"What world are we in again?"

April 28, 2011 | Posted by Greg Bruce

Coins, Star-bits, Gold Stars, Grand Stars and Green Stars, we've got 'em all (Thats right, even the green stars!). *Spoiler Alert!* ...

Oh, hello there. Please, take a seat...

Here at FLIPP, we're no strangers to the Mario Brothers, given that about half of us are hardcore gamers and no self respecting gamer would ever deprive themselves the pleasures of chompin down mushrooms and stomping goombas, So when we got our hands on a Wii and a small stack of the latest mario games we did what any geek would do... we dedicated all our free time to exploring every level, finding every secret and collecting every coin/star that these games have to offer.

First up, "New Super Mario Bros"

This Game was great. Each level has 3 large coins to collect, usually placed in hidden or hard to reach places and with a "Secret World 9" lurking in the shadows who could resist playing this one until their fingers blister. With the ability to have 4 people on the screen at the same time jumping off one another and throwing each other into pits of lava this game made for some awesome team lunches (some of us may have even stayed after hours to play).

Save States FTW!

Next we all piled into the Delorean and took a trip back to the late 80s to play a classic Mario title known as "The Lost Levels". Now my recollection of this game is a little fuzzy because time travel always leaves me a bit light headed but I do vaguely recall something about worlds A - D... I don't have much to say about this one, classic Mario titles are always a good time and despite the fact that its only one player at a time we still managed to keep the team spirit by passing the controller around.

"Super Mario Galaxy 2"

This one took a bit of time for everyone to warm up to, after the success of "New Super Mario Bros" everyone was a bit hesitant to get into a 3rd person, single player Mario game but after we discovered that the second player could actually help out by holding down enemies and collecting star bits, coins and "1 Ups" people started easing into it and it wasn't long before they were long jumping, triple jumping and butt pounding their way through the levels as Mario!

What was great about this game was its replay value, you can beat the game without collecting all the stars but once you do you unlock "World S" and every galaxy in this world (galaxies in a world?) requires a certain number of stars to unlock so you find yourself going back to get the stars you missed or avoided (Blazing dragon level) during your first run through. So anyhow, after you get all 120 stars in the game, turns out, there are 120 more "Green Stars" to get! These green stars are scattered throughout each level in high up or hidden places, but after mastering all Mario's jumping techniques on the first play through most of them where a breeze to get (crouch, back flip, wall jump, spin, wall jump)

Anyhow, the fun doesn't stop after the green stars! Once you've collected them all you unlock the "Grand Master Galaxy" which has 2 more normal gold stars to collect. The first one wasn't that hard to get but the second one was epic, the level is made up of about 6 or 7 mini levels with no check points and you've only got 1 hit point to work with... It took us a few lunches and some after hours plays to finally get that last star, but rest assured we did and the pay off was... well, aside from a letter in the Wii mail section from the developers congratulating us on our achievement there really wasn't any pay off, but it was fun while it lasted, which by the way was approximately 106 plays/60 hours according to the stats.

So now what do we do?

So now we're playing the original "Super Mario Galaxies" which, aside from some seriously crippling player 2 limitations is almost exactly like Galaxies 2. Why did we play 2 first you ask? I'm not really sure but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else who hasn't already played Galaxies 1, The difference in player 2's abilities is just to much of a setback...

Anyhow...

So I guess after all that there is only one thing left to say... "TRANSFORM!!!" *A new galaxy has appeared* son-of-a...! This had better not be another chimp challenge... Gotta run, but leave a comment, FLIPP wants to hear about your video game success! (especially if you know some secrets we don't).