GDC 2007: Eyes On Super Mario Galaxy

[wraggster]

Nearing the end of his anticipated Game Developers Conference 2007 keynote, Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto played a short, but incredibly sweet new video of Super Mario Galaxy in motion. The movie showcased less than two minutes of new gameplay footage, but it was enough to ignite a wave of applause from excited Nintendo fans.

In the video, Mario again collects stars and soars through space, landing atop giant spherical bodies complete with enemies and platformer obstacles. In addition, though, the footage debuts a variety of different, never-before-seen planetoids, baddies, and challenges, all of which look incredible. In older demos, Mario could be seen traveling across more traditional asteroids and planets, but in the new trailer he is shown bounding across enormous eggs, glass cylinders, exploding volcanoes, through stars, onto grassy knolls, on wooden planks, and even onto gargantuan apples, among other objects. It's clear that Nintendo has absolutely abandoned any attempt at keeping a galactic logic of laws with the game, which is, we're sure, just fine by everybody.

Although regular-sized worlds make up the backgrounds in many of the galaxies Mario explores, the mascot seems to traverse much smaller bodies, going from spheres to apples, from volcanoes to glass cylinders, and so forth. Gamers expecting giant land masses are - at least so far - out of luck. That noted, Nintendo has done quite a lot with the objects and obstacles in place as many of them seem to change dynamically or are altogether interactive.

When Mario reaches the end of a grassy peak, a beanstalk sprouts from its edge, rises into space and eventually connects to another body, enabling Nintendo's iconic mascot to jump to it. Later in the footage, Mario stomps a protruding cork into an oversized apple and a greenish walkway extends from the giant fruit. Mario is sent flying over flowing volcanic landscapes and crashes through pillars in the process. All of the planets share one trait in common, which is that they ignore gravity, which means that Mario can run up and over or down and under anything he sees. As readers can imagine, the physics go hand-in-hand with a series of impressive environmental puzzles. In one sequence, gamers must use the Wii remote to first point at and then drag Mario through a hazardous obstacle course made of fiery planets, but the satellites spew flames as he nears them.

Mario is seen swimming and battling what appears to be a fish boss of some kind in one snippet of the footage. In another, a spiral galaxy twists in the depths of space as he flies to a nearby ship. It's evident from the footage that gamers have only seen a very limited selection of the game's variety.

Galaxy is probably the prettiest title yet for Nintendo's new console. Not only does the art design shine with stunning characters, worlds and enemies, but the mascot and environments come to life with a host of graphical effects. The title's crispy-clean textures look to be bump-mapped in some cases, and we can't recall spotting better particle effects in a Nintendo title. Plus, everything runs in progressive-scan and 16:9 with a silky smooth framerate.

Via IGN

[jstush04]

looks absolutely brilliant