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Mario Might Save Christmas?

Posted by Zonk on from the when-you-have-nintendo-power dept.

Last week there was a Nintendo media event giving the gaming press preview experiences for the Christmas season's games. 1up has a look at all the titles on offer, but the one that (understandably) got the most attention was Mario Galaxy for the Wii. Wired's Chris Kohler thinks Mario's bee suit might save Christmas, while MTV's Stephen Totilo has comments from an hour hands-on with the game ala Games For Lunch. From Totilo's comments: "Each planetoid presents a challenge -- squash things, collect things -- that rewards players with the creation of a new launch star. I've launched Mario to a sphere that looks like it's made of wood. A star guy of some sort is in a glass jar. I need to kill all the Goombas to free it. I can jump on their heads, but I can also do the spin move, which knocks them dizzy and sends them spinning themselves. If Mario runs into them while they spin, they die."

24 of 127 comments (clear)

  1. Awesome. by Applekid · · Score: 4, Funny

    Is this similar to how The Flintstones, Underdog, The Peanuts, Garfield, and Futurama saved Christmas?

    (alternative jokes rejected for this submission:
      Thank you Mario, but the Christmas is in another castle)

    --
    More Twoson than Cupertino
    1. Re:Awesome. by Mattintosh · · Score: 3, Funny

      Hey, at least Christmas comes once a year.

      Peach has been holding out on Mario for a couple of decades now.

    2. Re:Awesome. by JoshJ · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Each state's ACLU does its own thing. The national organization is just a collective lobbying group. The decisions made by the ACLU of California have nothing to do with the ACLU of Vermont.

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  2. $5 Says... by Baylan295 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    $5 says Mario Galaxy loses game of the year to Halo, despite the fact that it will be a game that is talked about for twice as long, in the same way that people still talk about Ocarina of Time, Mario 64, Super Mario 3, Final Fantasy 7, and the other great games of the generations.

    1. Re:$5 Says... by Volante3192 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      it is by far the largest game in the world today

      World of Warcraft? Second Life?

    2. Re:$5 Says... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Welcome to the pathetic and delusional world of Xbots.

      None of the Halo games are even in the top twenty all time best sellers. This latest Halo isn't going to outsell the last Halo which had about twice the installed base - the 360 is selling at a slower rate than the last Xbox.

      There is some bizarre idea amongst Xbots that somehow all of them going out at once and buying the latest Halo game is something anyone cares about.

      Xbots of the World: "We all bought Halo at the same time! Take that gaming world!"

      Gaming World: "Uh, ok..."

    3. Re:$5 Says... by Sciros · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Howdy troll,

      Do you REALLY want to bitch about graphics when WoW looks quite a bit worse and yet has 9 mil active accouts? (last I checked, anyway) People care about gameplay more than graphics. Guitar Hero, WoW, Second Life, STARCRAFT, man I could go on but the point is maybe over half of your criticisms shouldn't have been about graphics.

      As for art direction, Halo has its share of the mediocre and the spectacular. Not everyone has Bethesda's concept artists, you know ^^

      One would have thought you'd try and criticise things like the story mode, where the last level is an uninspired rehash of the last level from Halo 1, or something. But you probably don't even know about it, as who would expect you to give the game a fair shake...

      As for what else an Xbox owner can buy, go to the store and see for yourself. There's a lot of good stuff out there, and there's soon to be more.

      Bottom line, sometimes it's not about the graphics but about providing more of the good thing that people have come to expect from a franchise. If "Halo 2.5" can make $300 mil in a week, then that speaks for the strength of the franchise more than anything else. How is it a disaster?

      Play the games you like, and stop trying to bash others.

      --
      I like basketball!!1!
    4. Re:$5 Says... by nine-times · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Well, if the people giving the "Game of the Year" award are the sort of gamers who are most interested in console-based multiplayer FPS games, then Halo will likely win.

      I mean, if you want to talk about it, then let's just say what's going on with that. The current pop-culture of gaming right now is biased towards multiplayer, either FPS or MMORPG, doesn't care about story, art, or single-player gameplay. If that's who's handing out awards, then it's no surprise that Halo is the big game this year.

