Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games

My cousin had a Commodore 64 which was the highlight of visiting his house as a child. While we played a number of great games in those days (Bruce Lee, Spy Hunter, Microsoft Flight Simulator, etc.), I most looked forward to playing Summer Games by Epyx. It (and it's various sequels) had three obvious advantages:

1. Geared toward multi-player. (Bruce Lee was an awesome game, but it's boring to watch after a while.)
   
2. Accessible controls. (Mash buttons or wiggle joystick.)
   
3. Considerable layers of what we now call polish. (How cool was it to have opening ceremonies with digital doves flying over the torch?!)
   

Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games follows the formula of the Epyx classics with three licenses as opposed to zero. Which means instead of stick-figure athletes, players control characters from the Sonic or Mario universes (or a Mii). And instead of a generic Summer Games, the characters compete at actual Beijing Olympics venues. The experience is a surreal, as charming as you might expect, but somehow not very epic. Rather than national (or Epyx) anthems during the medal ceremonies, we get sound bits from the characters exalting or lamenting their own performance. It's repetitive and a bit creepy.

For the most part, the events work the way you would expect using the Wiimote and Nunchuck. Lots of events involve shaking to build and maintain speed including all the track and field and swimming competitions. Despite the fact some events rely on nearly identical mechanics, each feels fairly unique. For instance, the 100m race starts with timing the start followed by shaking to gain speed and the long jump starts with shaking followed by timing the jump. To a bystander, these are virtual mirror image actions, but to the player they feel distinct. High jump, javelin, pole vault, and triple jump play around with the same core mechanic. I can't explain it, but slight variations combined with altered visuals keep these events somewhat fresh.

Other events use fairly unique mechanics. Swimming requires breathing and well-timed turns. Distance races do a pretty good job of simulating pacing and timing the final kick. Relays and hurdles add timed hand-offs and jumps to the formula. Hammer toss requires the Wiimote to be twirled rather than shook to build speed. Skeet and archery add deeper themes to the basic IR shooting mechanic found in Wii Play. Table Tennis borrows heavily from Wii Sports Tennis. Fencing takes advantage of the one-dimensional sport to create a bare-bones fighting game. Gymnastics events and rowing focus on precision button pressing and motions. Then there are Dream Events that add video-game wackiness to standard events.

Each character has unique attributes and are divided into Power, Speed, Skill and All-around categories. Each also uses preferred swimming style from crawl to dog paddle to running underwater requiring different motions to propel them. Apparently the stats for Miis are assigned on the basis of height and weight combinations. For individual events character selection can be a good source of handicap: let a less-skilled player take Sonic in 100m and chose Bowser for instance.

Unfortunately, the designers made a series of missteps that sabotage their own masterly event design. Most of the events are locked from the beginning with no immediate indication of how to unlock them. When you get a bunch of players together, the natural first step is to try out the single event mode to see what might be fun. But the best events are locked from the start and the events that are available tend to be the shaking the Wiimote variety. The only way to unlock new events once your group gets bored or carpal-tunnel is to sit down by yourself and play through all the circuits in Circuit mode.

Mario and Sonic really comes into its own in circuit mode, which should be the default playing option. (Single event appears to be the default, since it's the first option on the main menu.) Circuits work something like decathlons with different mixes of events. Points are awarded in each event according to finish and at the end of the circuit the player with the most points wins. To prevent run-away wins, each player has a bonus coin which can be used to double points for a top-three finish. If you take the option, but don't finish in the top three you get nothing.* Do you take an all-around character to do well in all events or pick a specialized character and go for broke on your best event? Nothing increases the excitement of a contest than taking a big risk to secure a come-from-behind win.

