Super Mario Galaxy

By Tristan Clark

While the Wii launched with one of Nintendo’s favourite characters of all time (you know, that guy with the green cap and pointy ears), the game starring their even more famous icon won’t be coming out till sometime in 2007. Needless to say, the anticipation is reaching insane levels as gamers wait with bated breath for Super Mario Galaxy.

In SMG, you’ll be controlling Mario as he moves around on numerous planets in space. Each planet varies in size – some might be not much bigger than Mario himself, while others might be quite a lot bigger. You’ll do a lot of planet-hopping throughout the levels, soaring from one sphere to another as you complete puzzles and stomp bad guys.

The game will use both the Wii remote and the nunchuck attachment. The latter will obviously be used to move Mario around in the game, but things get more interesting with the remote. You’ll use it to move a star-shaped reticule on screen, and actually interact with many items or monsters with it. You can, for example, point it at enemies to freeze them in tracks, allowing you to guide Mario past them or get in an easy shot.

The graphics are looking really good at this stage, in a cartoony sort of way. Unlike many of the Wii launch titles, Super Mario Galaxy should be able to easily avoid the claim that it merely looks like a pretty GameCube game. Everything looks extremely clean, polished, and detailed – and the game world looks particularly vibrant and appealing.

The combination of control schemes has a lot of potential, and, if it’s pulled off, would really show what the Wii is capable of. And of course, it’s a Mario game – meanng it’ll likely be of an extremely high quality, no matter what happens. Keep an eye on this one in the coming months as more information is released.

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