GDC Amazingness!

Not being a "professional" blogger has its downsides, to be sure. One of them is that I don't get invites to industry events such as this week's Game Developer's Conference. *sigh* On the upside, however, I, like any of you, can access most of the news that comes from such a conference, from the convenience of my desk at home, without the fuss, muss and expense of travel!

Yesterday and today have been fairly significant news days for Nintendo at GDC, with several key announcements being made and Shigeru Miyamoto's keynote speech this morning. A major highlight of the whole thing, to me, is the new video footage of Super Mario Galaxy that was shown during the keynote, and is now viewable at GameTrailers.com, among others. Here are a couple of stills:
This first shot, with Mario nearly dead-center, zooming through space as he seems to do a lot in the game, shows just how vastly, hugely, big and enormous the environments are! I also like the variety of objects Nintendo has put in the space, and the sweet franchise-themed items, such as the Dr. Mario pill and Yoshi egg...I put this second still up because as I was watching the trailer, there was just a momentary flicker in the background of the awesome airships you see here. They really grabbed my attention, even though we've seen them in some E3 footage, because in this shot you can see them in their entirety and from a distance. Also, is Mario running on a Martini Shaker? Is this a hint of a new non-game coming from Nintendo... Mario Bartender?Lastly, this shot, which doesn't really do the video justice. Mario is in the blue bubble, center screen (I forgot that he's always center-screen, which eliminates camera problems!) These are those crazy bubbles that you point at to make them grab Mario in a kind of force-field, and then carry him along. Here the mini-suns are spewing out fireballs and flares, which Mario has to navigate between without getting burned!

I guess I'm pretty jazzed about this, because I never post more than one screenshot with my entries! In any event, click on over to GameTrailers and check out the footage!