Did I mention unlocking events is painful? Shaking the controllers to beat a couple of friends equals fun. Shaking the controllers to convince the computer to let you play more interesting contests equal pain in the wrists. About half the events involve running, which requires moving the Wiimote as fast as possible. Since the Wii's controllers are accelerometer based, tight drum rolls represent the best chance of winning. And this sort of shaking starts to hurt after a while. The worst events are high jump and pole vault because they repeat over and over until all participants fail three times. It's realistic but until you know how high to set the bar winning involves ratcheting up slowly which means lots of shaking. And all of this is so that I can earn the right to play events that don't cause my arms to fall off.

Once you unlock the events, the experience begins to level out. Initially success seems possible through indiscriminate waggle, but as with Summer Games there are definite skills to learn. A variety of missions provide individual challenges for those who crave it. For multiplayer sessions, circuits can be customized so that you never need to run 100m again. All sorts of actions unlock various trophies and medals. Theoretically the game offers online leader boards, though in practice they have been thoroughly hacked. (A perfect skeet shooting score in less than a second? Yeah, right.) For the younger audience there are a handful of mini-games which are fairly pointless and easy. Finally, all the Dream Events are reasonably entertaining on their own. (So why does Sega force us to unlock them all?)

On the whole, I think the title does a good job serving the fans of the three licenses and has the potential to entertain open-minded gamers. But Sega seems to go out of their way to make the experience frustrating. Why should I have to work so hard to earn the right to play the best events? Games like Samba de Amigo or Super Monkey Ball have history on their side—previous iterations use unlockable content as a carrot. But Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games is a cross between sports and party games. Sega's model ought to have been Wii Sports or Wii Play, which use locking to direct players through modes in a sensible order. Neither requires you to be good at an event before moving on. Mastery of the game tends to be the best carrot for sports games and interactions for party games. Locking, especially requiring players to win playing solo, defeats the purpose entirely.

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* The Bonus Coin works something like the doubling cube in Backgammon. For those not familiar with the doubling cube, it doubles the value of a game during match play. The opponent may refuse the cube, which causes them to lose the game at the undoubled value. Or they may accept the cube, which allows the game to continue and gives the accepting player the sole ability to double the game again. In essence, it provides an extra layer of decision in games that otherwise might become boring decisive victories.

Samba de Amigo

To start with, the controls are great. Early reviewers were either: a) bad at the game, b) confused or c) lazy. Don't worry about the controls. (More on this later.)

Do you remember the final scene in Beetlejuice where Winona Ryder sings Jump in the Line while floating in front of a stairwell? If that seemed at all fun, go out and a get a copy of Samba de Amigo because it is fun. Actually, it's completely addicting.

The Wii version is a remake of the Sega Dreamcast game, which is in turn an adaptation of an arcade game. The basic gameplay remains the same: shake electric maracas in rhythm to the music. Each side of your HUD (for lack of a better term) has three targets: high, medium and low. Timing balls emerge from the center of the HUD and head towards the targets. If you shake your controller, which may or may not resemble a maraca, at the right position and the right time, you earn points. There are a few extra moves: rolls, poses, dance moves, crossover, and wide hits. The more hits you string together and the more accurately timed your hits, the faster your score goes up and the faster an energy bar fills. If you stay in the groove long enough, your energy bar fills all the way and you achieve a higher rank (from a low of E to a high of A). Missing hits reverses the process. You don't really need to understand the scoring to play: just stay in the groove.

Initially, you will probably want to spend some time with Career mode, which starts easy and ramps up fairly smoothly. It also unlocks a few songs, which isn't completely necessary since most of the 44 songs are unlocked from the beginning. But when a friend comes over and wants to play "Mambo Number 5" waiting can be a drag. There are also some maraca and dance sounds to unlock, but they don't add all that much to the game.

When you do have friends over, there are six different modes to try out. Each of the modes also work with one player, but aren't as much fun. Most of your time will probably be in Quick Play, which allows you to play one song after another for as long as you can shake the controller. While waiting for a turn, players can finally look at the crazy dancing stuff you quickly learn to tune out while playing. In addition to the cast of wacky characters (Elvis, calaca guitarists, luchadors, bongo playing teddy bears, and so on), you'll see Mii representations of the players shaking away. And of course the actual players shaking away provide entertainment too.

