Super Mario Galaxy [Wii]

I had to be physically restrained and the controller wrestled from my hands after the ten-minute demonstration of Super Mario Galaxy, a game platform fans have been waiting for since Super Mario Sunshine. The demo begins on a grassy island, where Mario can perform his regulation jump-to-doublejump-to-triplejump antics like he never left Super Mario Sunshine island.

But wait a moment and produce the Wii remote, and point it at a trio of bells on an overhead arch, and waggle the remote furiously. When all three jingled, a series of 20 rainbow notes appeared on the pathway, granting a fabled 1up mushroom for my troubles. Naturally, there's coins hiding in the grass, but there was a ten minute timer running during the demo, and I needed to shift some Italian butt -- sharpish.

The Wii remote wrist-flicking is surprisingly intuitive, and becomes second nature around five minutes after the time you finish grinning from ear to ear at the boot-up screen. The sample zone I traversed was the equivalent of visiting a small Super Mario Sunshine stage, but with the various zones fragmented into dozens of planetoids, each with a star gate, and a choice of three bosses to face. More on those later.

For now, I ignored the instructions given by a Toad and launched myself through the star gate at the top of the grassy island, using the Wii Remote in an exaggerated scribble to gain additional speed. I soared upwards on a pre-set trajectory, into the heavens, and a series of floating space zones. Think of each as its own mini-game en route to a final boss battle and a Star collection.

A quick note on the "scribbling"; there's a friendly star cursor that follows you throughout your journey, and by pressing a button on the remote you can trace blue arcs through the air, which deliver a variety of responses. These included the spin attack (great for tackling Goombas waddling around the space rock I landed on), and the collection of all-new gem-like objects that float around the planets or in space. As you zoom through the air, or head towards a planet, you trace through groups of these objects essentially lassoing them into Mario as you progress.

Then you can jab the B-button and grab bright blue stars in a bubble, and encase yourself, darting across the void of space from point-to-point without losing grip and plummeting back to a previously visited spot. Naturally, there's multiple ways to maneuver through each zone. For example, I climbed a tower not by using the "bubble" move, but by triple-jumping and grabbing a ledge to pull myself up onto. Old-school Mario playing is hard to forget, and isn't forgotten here, it's simply supplemented by a host of wildly entertaining new moves.