Mario 128 lives on Wii

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[Wii] Legendary Mario experiment inspired Galaxy

Tuesday 22 August 2006
Super Mario 128, the name given to an eye-popping tech demo shown at Nintendo's SpaceWorld event in 2000, was a test concept and inspired the upcoming Wii adventure Super Mario Galaxy. "The parts in Mario Galaxy where you're running around on the surface have come from Mario 128," producer Shigeru Miyamoto has revealed, referring to Galaxy's planetoid-leaping gameplay.

The original clip of Mario 128 showed 128 Marios racing around a curved, GameCube-styled Monopoly board - much like Super Mario Galaxy's interstellar antics, whichwe enjoyed during this year's E3. The feeling of gravity in Super Mario Galaxy originated in the Mario 128 tests, according to Miyamoto, and some of Mario 128's gameplay is included as Super Mario Galaxy on Wii.

"We ran many tests to get a good feeling when running about, which is Mario Galaxy's theme," Miyamoto told Japanese magazine Nintendo Dream. The result of more than five years of experiments is "3D action that anyone could play," and "a camera that won't make you sick".

Super Mario Galaxy will doubtless be a launch title for Nintendo's next-gen console later this year, helping to draw in old fans and new recruits to the Wii cause, and we're itching for another session with the moustached bounder. Look out for new info on Mario's outer-space adventures soon.

Ben_Richardson

Ben Richardson is a former Staff Writer for Official PlayStation 2 magazine and a former Content Editor of GamesRadar+. In the years since Ben left GR, he has worked as a columnist, communications officer, charity coach, and podcast host – but we still look back to his news stories from time to time, they are a window into a different era of video games.