One especially positive aspect of the game is that unequally skilled players can play head to head. When I play Hard and my six-year-old son plays Easy, we get scores in the same ballpark. The lyrics have been softened where appropriate. So instead of "Tequila!", the lyric is "Amigo!". (I don't want children picking up potentially unwanted vocabulary, but nothing prevents an older group from shouting the original lyric.) My arms can attest to Samba de Amigo's exercise potential and it probably doesn't hurt player's rhythm and dance skills.

At launch the game cost about a dollar a song. Now you will find it for half or a quarter that much. Master tracks featuring the original artist comprise just under half of the songs and the other half are reasonable covers. In addition, there are three downloadable song packs (3 for 500 Wii points). I haven't bought any, but they look to be high quality. Even more value can be squeezed out of the package by browsing the online leaderboards. These have not been completely hacked yet (unlike Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games) so the top scores are probably real. You can also compare to friends if you have their friend code or find your rank on the overall leaderboard. I can't really think of anything that should be added to the package.

Now let's talk controls. I have a theory about what went wrong with so many reviewers, so let's start with some observations:

1. Most reviewers had played the Dreamcast version and preferred it over the Wii version.
   
2. Most had few complaints about the Easy and Normal difficulties, but found they couldn't keep up with Hard and Super Hard.
   
3. And most had problems shifting from the high to low positions and vice versa.
   

Now the Dreamcast version had two different control schemes: hitting buttons on the normal controller and expensive maraca controllers that measured the height above a sensor bar on the floor. There's only one control scheme on Wii: tilt control (with either two Wiimotes or a Wiimote and a Nunchuck). Sega used the Wiimote's tilt control well in Super Monkey Ball and used it again in Samba de Amigo. Tilt the nose of the controller up for high note, down for low notes and level for medium notes.

Having watched videos of people playing the Dreamcast version, reviews of the Wii version and experimenting on my own, I believe most reviewers expected the controls to work identically to the Dreamcast or arcade game. And amazingly for easier difficulty levels, they do. Lifting the controller above your waist naturally tilts its nose up and dropping it below your waist registers a downward tilt. It's a touch unresponsive, but the beats are slow enough so that it's possible to keep up this way. Once you start playing songs on Hard the beats get faster and more complicated. At that point, you need to remove inefficient motions, practice and become more precise.

Understand that I'm not great at rhythms or difficult games. I played tuba in band and I'm stuck half way through Super Monkey Ball and Super Mario Galaxy. So it was with some trepidation that I started up Hard levels in Career Mode. Sure I missed some beats and maybe some of them were not my fault, but I cleared all of the Hard songs in the first or second try with the exception of "Mexican Flyer". And I've passed some of the Super Hard songs too. If you play the right way, the game is not punishingly difficult. It might even be too easy.

If you are having problems, here are a few tips:

1. Find the "Game" setting on your digital TV. It might not make a difference, but an extra millisecond or two to react to a beat can't hurt.
   
2. Use two Wiimotes rather than the Nunchuck setup. The Nunchuck reduces accuracy because of the tether and because it's difficult to find its level position.
   
3. Experiment with calibration. I've found that tilting too much in calibration makes hitting high and low beats slow, but tilting too little narrows the range for medium beats so that I don't hit them all the time.
   
4. Go back through the Normal levels in career mode trying to use your wrists more than your arms. Imagine playing Super Monkey Ball.
   
5. When you miss, don't assume the hardware is to blame. For instance, I notice that when I move too quickly I sometimes over-rotate on high beats so that the controller is starting to be upside down. That's my fault, not the controller's. Relax and try to get back in the groove.
   
6. If all else fails, consider using an alternate shaking motion. Instead of shaking vertically, a motion that can be confused with changing locations, shake to the side or make a stabbing motion. It doesn't look as much like a maraca shake, but it works.
   
