Super Mario Galaxy Preview

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.