Blast off...to adventure!

Guess what? Not all Games You Should Have Played are older, classic games. Sometimes new games come out that demand to be played. Bioshock is one example.  But today I’m talking about Super Mario Galaxy on the Wii.

Simple question here: Do you actually enjoy playing games? Do you? For real? Then you should be playing Mario Galaxy right now. Do you hate platforming games? Oh, that may be why. Okay, if you dislike platforming games, sure, skip it, because why would you want to play the game that reset the platforming bar yet again?

The Rule of Three

The biggest Mario Game to date.

Mario does three things in all of the games in the official series. First, he saves the Princess. For Mario Galaxy, Bowser has once more kidnapped Peach, this time during a festival the Mushroom Kingdom has to celebrate a comet that passes by every hundred years.

As Mario you’ll pursue Bowser, only to get blasted into space and land on the comet, discovering that it’s actually a spaceship powered from stars and run by Roselina who is, in short, the mother of the universe since she raises Lumas (little star babies), into adulthood where they become planets, suns, and galaxies. Just that alone makes for a good story and a good premise.

Secondly, Mario will jump and jump it what you shall be doing all the time in Galaxy. The whole platforming angle is shifted from the usual affair to something slightly different since you aren’t just limited to jumping up and down. Each planetoid you land on has its own field of gravity, so you’ll have to get used to running upside-down, sideways, and all which-ways.

It can be confusing, but it makes for a fun twist on what you’ve come to expect.

Finally, Mario sets the standard for good adventure games yet again. Every few years he seems to decide what good games should be and everyone else is forced to take notice. You will have plenty to do in Galaxy as there are once more 120 stars to gather in the various levels, with the difficulty varying between laughably easy to knuckle whitening difficult. That’s the sign of a game that has something for everyone. One minute you’re a bee buzzing around from platform to platform, the next you’re running over an image of a pixilated 8-bit Mario with the threat of falling into instant death. Oh, and you can run on water as Ice Mario, too. Crazy fun.

Just Tons to Do Before You’re Done

What the heck is that and why does it want me dead?

Overall I spent a good week (and I honestly mean a GOOD week), playing for hours a night until I finally finished the game at 100% completion. And then I played it all over again. That’s how great the game is. It’s worth playing back-to-back all the way through. It’s getting rarer for games to be capable of providing that amount of fun for that long of a time.

Simply, if you have a Wii, you should have this game. I’ll get into the 5 Wii games you should own another time, but rest assured, Super Mario Galaxy is on that list. You’ll enjoy yourself.

Four players at once? Sign me up.

Nintendo’s been listening whenever we’ve mentioned our love of classic Mario platforming.  Now we’ll be rewarded with yet another entry in the New Super Mario Bros franchise with New Super Mario Bros Wii expected the holiday season of this year.

But just what do we have to expect from the odd title?

Well, those of us who played New Super Mario Bros on the DS know firsthand how great Mario holds up after all these years and exactly how much mileage can be chugged out of the simple concepts the game was based on from the beginning. New Super Mario Bros has consistently been one of the best selling games on the DS and it’s four years old. That’s saying something right there.

The new New Super Mario Bros takes a page from the DS version and keeps gameplay simple, yet adds in a few little flourishes here and there. New power-ups are vital to the franchise with the Propeller Suit and Penguin Suit adding a nice touch of the typical Mario-brand wackiness we’ve come to expect.

New Features include Multi-Play

Probably the biggest feature is 4-player simultaneous multiplayer. Mario games have usually done a good job of including at least 2-players taking turns, but this is the first time we really get something as multiplayer with Mario in it unless we’re talking Mario Party or Mario Kart.

Having four players onscreen at once can look a bit disorienting at first but it still looks like a blast. As usual, you’re able to either help out your buddies or totally ruin their good time depending on how you’d like to play at the moment. That’s just asking for hilarity.

But They Skimped on Motion Control and Gave us 2 Toads

One of my only complaints is that the game obviously looks like a DS game ported over to the Wii. No, it doesn’t make the game any less fun but it feels like another one of those last minute changes Nintendo is starting to get famous for when they take the game from a less-superior system and plunk it onto the Wii without doing really anything to justify the action other than having more Wii titles.

The only motion-controlled action here consists of shaking the Wiimote to cause you to spin upwards while wearing the Propeller Suit, or to pick other characters up. Not really worth the hassle of motion control, but it’s there.

Also, the four characters are Mario, Luigi, Toad, and another Toad. Why no Princess? Why no Wario? Heck, why no Toadette even? I’m hoping they would have given us something better than the brothers Mario and a pair of Toads, but that’s just wishful thinking. New Super Mario Bros Wii is anticipated for a 2009 holiday release.