7. A suggestion I can't vouch for is to buy the maraca shaped attachments. Supposedly they help find the high and low positions. Perhaps because they make the angles more obvious.
   

I've seen videos of people getting perfect scores on Super Hard using the button mashing scheme on the Dreamcast. And I've seen dedicated players struggle through the Easy difficulty with the expensive Dreamcast maracas. And I've seen people breeze through Hard levels with Wiimotes. My best explanation for the harsh reviews of Samba de Amigo for Wii is that reviewers were muddled in their memories of the previous game. If Sega is interested in re-releasing the game with Wiimotion Plus support, it probably won't make a difference. Adding a button pushing option, probably would.

Overall, there's almost nothing to lose by trying the game out. Probably the game is more fun on Easy and Normal and easier on Hard and Super Hard than you imagine. And compared to other games in the genre, Samba de Amigo would be a bargain at twice the price.

M&M's Kart Racing

My defense: M&M's Kart Racing was a gift. Sometimes games are bad because they just aren't worth the money you pay for them. I would have been a lot harder on Go, Diego, Go! Safari Rescue and Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz if I'd paid full price for them. Other games are bad because they are a waste of time. This poorly implemented racing game falls into the later category.

Looking at the menus, you might think the game offers a lot of play modes and options. "Quick Race" is a single player race. "Training" is the same thing, but with no other karts. "Arcade" is a race for points rather than strictly time. "Tournament" is a single player race just like "Quick Race". "Tournament" is the only mode that makes any sense to play since winning a race opens up new tracks for the other modes. And you'll want to open up more tracks since the three you start off with are boring. Finally there is a "Multiplayer" option, which is just a two-player, split-screen mode. It has two modes: "Quick Race" and "Full Throttle". The difference is that first is one lap with no extra karts and the other is three laps with opponents. "Options" sounds promising, but just allows you to adjust the music and sound effect volumes. (Hint: it doesn't matter since the game should always be played on mute.) "High Score" is pointless since you can't enter your own name.

Lack of modes is forgivable in a racing game, if the tracks are fun. We begin our circuit with the "Chocolate Factory". You might expect bright colors and wide-open spaces. Maybe the track would feature tricky conveyor belt and packing machine obstacles. Sadly, the track is a series of boxy rooms with drab, factory-like decor. Racing consists mostly of getting through the doors between rooms before your opponent and being careful not to run into anything. Turns pop up around each corner, so you have to keep on your toes (or memorize them). There are usually signs pointing the next turn, but they sit on immovable posts that will bring your kart to a dead stop that will force you to reverse away from the post. Annoying.

Next up is "The Streets", which ought to have been called "The Dark Alleys". Most of the course is a series of narrow alleys with protruding door steps designed to slow karts down. Part of the course is a wide boulevard with a giant truck (not moving) and you start to wonder what the game would be like with wide-open courses. Then you take a big left turn into a dead end with a small opening back into the alley. If you can find it. To be successful, you need to memorize the awkward layout of each track, which does nothing to add to interest in the game.

Each course has two types of power-ups that are placed in fixed locations. First are chocolate coins that can be used to purchase new carts. Sadly, the new carts aren't that interesting or beneficial. Once you've bought them all, the coins are best avoided as collecting them blocks your view of the track ahead with an update of the number you have. The other power-up is a cup of coffee that give your kart a speed boost. Invariably, the coffee is at the end of a long straightaway so picking up the coffee will boost your speed into tight, twisty turns. It's the last thing you want.

The House level is more or less the same idea a The Chocolate Factory: boxy rooms with narrow doorways. The Farm actually turns out to be interesting. It's more open than the other courses and it has a difficult hay bail maze section. After running through the course several times, I discovered there is a shortcut through the maze. After three mindless, unrewarding tracks, the first unlockable gave me a glimmer of hope the rest of the game was going to be better. Like, maybe the initial tracks are sort of tutorials.

