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Preview: In Space, no one can hear you Wahoo!

Game: Super Mario Galaxy	Developer: In-House	Publisher: Nintendo
Console: Wii	Release Date: TBA

In space, no one can hear you be sick. In your living room, they might.

The E3 video footage of Super Mario Galaxy left us feeling sick in parts, but not necessarily in a bad way. For a start, the first thing you see is our favourite Italian plumber spinning around rapidly in a variety of angles, which, if you put yourself in his position, would make you feel a little queasy.

This passes though as you're distracted by the friendly letters that spell out "Point at Mario and press the B button". Moving the Wiimote moves the small yellow star with a fading blue trail behind it, and squeezing the trigger-like B button releases Mario from his bubble, replacing the instructions at the top with the sufficiently Mario-esque "Welcome to Star World".

This initial bubble-popping exercise could be a number of things. It could simply be the system in place to activate the level, or a simply tutorial to tell the players how to get started. Alternatively, it could be an in-built, last minute calibration system to check that the Wiimote is still working properly. With all this emphasis on motion control, Nintendo probably want to get it right.

As Mario drops casually to the ground and you start playing with the controls, the sickness returns in the form of a headache. Now you have to wrap your prehistoric gaming mind around the fact that, in a rare turn of events, you have to control two things at the same time. The nunchuck and its analogue stick controls the moustachioed drainpipe attendant, while the Wiimote controls the star-shaped cursor.

For a brief second, you feel confusion, but the video footage continues instantly as the player starts to enjoy the new control system. From the looks of things, it seems like it might be quite an intuitive and simple system, but only time and a release of the final game will tell.

If you are confused, Toad-haters will also start to feel sick. A number of the walking, talking fungi are on hand throughout Star World and some of it's accompanying asteroids and planetoids (or 'Oids as they shall be know hereafter) to give players a tutorial in the controls. Or you can just work it out for yourself.

The player in the video seemed to do reasonably well. First, when unfortunately falling off a cliff on the first 'Oid, he (or she) discovered that some of Mario's moves are back, including the fall-cushioning Ground Pound. These are probably control by nunchuck triggers, in order to avoid confusion.

Second, s/he discovered that wiggling the Wiimote while the cursor targeted some bells activated them, causing them to ring out. In fact, wiggling seems to be the order of the day here. In the case of the bells, it caused a trail of twenty musical notes to appear. Successful collection of these awarded the player with the familiar green 1up mushroom. Nearby, a circle of rocks was subject to a wiggle, crushing them nicely to reveal a few of those all-important coins. A recurring example is the spinning star shapes that hover above the ground. Positioning Mario near one of these and activating it with a skilful wiggle will send him hurtling into the stratosphere until he reaches the next 'Oid. While this seems to be rigidly on rails, you catch glimpses of countless more 'Oids, which suggests that each level will have plenty to explore.

An important use of wiggling, however, is in combat. While Mario can just on the unsuspecting Goombas, as he has done since time immemorial, other enemies must be taken out by a different method. Towards the end of the demo, Mario encounters a Pokey that could only be harmed by standing closing to the conveniently-placed coconut and spinning the Wiimote. Doing so sends Mario into a spin jump, knocking the coconut towards the enemy.

Throughout the demo, Mario also encounters a number of small, rough jewels which a Toad informs you are Star Shards. The significance of the Shards hasn't been explained yet, but at points they join you as you fly to the next 'Oid. Judging from the interface in the bottom-left corner of the screen, players have to collect one hundred Star Shards from Star World in order to move on to the next level. This may make you feel sick as you realise it's another collection-based Mario game, but then, if you didn't like those type of games, you wouldn't be playing this, would you?

The interface itself, bearing the usual coin and life counts as well as the traditional circular health meter, disappears after a few seconds, so nothing distracts from the beauty of the game. And it is beautiful. At the beginning of Star World, you're on a large 'Oid on a sandy beach, which a rippling ocean that could have been ripped straight from Super Mario Sunshine. Indeed, Galaxy is closest compared with the plumber's vacation-based GameCube outing, as even some elements of the interface are all but identical to that which accompanied you around Isle Delphino. Some 'Oids are home to flowerbeds and tufts of grass, all of which rustle nicely as you barge through them with your lasagne-laden gut. Perhaps the thought of that will make you sick as well.

But what will really make you sick is the camera angle. The footage we saw didn't get stuck in a corner or suffer from screen-rocking spasms like so many poorly programmed cameras that have haunted our gaming past. On the contrary, this camera obediently stays behind our nimble Italian protagonist, which is good news if you like staring at Mario's backside all day. The problems arise, however, when he traverses some of the smaller 'Oids.

Super Mario Galaxy is possibly the most three-dimensional game that Mario has ever appeared in, in that he can walk on every inch of each 'Oid, offering a stupid number of angles to each level. So, while a starshape could sending you flying to the top of one 'Oid, another on either side would send you in a completely different direction. Two-dimensional mapping in future guidebooks will not be possible. As a result, however, the camera often ends up in a mind-bending and stomach-churning angle where you see an upside down Mario at a 45-degree angle. Even when watching the video footage, it's hard not to tilt your head to compensate.

The final thing that made us sick was the fact that no release date has been confirmed or hinted, no story details have been revealed (though our money's on that Koopa bloke being behind it all) and, worse still, no one has explained how Mario can survive in space without a suit on. But that's Nintendo for you; stringing you along with some highly promising footage and the yearn to explore every inch of a galaxy far, far a-wiggle. Pass me the brown paper bag.

(For UK readers, the footage used for this preview is available on the DVD that comes free with Issue 5 of Nintendo Official Magazine)

Already published at NintendoSpin - here

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