Mario, Katamari... in LittleBigPlanet

A piece ofLittleBigPlanet artwork featuring famousgame characterssketched in the LBP stylehas sparked new interest on the Internet today.

In fact, the artwork was originally featured in an Edge magazine preview earlier in the year to demonstrate how the player of the game has complete creative control over the design of their character. Technically you could reproduce anything you wanted - as long as you don't mind them having a massive head and tiny arms.

As Edge points out inits feature, Media Molecule - the game's developer - has yet to announce whether there will be any submission procedure for making user generated characters and levels available online, opening up the possibility for all sorts of risky copyright infringement.

You could, for example, reproduce a level from Mario (as it hints in the artwork)or Mickey Mouse Castle of Illusion. Or, even better,make a Sonic game in 2D, better than all the recent 3D ones.

Sony has yet to make an announcement on whatits plans are for the game-whether it will introduce moderation or censorship ofuploaded levels,for example - but surely any kind of creative 'policing' is against the ethos of user customizationthat LittleBigPlanet is basing its game on? Put it this way, we're not making plans for that bespoke Sonic game just yet...

To read our LittleBigPlanet preview for a full overview of the game clickhere, to see the video click the Movies tab, and if you click the Images tab right next to it you can check out our new screenshots.

Above: Spot the characters most likely to give Sony the biggest copyright headache...

May 17, 2007