Fallen by the Wii-Side

It's been a long time since I made a pun on the name of the Wii. Too long.

My poor Wii has been sitting unplayed and unloved in my entertainment center for the last few weeks. Ever since finishing up Twilight Princess in February I've been focused on Dragon Quest VIII and FFXII (both on PS2). There's still a bit of a PS2 backlog to work through, including Rogue Galaxy, Okami, and ICO, among others; and my GCN backlog is growing by leaps and bounds.

I've been snapping up "classic" used GameCube titles from Gamespot.com to catch up on some of the franchises I missed out on while my GameCube was broken (for a good bit of the last generation). I remember I was playing Animal Crossing, and after that everything is a blur. . . . It is entirely possible that I failed to pull up a weed in my flowerbed, or neglected to say hello to the mailman, or missed a performance by K. K. Slider, or something, and the cute animal denizens of my town may have revolted, sabotaging my 'Cube from the inside.

That seems like the most likely explanation.

Anyway, my point is that I've been neglecting my Wii ever since finishing Twilight Princess. We played some WarioWare here and there, but that isn't the type of game I would sit down and play by myself for any extended period of time. There haven't been any great new titles lately that have really caught my interest, but there are some interesting titles coming down the pipe in the next few months that I'm looking forward to; chief among them is Super Paper Mario.

Due out on April 9, Super Paper Mario is both a member of the Mario RPG series and a classic platformer with a twist. While maneuvering through the gameworld from left to right per the old-school Super Mario Brothers games, Mario will sometimes encounter impassible obstacles such as gaping chasms, steep mountains, or high pipes. Not to worry---with a special move (in this case, a spacial move?) Mario can turn the whole game world on its axis, revealing a three-dimensional environment. Take, for example, a pipe that is too high to jump over. By turning the world sideways for a three-dimensional perspective, Mario can easily run around the front or back of the pipe; when the world returns to its flat perspective, he will be on the other side. See the composite to the right (which I made from two screenshots borrowed from IGN.com), which shows two different views of the same screen---one in standard, side-scrolling mode (top) and one in 3D view (bottom).

I'm looking forward to this title in a big way. It's not Super Mario Galaxy, but it will tide us over for awhile.