Coming: 2010
From IGN's Interview: "Reggie Fils-Aime on the Record"
IGN: You have a bit more insight on the development of Galaxy 2. What's the direction for the game? Do they really want to blow it out or will it be more of the same?
Reggie: What Mr. Miyamoto has shared is that if the first Galaxy was maybe more inviting in terms of all the audiences, what Galaxy 2 is going to be is maybe a little more Nintendo fan / harder gamer focused. A little tougher. The use of Yoshi makes it a little more challenging. We showed some of the snippets of some of the activities -- it's a bit more challenging. It's going to be, if you will, for more of that passionate Mario fan who grew up getting challenged with Super Mario World. It's going to be much more in that area.
From "Shigeru Miyamoto Roundtable LiveBlog"
"With Super Mario Galaxy, it's the first time we really worked with spherical worlds and we had a lot of ideas about how to use gravity. However, when we finished the game, we realized there were a ton of ideas we just couldn't fit in," he says.
More than 90 percent of what you will see in Super Mario Galaxy 2 is all brand new. Maybe even 95 percent . . . Galaxy 2 contains roughly the same amount of content as the original.
Galaxy 2 is very, very far along, but since Nintendo has New Super Mario Bros. Wii, it's going to hold off and keep Galaxy 2 for next year. :(
Don't worry GG. You're not saying that you don't like Yoshi. I understand that what you're actually doing here is a cry for help. What you're really saying is "will someone please pee on me?" And I am more than happy to help you out.
Yoshi needs to get his own games.
And STAY in his own games.
WRONG!
GoNintendo's Super Mario Galaxy 2 - Nintendo Media Summit 2010 impressionsYou read it wrong! Check again.
CVG
It's great to see that even after the massive success of New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Nintendo hasn't been tempted to "dumb down" Mario Galaxy 2. In fact, in the demo levels we played in London today, the second game feels even more challenging than the first - and we love it.
Galaxy 2 is the second part of a learning curve that began the moment you fired off your first starbit in the original game. In our first level - the 'Flip Swap' galaxy - we traverse a maze of red and blue platforms suspended over space. The moment Mario performs a spin jump however, the platforms flip, with one colour disappearing to expose a perilous jump.
This was an unexpectedly tricky course to clear - and our objective of racking up 100 purple coins only made it harder (though Nintendo has added classic checkpoint flags to accommodate the rookies among us).
Confusion quickly sets in as we attempt to spin jump across large gaps - causing our target platform to disappear - and later rolling chain chomps appear, forcing us to jump and spin to different colour platforms, dodging the big black baddies and dropping them into oblivion in the process.
A hallmark feature of the second adventure is the welcome return of Mario's dinosaur chum, Yoshi - and he's a joy to play. Unlike the dodgy implementation in GameCube entry 'Sunshine, Yoshi makes you feel empowered again, offering the ability to effortlessly gobble up baddies with the Wii Remote pointer.
Yoshi feels vulnerable like he did in the original Mario games; one hit from a Hammer Brother or Zelda-style electric blob will either send the dinosaur hibernating back into his egg or legging it away Mario World-style.
Bowser Jr.'s Fearsome Fleet - another challenging galaxy - showed off Yoshi's awesome skills brilliantly. The level opens with an inviting glass dome accompanied by a bullet bill turret. Quickly we realised our green mate can gobble up the missiles and then aim and spit them out as your own projectiles, smashing the glass and any baddies unfortunate enough to be in the way.
Quickly,this intuitive mechanic turns Galaxy into a swift-draw shooting game: Mario and Yoshi hop onto a moving platform and all of Bowser Jr's armies unload their bullets in our direction. A quick aim and a flick of your wrist is all it takes to gobble up and fire back the incoming bullet bills - it's effortless and great fun.
It's sections like this that make it clear that Nintendo has plenty of ideas left over from the first game. The five levels we got to play all felt unique and a genuine step forward from the excellent original.
The new drill ability is another example and adds a whole new dimension to Galaxy's planet-hopping gameplay. The demo level we played eased us into the idea with inviting craters scattered across a spherical moon. Drill through them and Mario will dig his way through the entire planet, inevitably emerging inside a 1UP cage on the other side.
Eventually we were using the drill to dig our way to the top of huge towers, attacking boss characters through the ground and even burrowing our way inside planets, running around their hollow innards collecting coins.
By far our favourite level in the demo though was the Tree Trunk galaxy, which expectedly takes place on top of a gigantic tree.
Here, Mario's rarely apart from Yoshi and he's also introduced to one of the dino's new abilities. By gobbling up blue Blimp Fruit Yoshi bloats up to a gigantic size, allowing him to blow out air from his mouth (which is done automatically) and send the pair of you soaring towards the sky.
The excellent pacing and wide variety of celestial playgrounds is again present all over the second game, and soon Yoshi blows us to the top of the tree where a launch star sends Mario and friend flying towards another area - a giant log in the sky.
This is the definitive 2.5D platformer; though gravity keeps us tethered to the log (so if Mario falls he'll simply spin around it forever) we're only moving left and right - like a classic Mario game.
The change of perspective also allows the game to present a very Donkey Kong Country-style vertical section, which has bloated Yoshi blowing his way up towards a Power Star, dodging spiky bushes and flying goombas with the A button, which holds your breath.
The sheer amount of imagination present in just a few levels has us convinced that Galaxy 2 will deliver yet another standout Mario experience when it arrives this summer - you just might want to get some practice in with the first game before it arrives
Like I said, Yoshi was only good in SMW and Yoshi's Island. Since then its been a complete bust.