      That's not to say there aren't better games, more original games, or games which will ultimately prove to be more influential. Personally, I think that if you look back in 10 years, Wii Sports will probably have had a bigger effect on the gaming community than Halo 3. Portal is far more innovative than Halo (even though it's kind of a remake of Narbacular Drop), and the Half Life series continues to provide a better single-player experience than Halo.

      I recently read someone's attempt to compare Bioshock and Halo 3 to decide which was a better game. The review basically said, "Bioshock looks better, has a better story, and generally has a much better single-player experience. but Halo 3 has the best multiplayer ever, and multiplayer is what really matters!"

      So yeah, it's basically a question of who's giving the review or who's giving the award. For some people, Mario Galaxy won't be a very good game unless it's a multiplayer FPS they can play on XBox Live.

    5. Re:$5 Says... by meringuoid · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Wow you have high hopes for this thing. Do you seriously think it'll be one of the *best games ever made*

      In 'proper' Mario games, they've missed twice by my count. Super Mario Bros. 2 (which wasn't really a Mario game anyway) and Super Mario Sunshine.

      Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, Super Mario 64 are absolutely legendary, definitely among the 'best games ever made'. Yoshi's Island and New SMB are both excellent.

      So I'd say that yes, there are very good grounds indeed to think that Super Mario Galaxy will, like most of its predecessors, be one of the best games ever made.

      --
      Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
    6. Re:$5 Says... by sanosuke76 · · Score: 2, Informative

      > That's just flat out wrong, it's 2x 640p resolution, or 1280p equivalent scaled down to 1080i.

      Actually, they considered 'blooming' (i.e. the day glow you mention) to be important enough, that they rendered each frame twice at 640p. One overexposed frame, one underexposed frame - then combined the two. Were they rendering different pixels, rather than the same ones at two different exposures, you could call it 1280p equivalent. Certainly it's rendering that many pixels, but they aren't rendering that many displayed pixels.

      That having been said, I'm certainly not a fan of the x-box. Just felt compelled to point out what the dual buffering was about.

      The wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_3 touches on the 640p rendering a bit...

      --
      My 229 is all the Sig I need http://thegunwiki.com/
    7. Re:$5 Says... by hansamurai · · Score: 2, Insightful

      None of the Halo games are even in the top twenty all time best sellers. If the only games we discussed were the best selling games of all time, our discussions would all be about whether we should evolve our Pikachus into Raichus or whether or not Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen were worthy remakes of the originals. Seriously, Pokemon dominates your top twenty all time best seller list and it's filled in with Marios, Sims, and GTAs in between.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games

      Those are all fine games to talk about, but considering there are many more games worth discussing than just those, I don't really see your point about sales numbers.

      Halo 3 was mega hyped and marketed by Microsoft. It made lots of dollars very fast. People outside the industry are noticing us and it's not about boobs, deaths in internet cafes, or hot coffee. He may be an "Xbot", but that doesn't make his point invalid. Just look at last generation, ten years from now, a lot more people are going to be talking about Halo and GTA than Super Mario Sunshine.
      --
      Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
    8. Re:$5 Says... by SetupWeasel · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yes. Nintendo regularly takes a critical hit due to a nostalgia bias. Look at Wind Waker.

    9. Re:$5 Says... by nine-times · · Score: 2, Interesting

      "My friends and I only play FPS and MMORPGs and have narrowed our world view to the point that other game genres and trends don't show up in our small minded view of the world", does not mean the world is changing to adhere to your ignorance.

      Geeze, calm down, I'm not even talking about me.

      My point wasn't about about actual trends in games, but the pop-culture biases about games. Whenever I see anything related to gaming on TV, it always seems to be about frat-boy types playing Halo. Whenever I read game reviews these days, they're always slanted, favoring multiplayer games over single-player games.

