James McGeachie

Yeah you could have a Skytown moving stage where you're on floating platforms being pulled along the zipwires and what not, having to switch between them as some fall off as steambots kind of whizz past in the air and stuff too. A Phazon based level could be interesting too, with perhaps pools of Phazon dropping onto the platforms with different types having different effects. Some do damage, some heal and perhaps others increase the amount of damage you do temporarily. Phenedrana could obviously make a very nice looking stage too though I'm not sure what gameplay gimmicks it could have to separate it out.

No, everything is before that. There's nothing to collect at all in the final areas. You read he's on Hyper Mode difficulty level as well though?

It's only shorter because of how much easier it is to manouever around and fight in combat. You don't actually have to STOP to shoot in this game, so you spend much more time on the move.

Well In Melee at least both stages were named after Brinstar, which was weird though as Brinstar isn't associated with lava at all, there's only a tiny amount here and there. Actually I guess there was more in the original Metroid come to think of it. Anyway they should really have a Tourian stage actually, with Metroids flying around and a visit from Mother Brain in her SM final boss form to fire lasers at the stage every so often. Perhaps have those red barrier things raise up and split the playing field when she attacks so you have to break through them to get to safety. EDIT: 2 minute hastily (crappily) drawn mspaint pic of what the layout could be for that. She'd smash out of the glass container eventually! Bottom would be acid and not lava. http://img441.imageshack.us/img441/8148/tourianab2.gif

I think he actually said that the ENTIRE Mario series has sold 10 million, which is actually a drastic understatement. He probably just meant in recent years or something.

Dunno why you'd want a classic controller for them and not just use a Gamecube one, hell I don't think the classic controller even works with Cube games does it? Or maybe I'm wrong, never tried. Anyway if you think 0 was a better game than Remake, which is perhaps the finest of the traditional RE's by modern standard, only edging out RE2 because the latter is far more dated, I'm not sure how much playing the others would appeal to you as they follow a very similar formula to RE1 except that 2 and 3 have ps1 level of visuals. Code Veronica is Dreamcast and might interest you slightly more actually as it's the only one with 3d environments, though still has the old gameplay style but actually has some shifting camera angles. All isn't lost for there maybe being a Remake of 2 at one point on Wii though, the fact they've deliberately left out Leon and Claire in Umbrella Chronicles almost suggests they're keeping the re-visioning of that story for a remake, all dependant on whether UC sells enough to prove the Wii has a good number of hardcore RE fans on board.

I think the hardware estimates were like 45000 Wii's or so, which isn't really much of a drastic increase. Could be because of lack of hardware though. The only Wii games that have had legs in Japan are Wii Sports and Wii play. Even Fire Emblem dropped like a stone from the charts. Also no one is really saying the game has bombed or had a "bad start", this is being read wrong. The thing is it's just disappointing that with the already pretty large Wii install base, the game didn't have a FANTASTIC start and wasn't massively hyped and queued for.

Sort of bull really. It's possible they'd have been really stretching the limits of a disc with a lot of compression or would've had to do 2 discs but the fact is that wasn't the main factor in it at all, Nintendo just don't feel the need to splash out on things like orchestrated soundtracks usually. If you read the interview with the Galaxy sound team on one of the "Ask Iwata" Wii updates they even bring up how they were hesitant to do it because of the budget. I think the main reason Galaxy has one is because they really wanted to make sure this game was the best it could possibly be in all areas... as you know it wouldn't surprise me if it's the utmost peak of Mario games. After all, there are no settings that are "bigger" and more "epic" than space.

I can never watch gametrailers reviews of games I know I'm buying nowadays. It's just one long chain of spoilers, they don't hold back at all with the footage they show. I did skip to see the score though! Excellent. No one said it is but if a game is one of the best ever, naturally people want it to have some of the best SALES ever. NSMB managed 900,000 first week, though of course with a larger install base and that game is honestly pretty naff in comparison to almost every other Mario. Game sales go down drastically after the first week too, so it might be that Galaxy never sells a million copies in Japan.

The sales don't surprise me much, good but not amazingly stunning. The thing is from what I've noticed, among casual gamers, even ones that liked Mario 64 a lot, there's not much hype for Galaxy. I think after the Gamecube a lot of them just have this mental image that the franchise "went down the drain" and even if they see this game looks good they probably think it'll be like Sunshine. I mentioned the game to someone the other day after the first reviews came in and he was like "I think Galaxy will probably turn out poorly" as he hadn't heard much. When I first showed videos to some people after E3 2006 the reaction wasn't really positive, just more like "How does it control with THAT thing?! Isn't it hard?!" I don't really think it's Nintendo's fault with advertising or anything of the sort. Perhaps part of the issue too though is that because of the huge casual interest in the console, more systems are being snapped up by casual gamers than hardcore, with hardcore gamers that would usually buy a system on a "whim" choosing not to because they're so damn hard to find. So the main Wii audience will watch Galaxy adverts and not even think about them, yet when the Wii fit ones are rolling they'll jump from their chairs and go crazy. Anyway the game's sales are still nice enough but I have a sinking feeling they're not going to remain consistently strong and the game will plummet from the Japanese charts like every other non-casual Wii title has after the hardcore crowd has picked it up. That'd be a real shame for a title of this quality, especially a Mario game. Hopefully western sales are strong and it sells consistently well for a while. This is the very definition of a big Christmas hit, or at least it should be.