This tiny nod to rewarding gameplay got me excited to play the next level: The Forest. Here was another chance for a wide-open track with shortcuts and maybe less drab visuals. Sadly the forest the designers seem to have had in mind is Mirkwood. There are no shortcuts, no brightness, no escape. If you stray even for a moment from the path, you are likely to be caught by, well, monstrously large blades of grass or stuck behind huge mushrooms with the M&M logo. In addition, you can't see very far. Or rather, trees pop into existence when you get close enough to them. Initially, I thought this was an issue with objects being loaded into memory when beginning a level. But no, each time around the trees suddenly appear.

I don't have the heart to continue racing in the horrid forest level, so if there are more surprises like the farm, I'll never find them. And to be completely clear, the farm is only a good course relative to the very poor alternatives found in the rest of the game. No matter how cheap the game, it's too expensive. It's just not worth your time.

Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz

Marble gravity puzzles have a long history both in physical and digital forms. In both cases, whether the maze should be manipulated directly or via mind-bending knobs depends on if the designer intended the puzzle or the control to challenge the player. The grandfather of video game marble puzzles, Marble Madness, began life in arcades with an intuitive trackball setup that highlighted the course itself. Later, it was ported to other platforms which tend to use directional controls making the game an exercise in axis shifting.

Super Monkey Ball on the GameCube represented a sort of middle ground between the extremes. I only played it a few times and using an analog stick to maneuver floating platforms in order to propel monkeys who were inexplicable trapped in transparent spheres took some getting used to. But once oriented, the game felt fairly natural, though the levels themselves are very difficult. However, the Wiimote's tilt control and Super Monkey Ball are an even better fit. Tilting the controller forward tilts the world forward and starts your monkey moving ahead. Tilt in the other direction to slow down and to one side to turn. I'd guess the transition from "What's going on here?" to "This is awesome!" is half as long on the Wii compared to the GameCube.

This time around, Sega added the ability to jump, which adds a platforming element to many levels. Personally, I find jumps enjoyable, but aggravating at times. Part of the aggravation comes from the challenge of getting over obstacles or across gaps, but a bit is related to the controls. Jump is mapped to A, which normally makes sense. However, the A button is toward the front of the Wiimote, so pressing it pushes the controller forward a bit, causing your monkey ball to race forward as soon as you land often sending it crashing into some object in your path or zipping off the end of the platform. Knowing the cause of the problem was all I needed to solve it. Jumps can also be accomplished by holding the B button and flicking the Wiimote up. While it seems gimmicky, this method does allow jumps to flow better at the cost of being slightly less responsive.

I've only finished about half the main game, which tells you A) the course difficulty ramps up pretty quickly and B) I have not played it as much as Super Mario Galaxy. The courses I have beat were fun and challenging. But trying and failing the levels can be a chore because of the way the worlds open up. Initially, you start with an island world (Monkey Island, if you believe it). Each level in that world has the same music and graphics style. If you beat that world (most will have no problem up to the final map before the boss fight), you are allowed to move on to the Jungle world. You can play the levels within a world in any order, but you can't move on to another world until you finish off the previous one. So it's not unusual to get stuck on a map and have nothing to do but try over and over to beat it. In Galaxy, you can never get stuck on a level with nothing else to do because there are always a handful of worlds available at any one time. Opening new worlds in Banana Blitz requires falling off the same level over and over until you get it right.

Thankfully, there are reasons to go back to worlds you've already beaten. In order to unlock the 9^th and 10^th worlds, you'll need to conquer the other 8 worlds without using the continue option. Since only the most obsessive players will make use of the practice option enough to do it the first time through (and they have other problems besides being getting worn out doing something over and over), you'll likely need to retry older worlds in order to get a clean run. In addition, there are high-score, fastest-time, and bananas-collected records that can be pursued. Plus most of the courses are fun to race through and some have crazy shortcuts to attempt. Finally, a look around any cheat site will reveal a hidden goal to pursue. I'd prefer the less-linear Mario-style of progression, however.

