Super Mario Galaxy @ E3 07

Written by Matt Swider  on July 17, 2007

Hands-On E3 07 Preview: Part of our E3 2007 Sweet Suite Tour.

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Super Mario Galaxy may not blast off until November 12, but we got a chance to try out Shigeru Miyamoto's next Wii creation while at E3 07. Nintendo's Suite was where the company demoed more of the game's gravity-defying controls as well as Mario donning a bee suit. But, the most interesting news to come from the event was the first details of multiplayer interaction for two players in Super Mario Galaxy.

Mario controls much like he did in Super Mario 64 with minor changes because of the motion-sensing remote and loose gravity level designs. There are still triple jumps, back flips, butt-stomps and so forth. Now, however, spin attacks are performed by intuitively shaking the remote. When we were on a vine or in front of a star, the same motion initiated actions to climb the vine stem or use the star to sail to another planet.

As we traveled the spherical platforms of the demo, we quickly learned that the C button on the nunchuk centered the camera while the game automatically rotated the angle to the best of its ability. Camera issues have been a major gripe in past 3D Mario games and the many clones that have followed. However, once we got used to all of the craziness of navigating the round planets and their lack of gravity, we knew that Galaxy was going to get the camera right.

After a few minutes with the game, the new motion control moves felt like an extension of our hand, but we found that some of the remote actions could be further extended to a second player's hand. While the first player controls Mario with all of the moves mentioned above, a second player can assist him with another Wii remote. Tasks for player two include collecting bits of stardust and then stunning enemies with it. This pointing and clicking involvement is far from the Mario and Luigi two-player action we were hoping for, but at least you don't have to take on the galaxy alone.

The bee suit was the last new element we experienced in the E3 demo. Mario can shed his trademark blue-and-red plumber suit and transform into a yellow-and-black bumblebee in order reach distant platforms. In addition to flying to new heights for a limited amount of time, Mario can also turn into a ghost with the Boo suit (only seen in video so far) in order to go through walls. Super Mario Galaxy is supposed to have Mario suit up for even more transformations in the final game, which should add a continuous amount of discovery to the Nov. 12 title.