To Wii or not to Wii? That is the fan-angering, sniggersome question provoked by Nintendo's dithering back and forth as to just how we'll be playing Super Paper Mario. One second it's a GameCube exclusive, the next it's also on the Wii, and now it's apparently only on the Wii. Nintendo don't seem to know what's going on; leading us to make plans to hijack the next Ask Iwata session to squeeze answers from the head honchos.
The game adopts the charming 2D stylings of the Paper Mario titles, and adds a dollop of retro tastiness. It's a side-scrolling platformer for the most part, but with a level 'deepifying' mechanic that pushes the flat world into 3D, revealing hidden depths.
Its roots firmly in GC territory, this wasn't developed with the Wii's controllers in mind. How can we expect them to be implemented? As NES titles on the Virtual Console show, a horizontally held remote is the perfect replacement for the NES' D-pad and dual button setup. So traditional are the 2D sections, with their block-smashing, Goomba-squashing and shell-kicking simplicity, that to play them with anything other than a NES setup would seem wrong.
This would, however, clash with Fairen control. Throughout the game you're accompanied by two odd-looking sprites, or Fairens; a butterfly and a shape-shifter. In the E3 demo, the shape-shifting assistant was activated with the X Button, to grab enemies and throw them or transform into a yellow mallet for Mario to wield.
Now we're on Wii, we can't look at the Fairens floating around Mario without thinking of Super Mario Galaxy's item-activating star cursor or the remote-directed Zelda fairy.
With Galaxy's remote-directed cursor being met with thumbs-up, we expect it to be implemented here. The possibilities for getting the Fairen hand shape to seize enemies by their bonces already has us rubbing our hands together with malicious glee.
It looks great and the story will surely be as barmy as the other Paper Mario narratives. Here's hoping Nintendo have done enough to justify the confusing move to Wii.
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