Miyamoto on Super Mario Galaxy

Undoubtedly, one of our favourite games at this year's E3 was Nintendo's latest proper Mario jaunt, Super Mario Galaxy. Ditching the traditional Mushroom Kingdom-bound hopping and jumping in favour of some unusual interstellar planetary diversions, it's something of a departure for the series.

Now, Nintendo's legendary designer Shigeru Miyamoto has explained some of the reasons behind the shift away from classic 3D Mario games in Galaxy, speaking to MTV News. "Our biggest focus with 'Super Mario Galaxy'", Miyamoto revealed, "is having different spheres or planets Mario can visit, with the idea being if the planet gets very, very large the scenery will look more like he's running across a plane. But if the planet is very small it almost looks like he's running around a ball.

You can essentially run over the spheres almost endlessly. But when you do that you're moving in a 3-D space but without the typical camera issues that we've had in 3-D games in the past."

Again citing Nintendo's desire to simplify its titles, while still appealing to the traditional gaming audience, Miyamoto continued, "What that allows us to do is take a game like 'Mario' that has been a very jump-based game in the past, and turn it into a game that is more [about] Mario running around a lot and going to different places and kind of enjoying that."

Quite whether we want a Mario game that's more about running than jumping, we're not sure at the moment. Still, from what we've seen so far, it's all good news. Finally, touching on one other aspect of Mario Galaxy, Miyamoto explained some of the games unique remote uses: "[It will] take advantage of the Wii remote's pointing capabilities to allow you to directly interact with things on the screen by pointing at them or clicking on something to get Mario to go exactly where you want to go.

"In that sense, I think it's going to allow for a much more intuitive camera system and much more intuitive control scheme that will allow people who have never played a 3-D 'Mario' game before to feel comfortable enjoying "Super Mario Galaxy."

Via CVG