited time period to flutter around before having to return to solid ground to recharge, and it's as fun as it ever was.

The rest of the Honeybee Galaxy demo was the usual set of imaginative Mario antics, pitting you up against a sticky wall of honey in order to reach the queen bee, who has a scratch she wants you to itch. It was pure Mario gold in the classic format, rather than the new planetary style. Anyway, it was the other three Galaxy demos that showed the more revolutionary aspects of Super Mario Galaxy. Super Mario 64 was brilliant because it moved the series forward from the 2D platform game it had been previously, into a whole new way of experiencing Mario. In fact, it's fair to say that Super Mario 64 moved the platform game genre forward in leaps and bounds when it was crying out for a stern kick up the backside. Super Mario Sunshine on the Gamecube was more of an evolution of the Super Mario 64 format but now, with Super Mario Galaxy, the series is back to its pioneering ways.

This isn't simply because of a seamless integration with the Wii remote and nunchuk. Well, the Wii handsets are seamlessly integrated and feel great to play with, but that's not what is so incredulously groundbreaking here. Many of the galaxies featured a number of planets to play through, and we're calling them planets in the loosest possible way as there are hollowed out planets, apple shaving planets, planets with holes through them and just generally oblong balls of rock. The brilliant thing about these planets is how the gravity works across their surfaces.

For example, on the hollowed out planet in the Gateway Galaxy, walking across its spherical outer surface was as normal as you'd expect. However, once you got inside the planet there was a kind of reverse gravity effect where you stuck to the spherical ceiling (for want of a better phrase). I've never seen anything quite like it in a computer game - it's original like the first barrel that Mario ever jumped over. The crazy uses of gravity continue as you encounter a corkscrew shaped apple shaving in the Egg Planet Galaxy, where you twist and turn your way across its spiralling surface, and I'm sure there are numerous more inventive planetary/gravitational incarnations throughout the full game.

These 'planets' were the foundation of the gameplay in the demos we played, although there were some other cool features worthy of note. In the Stardust Galaxy demo you had to pull yourself from one place to another by pointing at and selecting blue stars with your Wii remote. Once selected, the blue star had a kind of tractor beam effect on Mario. The upshot of the gameplay was that you ended up slingshotting yourself from one place to another via the tractor beams of each blue star. Eventually you'd get close enough to one object's gravitational pull to set down on its surface. Later on in this level you end up freeing a bunch of crystallised toads (fungi not amphibians) who then set you on some classic platform style play - rollicking good fun!

The demo levels we played concluded with you finding a large yellow star in each area, which was often preceded by travelling across a number of planets where you'd try and solve perfectly weighted puzzles. The puzzles felt platform-like in style, but were that bit more challenging and created a greater sense of freedom as to how you attacked them (the format that Super Mario 64 originally championed). More importantly, they're accessible to young children (all of which should be playing the game on the National Curriculum) but also open to adults in ways that are heartily enjoyable and easy going.

Solving each individual planet culminated in finding star shaped hoops that you'd jump through, which then catapulted you over to the next area by a flick of the Wii remote. And, speaking of the Wii remote, it's everything we'd hoped for on Mario. The controls are simple, mostly requiring pointing the Wii remote to pick-up crystals etc. and a flick of the wrists for various actions, but they're also very responsive and blend in effortlessly to Mario's perfectly simple style of gameplay.

Combat consists of a flick of the wrists performs a spinning attack which allows Mario to kick-aside smaller aggressors, with a second flick sending them spiralling off into space. You can also jump on enemies in a more classic style of attack to pick-up some crystals for your efforts. The demo levels we played also suggest that there will be a wide range of more daunting foes. One of these was a huge lizard/venus flytrap hybrid which had an old-skool boss weak point. By getting around behind it and kicking its tail, the creature's appendage than swung around like a swingball and hit it on the head. It's touches like this that will please kids, adults and hardcore Nintendo fans in equal measures, which is exactly what Super Mario on the Wii should be doing.

There was a time (particularly throughout the 16-bit generation of games machines) when it seemed like every other game was a platformer. In the 21st century, platform games have receded onto handheld systems (e.g. the DS and the PSP) with only a select few game series evolving enough out of the 2D platform game confines to get releases on the latest table-top consoles. Of these select few, Mario has proven itself to be by far and away the top dog and Super Mario Galaxy will put the series in a gaming genre all of its own.