I found myself in Nottingham this weekend, in particular I found myself in Nottingham's Victoria Centre, where I was lucky enough to spend 10 minutes playing Super Mario Galaxy on the Nintendo Wii. The game is to be released on the 16th of November, and let me tell you, it plays like a dream.The graphics are excellent, the music and sound effects are spot on, but where this game really shines is in the gameplay. The low gravity and exploring small asteroids literally adds a whole new dimension to the classic formula, and the Wii controls felt 100% natural after about 5 seconds. The level I played centred around Mario's bee power-up that lets you take flight and buzz around in stripy overalls. I was planning to ask for this game for Christmas and the sensible adult within me is still thinking this is a good idea, but the child within me who got to play the game is screaming at me to preorder it. I think we all know who wins when a child has a temper tantrum, and I'm not about to send myself to the Naughty Step.
I have criticised Nintendo's advertising on this blog before (I have also praised it) but they are pretty much spot on with their experiential marketing (courtesy of BD NTWK). The booths with people playing games caught everybody's attention and the staff were both enthusiastic and knowledgeable. Everybody wanted a go - Wii owners wanted to try the much anticipated game and vowed to buy it, non-wii owners had a glint of conversion in their eyes, and kids looked on in bemusement as a 21 year old man set the new high-score and reached a level that none of the others had!
My only criticism of the experience that Nintendo had set up is the choice of games: most were good choices, particularly an unreleased Mario game, but I saw one man attempting to play Tiger Woods golf, which hasn't received particularly good reviews and doesn't really show the Wii off at its best. That's my only problem with it, though, and the whole experience on the whole was brilliant, my hat goes off to Nintendo and BD NTWK.
