The Big Three Part 2 of 3

Next up is the Nintendo booth. Less in the way of Wii’s, but there is that shortage after all. In the middle of the stand was a sort of cube with a gigantuous line. Indeed, a line so big it needs to have new words invented for it. In it was of course, Super Mario Galaxy, the long awaited sequel to Super Mario 64. I’m choosing to forget Sunshine here, just to do Nintendo a favour. When I saw that line, I assumed some sort of Second Coming. I decided to check out the rest of the stand first, before undertaking that quest. Lined up around the House of Mario were Wii's playing an assortment of games, among them Metroid Prime 3, Super Paper Mario, the new resident evil, Pokemon, endless ocean and Links Crossbow training, the latter featuring the Wii zapper. Pokemon is Pokemon, I don’t really have anything to say about that. Super Paper Mario was fun, but it made the craving for Galaxy just that bit more. Metroid Prime 3 is I believe the last in the Metroid Prime series, shooting aliens has never been cooler than with the wiimote, point an shoot might have dropped the difficulty a bit, but it’s still challenging enough. Any fan of the Metroid series ought to have this very fine fps/adventure. Links Crossbow training is a game you get packaged with the Wii zapper, a gun like shell for the wiimote. A sort of picnic set up was placed on a slight elevated area to create a small oasis for people to play their ds’s that they brought with them.  On another elevated area, Rockstar’s Table Tennis was set up. Virtual table tennis has never been this fun.

<Table Tennis with your wiimote, it’s nearly the real thing

On to the main event, Super Mario Galaxy. After standing in line for more
than an hour, which is still nicely put, I was allowed entrance. Two people per Mario game, and ten minutes play time, of which five minutes you actually got to play as Mario. The other five minutes you were the helping star, collecting star bits and such. I was star bit collector the first five, painstakingly long minutes, while my juvenile partner, a ten year old who, unlike my co-workers, had braved the line, ran around being silly. The last five minutes I had to race through the level, trying to get to completion, which I failed to do by almost a couple of seconds. The level which we played was the bee level, which it seems,  they show at every game event. Not that I’m complaining mind you, I found the experience to be fantastic. You basically run around a galactic hive of sorts, occasionally wearing a bee suit to enable flying and crawling on honeycombed trying to get to the queen who has an itch. Now, I really prefer not to have to resort to these kinds of possibly ambiguous statements, but in obtaining the star it is imperative you scratch her itch. As one of the more strategic photos made by Vincent shows, scratching itches was not far from my mind at the time of playing.  I do hope you’ll excuse this office humour.

After the ten minutes of play I asked the Nintendo floor manager a couple of questions. I’m not going to do a direct transcription since that’s just a waste of space. Instead I’ll tell you her answers in the most interesting way I possibly can. From what I was able to ascertain, Sunday was the busiest day of the Nintendo booth, when I asked her whether or not fights or such had occurred during the incredibly long waiting line for Super Mario Galaxy, she claimed otherwise. That’s not the kind of stuff we wanted to hear damn it! She thinks the reason Mario remains so popular is because of the rich game play you get in games such as Galaxy. Every planet is it’s own beautiful level which differs substantially from other planets. Contrary to the popular belief that all you need to get a job at Nintendo is a red plumber suit and be able to exclaim mama mia, she says you actually need to be able to do something. Especially since as in the Netherlands or the rest of the Benelux for the matter, no actual development takes place, only marketing.

Oh, and since I just know you guys are dying for this bit of information, her favourite game at the stand was phantom hourglass.

This was the Nintendo part of the Big three article, click here to go to the final part.

Dren Sokić
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