We already get the vast majority of DECENT Japanese software. The majority of stuff that doesn't make it over is pretty much shovelware poorly done anime games and some quirky titles that are too obscure due to culture barriers that mean they'd make absolutely no sense in any respect here and don't have any particularly strong elements anyway. It's not like Japan has some deep treasure chest of ultra classics that we never see in the West. There's probably a few but virtually everything of highest standard is localised in some form. The only thing I can think of that really interested me and I was sad to see not come to the West was those ultra simple GBA games, with simple concepts and visuals but pretty deep quality of gameplay. Can't remember the names but they looked like Atari games visually but more stylised.

Miyamoto isn't directing Galaxy. He hasn't been "director" since Mario 64, he just oversees most projects and is more involved in some than others. He was obviously giving a lot of suggestions and advice with Galaxy, but he's not director. Even on OOT he was the producer working with a team of directors. He was in charge of the entire project, but other people had a lot of creative responsibility too. I think technically he's only actually technically "directed" a few games total, with the only main Mario ones being SMB and SM64 (not sure about SMB2J aka lost levels or "Mario Brothers). Takashi Tezuka was director of SMB3, Super Mario World and Yoshi's Island, as well as Link to the Past and Link's Awakening. He sadly doesn't direct anymore either. EDIT: ALSO, Miyamoto never started off as director for TP, in fact I'm pretty sure it was a newer staff member as Aounuma felt he was out of ideas and wasn't sure if he could continue with the Zelda franchise. I think at that point Miyamoto had a talk with him and he got back on board as director.

I think they're just there to imply that the Chozo did study and view a LOT of different planets.

Bloody hell, I scan and read virtually everything I see and I'm at just like 17 hours or so with 100% and just about to go to the final area. You must really like to examine the environments or something.

It's all good so far and stays true to the same style established by the other games. Not a whole lot of it could be described as "catchy" or anything though, more epic and immersive. There's certainly a LOT of music though as the separate planets have multiple areas each with their own separate themes. Not much in the way of oldschool remixes this time though but that's unsurprising as they'ved already remixed and used the majority of the important Metroid and Super Metroid tracks for other stuff already.

I'm also playing on Veteran, though I notice it seems like all that means is bosses have a stupid amount of health that goes down really slowly with any weapons other than hypermode.

No it's not a revolution. No Wii title is ever going to feel like a real "revolution" unless they ever get 1:1 going on a high quality title. I'm impressed so far (up to the first "proper" boss on Bryyo, very epic fight) though the game had a really slow beginning. I couldn't stand that first planet at all, even the boss fight was nowhere near as epic as I'd always thought it'd be (obviously overhyped it a bit in my head). I'm really glad the game picked up on Bryyo as it feels like I'm playing a "Prime" game again now and not just weird off the wall first person shooter, like it was kinda feeling for that whole first section.

Hell 42" is almost overkill for a 360 really too. From what I'm aware I think that's the point really where the difference between 720p/1080i and 1080p begins to get a good deal more noticible, so you wont really be getting the best out of games unless they're all full HD 1080p compatible. Also at that point regular non-HD TV viewing is going to look like fucking ass as well.

I think 42 inches is way too big for any Wii titles unless you're sitting like 15 feet away from the TV. I recently tried out multiple Wii titles on my friend's 32" Panasonic Viera and they were still good looking despite him not yet having the component cables (he's a 360 man). What I did think though was that this was seriously obviously the limit before pixelation was too apparent. At the viewing distance I was playing at (around 8 feet away) it wasn't all too noticible but ANY closer and the picture just blatantly got significantly worse. I seriously don't think any Wii owner who considers the visual quality of their games important should go above 32" for an HDTV. Even if you own a 360/PS3 as well, if you want those systems to look great while still retaining good visuals on the Wii then you really have to strike a balance out. 32 inches is the perfect middle ground in my opinion and is exactly the size I'll be going for when I make a purchase early next year. Anyway in other words, there's absolutely no way in hell a 42" TV is ever going to be "the best TV" for a Wii game, no matter what model, what manufacturer and what fancy cables you're using.

I always figured the game Matt was talking about would be a Luigi's Mansion 2. This sounds like it could work out well I guess, really wasn't keen on the franchise on PS2 though. I hope it's treated like a main entry in the series at least.

Most Gamestations around here have tons of used GC games, virtually the entire selection of good games, as well as tons of crap ones.

Yeah except when a game is a port that means you're not going to get anything close to 1:1, so we'll have the lightsaber equivalent of the sword in Zelda yet again with this.

This was fairly obvious I guess but it's cool to know that their hardware partners are also largely reaping the rewards. If ATI and IBM also end up with a shitload of profit they'll probably think more strongly of their working relationship with Nintendo and be highly interested in what they can do with them for their next systems.