      But I don't agree with those people. If you read my post again, more carefully, you'll realize that I'm saying Wii Sports is a better game than Halo. The media and game sites are trying to cater to what people call "hardcore gamers", which basically means teenage boys and frat kids who are into playing first-person shooters on XBox Live. However, those "hardcore gamers" aren't really representative of gamers in general.

      And where it really becomes a problem is that "hardcore gamers" (IMO) don't have very good taste in games. There was nothing new, interesting, or innovative about the original Halo game. It was merely the first FPS that really worked on the console, and had managed to have good controls and weapon balance for multiplayer games. AFAICT, the next two Halo games weren't particularly innovative either, but only refined the same formula that Halo had been using.

      So if you're looking for a game that really does something cool, innovative, or that hasn't been seen before, Halo isn't where it's at. However, the people who give these "Game of the Year" awards are often catering to "hardcore" gamers. Therefore, I wouldn't be surprised if Halo won a bunch of those awards in spite of not really being an interesting game.

    10. Re:$5 Says... by KDR_11k · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Actually I believe they're called Shine Sprites or something but I just call 'em stars.

      What changed from M64 was that while in M64 the level stayed mostly the same and all stars were always available in SMS only the selected star was spawned, forcing you to go through the stars in order and discouraging random exploration because you wouldn't get anything out of it.

      --
      Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
  3. sorry.... by ILuvRamen · · Score: 2, Funny

    Sorry but Christmas is in another castle. Guess Mario's not gonna save it this time lol.

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  4. Re:Not to troll... by Sciros · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The basic premise doesn't really matter. Zelda, FF, Halo, etc. have had the same basic premise throughout the life of each franchise. It's not about coming up with a new premise, but about setting new standards in how that premise is made into something fun. ^_^

    --
    I like basketball!!1!
  5. Re:Not to troll... by SeeManRun · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If it ain't broke...

  6. Re:Not to troll... by nicolastheadept · · Score: 2, Funny

    Oh noes, this game consists of DOING things!

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  7. UR MR GAY by samwh · · Score: 4, Informative

    For those who don't get it: http://www.joystiq.com/2007/09/18/u-r-mr-gay-message-discovered-in-super-mario-galaxy-box-art/

  8. Re:Not to troll... by pembo13 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ....but is it just me, or does this sound like Mario64 and Mario Sunshine's basic theme of collecting stars after tasks, only on planets instead of "rooms" or "areas"? You make it sound like they retitled it and were trying to pass it off as a brand new thing. And how exactly are you going to download Mario Galaxy?
    --
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  9. Quick comparison by Captain+Spam · · Score: 4, Funny

    Quick comparisons, Mario and Santa Claus:

    [Overweight] Mario: YES; Santa: YES
    [Dressed in red] Mario: YES; Santa: YES
    [Facial hair] Mario: Moustache; Santa: Beard
    [Hair color] Mario: Brown; Santa: White
    [Headgear] Mario: Cap with 'M'; Santa: Floppy conical hat
    [Frequency] Mario: Annual/Bi-Annual*; Santa: Annual
    [Lineage] Mario: Unknown**; Santa: Elf (Jolly)

    *: Rough estimate of release frequency of new Mario games
    **: Is he human? A mushroom person? What is he, anyway?

    Tough call, but I'm still gonna give this one to Santa Claus. Mario might be able to save Peach, but he's got a bit to go to save Christmas.

    --
    Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
    1. Re:Quick comparison by Scutter · · Score: 2, Funny

      Tough call, but I'm still gonna give this one to Santa Claus. Mario might be able to save Peach, but he's got a bit to go to save Christmas.

      I'm sorry, Santa, but your cookies are in another castle.

      --

      "Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
  10. Re:Not to troll... by theNeophile · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ....but is it just me, or does this sound like Mario64 and Mario Sunshine's basic theme of collecting stars after tasks, only on planets instead of "rooms" or "areas"? Explain to me how that's not awesome.
  11. Re:Not to troll... by KDR_11k · · Score: 2, Insightful

    More importantly, how many do that and don't end up as the black sheep of their respective series?

    --
    Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.