Originally, the party games in Super Monkey Ball were a sort of extra that could be unlocked, but in Banana Blitz, they are half of the game's split personality. This time around, there are fifty mini-games and all of them are available from the start. If you've read other reviews, you'll know these are a mixed bag. The most unfortunate are those that match Wii Sports—Monkey Squash, Home Run Derby, Monkey Golf, Monkey Bowling and Monkey Boxing. They are either shells of deeper games or simply don't work (I'm looking at you Monkey Golf!). I feel like these would have been better received if Nintendo hadn't bundled a much better package with the system. Sega could have saved the sports if they had offered traditional controls in addition to motion controls. And since some of these were included in earlier Monkey Ball titles, it should not have been hard to get this right.

Perhaps the biggest complaint about the party games is that the developers seemed to be experimenting with every type of control scheme imaginable and all sorts of crazy game concepts. The result is that each game takes a few plays to understand what's going on, which doesn't work the best in an actual party. The good news is that some of the games do work well and are fun to play. You just have to finish the bad ones quickly and move on.

I am a touch annoyed at the Shepherd game, which is an implementation of an idea I had in the late 80's while playing with my cousin's Arcade Game Construction Kit on the Commodore 64. In fairness, I've had plenty of time to implement my idea and I didn't imagine monkeys playing the role of shepherd!

The games can be divided into tilt-control, IR-pointer, and motion-control listed in order of how well they tend to work. Tilt-control games such as Monkey Snowboard benefit from the developer's experience on the main game and only have issues if theme of the game has issues. Since tilt is even used for navigating the menus, you get the idea that when the developers got down to doing the mini-games, they found tilting the easiest control to work with. All-in-all, I would have thoroughly enjoyed more attention focused on these games and either left the other game out or just directly ported the GameCube versions.

IR suffers throughout. I suspect the Wii's pointer wasn't completely understood at the time. One problem is that the system does not register the motion of pushing the Wiimote toward the screen and Banana Blitz uses this mechanic in many mini-games. Sitting closer to the sensor bar helps as does making more dramatic motions. Another problem stems from a pretty good idea: pointer calibration. Before IR-pointer games the players are asked to land a ladybug on a flower to calibrate their Wiimotes. If you land in the center of the flower, your Wiimote will be directed at the sensor bar, not the TV, so in the game you won't be pointing at the screen. A solution is to aim at the screen and ignore the bug during calibration so it will land at the bottom of the flower if you have your bar mounted above the screen and vice versa. Finally, more rumble feedback would help greatly to know if you are pointing at what you think you are pointing at.

Motion control is temperamental at best in these games. Too often a movement will be ignored only to have the motion of returning the controller to a neutral position be registered. So in Monkey Golf, a back swing won't be detected, but lowering the controller will be detected as a stroke somehow. So your monkey ball will dribble a few feet off the tee rather being hit hard. Putting is even more frustrating since there's no way to gauge how hard the game will interpret your swing. I feel I do the same motion, but one time it barely budges the ball and the next it shoots the ball off the green. Other games are better, but only because constantly shaking the controller is rewarded by lots of action on the screen. The one game that motion control works for is Red Light, Green Light. Shake the Wiimote and Nunchuk like crazy when the light is green and stop all movement when it turns red. Temperamental controls add to rather than subtract from this bazaar activity.

Two factors ought to temper some of my negative comments about Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz. First, it was a launch game and having fun titles to play on a new console, especially a console as revolutionary as the Wii, are critical to the platform's success. Taken on its own, the main game is a worth addition to any Wii library and a showcase of the power of tilt-control. The mini-games should be seen as 50 experiments, many of which succeed. That so many copycats have now tread the same ground on Wii should not be held against this group of party games. The second factor is that nobody will be paying anywhere near full price on this title. In the context of Wiiware, and it can be purchased for Wiiware prices, the main game is a true bargain. The rest of the package can be utterly ignored or counted as the whipped cream and cherry topping.

