Could Nintendo be planning a demo of some kind for their upcoming blockbuster Super Mario Galaxy? It would certainly appear so. We recently spent some time with Nintendo running through their range of upcoming titles, including Zach & Wiki, Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles and Sight Training. Of course the biggest game on show was Super Mario Galaxy, which we featured in our article Why Super Mario Galaxy will be as Revolutionary as Super Mario 64. During our hands-on with the game, we noticed something rather strange. A timer.



Indeed, when the game first loaded up, a clock began counting down 10 minutes, a feature that is extremely common with timed demos. The theory being that you get 10 minutes to get as far into the game as possible before it resets to the start and you walk off to buy a copy, suitably addicted. In fact, for the purposes of our hands-on, the timer was increase by a cheat.



Such a feature is obviously useless in the full retail release, leaving us to wonder why it exists at all. Almost certainly this reveals Nintendo’s intention to have the game playable as a public demo. While PS3 and Xbox 360 console displays have become mainstays of most retail outlets across the globe, the Wii has struggled to promote itself in such a fashion, an unfortunate side effect of the motion-based controllers that can’t be locked into place like your standard peripheral. So what does this timer mean?



It’s fair to suggest that Nintendo will be touring the game around key shopping malls in the lead-up to Christmas. We predict booths with multiple screens set-up, and a couple of hot Wii playing chicks running consumers through the experience – Nintendo have undertaken such tours in the past, including for the launch of the Wii itself. It is unlikely to be downloadable, given the minimal memory space on the Wii, but it could possibly come packaged in another big game… like Metroid Prime: Corruption. We would think this is unlikely, but the Crackdown/Halo 3 venture and Tony Hawk Proving Ground/Guitar Hero III ventures have shown that the concept of including demos of upcoming games with new releases works wonders for publishers.



We’ll keep you posted! The game is expected to go on sale November 29.








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