Preview: Super Mario Galaxy
Renowned Nintendo Game designer Shigeru Miyamoto showcases a brief, but scrumptious trailer of Super Mario Galaxy at GDC, and we've got all the juicy details.
Something about Shigeru's shroom-eating Italian plumber is so seductive that even after so many years, fans are still raving for more. There was definitely no doubt about it when Shigeru debuted a two minute preview of his legendary hero's newest adventure at the Game Developers Conference 2007 keynote and the room was packed full of eagerly waiting Nintendo fans.
The video begins by showing Mario rocket off a magical star into a stunning interstellar space filled with oddly shaped planetoids. One polka-dotted green planetoid looks like an egg, another looks like a gigantic red soccer ball, another appears to be a glass cylinder, and yet another looks like a wooden furniture piece. The floating bodies feature a variety of terrain, from rocky boulders, to grassy knolls, to lava-filled pits.
The planetoids appear to contain challenges that Mario has to encounter as he leaps through the cosmos, including battling fish bosses in underwater levels and eluding angry-looking caterpillars. One scene even has Mario running around a planetoid trying to escape the clutches of a bizarre, newly-hatched dinosaur / venus flytrap chimera.
In the trailer, Mario seems to fly from one planetary body to the next by running to "jump stars" located on each chunk of land that give him enough boost to travel great distances. Inter-planetary paths activated by jump-star traveling are marked by lines so that paths can be easily backtracked. But the trailer also reveals other means of travel. On one apple-shaped planetoid, Mario butt slams a knob, which triggers a great worm to spring out and connect to another area. Another planetoid sprouts a vine that Mario climbs to reach another piece of land. Mario can also float in protective bubbles or hang off gliding flower-like objects.
The cool thing about the world of Super Mario Galaxy is Mario's ability to walk around spheres. Mario "sticks" to the planets as he runs around, even in a seemingly upside down orientation. As a result, the player must constantly reorient to Mario's new perspective as he moves to new areas. The planetoids also ignore the rules of gravity, which frees the player to run through obstacles in interesting ways.
Even with all the new outer-space features, it appears that Super Mario Galaxy will also contain familiar elements that will be recognizable to fans, from the cartoon-y character and enemy designs to the good-old gold coins. From the limited clips, it is pretty clear that we have only seen a tiny bit of the game's ultimate variety. Mario looks prettier on Wii graphics than ever before and the trailer provides a striking look at what looks to be a very promising game.
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