Super Mario Galaxy

The third game that was bundled with the Wii was Super Smash Bros. Brawl, but I never really had an interest in it. So, I traded it for Super Mario Galaxy at Wal-Mart. It was a great choice.

As always with Mario games, you control the portly, but surprisingly athletic plumber in a quest to save Princess Peach from Bowser. But after a few minutes playing, that no longer matters. What does matter is the joy of exploring galaxies (hence the name) in search of Power Stars. Each galaxy consists of several planetoids that house different obstacles to your goal. As you collect more Power Stars, more galaxies and missions open up to you. It's enjoyable to go back and play levels you've already completed, but opening new levels stands as the main draw to keep playing early in the game. In my opinion, the feeling of wanting to play "just one more time" defines good games.

Technically, the galaxies shine. The crystal/glass effects of the Pill Planet made me gasp the first time I landed on it. A few levels feature a giant ball that Mario rolls around on à la Super Monkey Ball. When the ball moves quickly the background music speeds up and comes to a virtual stand still as the ball does. There are a variety of suits that Mario may grab to completely alter his abilities, including becoming Bee Mario. Transforming from one to another occurs seamlessly even though each alters gameplay dramatically. Once the game is started, there are no perceptible load times and at no point do you feel pulled out of the game by technical glitches or hiccups. (Once in a while, however, the automatic camera gets lost and you see the outline of Mario behind a pillar or wall. Just press C to reorient.)

Galaxy's music deserves special mention. The soundtrack is fully orchestrated and sets an ideal tone for your quest. Each level plays to background music that fits the pace and mode of the location. One of the early galaxies features playful and bouncy music that fits with the way Mario leaps around the planets. The Honeybee Kingdom moves along like a busy honeybee finding new flowers to harvest. Beach galaxies dance with tropical calypso beats. When Bowser shows up, the music becomes operatic and brooding. In every case, the music compliments the situation and the situation gives meaning to the music.

With a world just asking to be explored, it might have been easy to just scatter Power Stars around and call it a day. Instead, each level received careful attention to be both challenging and approachable. Part of the secret is that it's fairly easy to acquire extra lives, yet very easy to lose them. Just three hits from enemies and hazards will kill Mario. Most levels also include instant-death hazards, such as black holes that suck you to doom if you fall off the side of some planets. (My son tells me not to fall into the Milky Way.) So you might start a mission with half a dozen Marios, which gives you confidence, but lose them to missteps and tricky enemy attacks. Along the way, you have chances to pick up more lives (especially if you peak around corners or collect lots of star bits). Each time you die, the tension mounts a bit. At the same time, most mistakes are obvious and avoidable, so beating a level is truly a matter of trial and error in the best sense. Thankfully save points have been spread liberally around most missions, so starting over isn't normally tedious. While the penalty for leaving a galaxy early is small, it exists, so there is a motivation to dive ahead one more time. On the other hand, it's hard to get stuck in the overall game since there are always other levels to try out.

Initially, multiplayer seemed unpromising. The second player merely points at the screen and has a limited range of actions: help Mario jump, collect and shoot star bits, and freeze enemies. But the pointer itself turns out to be the best feature of "Co-star mode". When my son is the primary player, I can point out where to go next and what to avoid, while shooting and freezing enemies. When I take the controls (normally for just long enough to get past a tricky obstacle), my son directs me to coins that I missed and collects star bits. Two proficient players wouldn't likely enjoy this mode, but it works well for unequal or casual players.

The scope of the galaxies is truly amazing. Even after you've unlocked all the galaxies, there are added challenges in the form of special comets that show up periodically. One of the comets challenges Mario to a race with Cosmic Mario and another speeds up enemies. While not every galaxy has enhanced challenges, the ones that do become much harder to beat. It would have been interesting to see all levels subject to these influences, but the level designers clearly valued a game that could be completed by most players given enough persistence.

At the end of the day, it is the level design that truly sets Galaxy apart. Classic 2D platforming levels, where the camera is locked facing the side of a wall, tend to be my favorite levels because they are all about the challenge. Every level seems to be built to maximize fun, whether because they are frustratingly difficult or delightfully relaxed.

This game keeps me up too late trying to get just one more star and prevents me from falling asleep thinking about that one missed jump or that one wasted second or that one unbeaten boss. It's a rare game that consumes the player with the simple pleasure of play.

Buying a Wii

Until last Christmas I was a PC gamer (if I had time for games at all). Originally, I figured a console was too expensive—especially since I already owned a PC. Since PC games are usually a few dollars cheaper and there's no additional hardware to buy, the choice was obvious. But over the years, I played fewer and fewer games. Part of the reason was that I got married and had a son. There just hasn't been as much on-my-own time as there was when I was single. But I also discovered the fatal flaws in my cheaper-is-better world view.

First, PC gamers are constantly upgrading. In the early days it was memory. Then CPUs needed to be upgraded as well. Then video cards. Plus you need joysticks and better mice and keyboards. All these things add up over time to match or exceed a console's startup cost. Then there are the wasted hours getting all the drivers and device settings working together.

Second, most games are awful. Saving a few dollars on a good game is fine, but too often I'd buy a game only to get bored with it a few days later. This is not an issue specific to the PC, obviously. Games are hard to perfect on any platform. But the PC has a unique issue that hasn't hit console games for the most part: patches. Theoretically, a game that isn't quite perfect can be released on the PC and a few weeks later, a patch to fix the small issues can be distributed. A surprising number of times, I'd get a game that included the patch on the disk with the rest of the game! (I have no idea why publisher do that. Just send us the patched game.) The result was a culture that viewed polish as less of a goal than publishing. Technically, there's no longer a reason console games wouldn't be patched. But for some reason they aren't.

Third, PC games are either solitary or remote. Sure, we'd organize LAN parties once in a while. But that carried it's own set of problems and frustrations. The computer is ideal for one person, but a console is geared toward people sitting around the TV playing together. A game that's kinda fun can become boring really quickly if there is no one to share it with. Since I want to maximize the time I have with family, I haven't had as much time for solitary games as I once did.

Now a few years ago, I visited one of my brothers who had a GameCube. We played a bit of Wario Ware Inc. and Super Monkey Ball, which are two of the oddest games I'd ever seen. There seemed to be wires everywhere and we had to sit close to the TV. But we had a pretty good time, so I put the idea of buying a used GameCube console in the back of my mind.

Last Christmas, we visited another brother in Hawaii. He has an Xbox 360 and plays Halo online. My son, who was 4 at the time, was interested in the game, but we didn't really want him watching that sort of thing, so we loaded Lego Star Wars. I don't know what it was about that strange combination, but we had a great time. Even watching other people play was a lot of fun somehow. Being able to grab a new controller and drop in or out at any time in coop mode really increased the fun factor as well. It was a revelation.

The Xbox 360 has wireless controllers, so there is no tangle of wires. The games look great and there isn't a huge install process for starting new games (compared to PC games). When my son went to bed, my brother and I played a few games of capture the flag with strangers online and it just worked. On the downside, more casual and family-oriented games are less common then on Nintendo systems. And the Xbox draws a lot of power, so it has an overheating issue. Further, it's really expensive.

Striking a balance between the GameCube and Xbox consoles (plus adding an innovative controller) is the Nintendo Wii. Sure the graphics fail to live up to an Xbox 360 and the price is higher than a used GameCube, but it had all the features I wanted. I was lucky enough to find a bundle at Costco early this summer. In the future, I plan on writing about the games I play on it.