E3: New Super Mario Bros. Wii
Four from the floor.
Unlike Four Swords and LBP, the camera's fixed and doesn't scale much, so if anyone gets left behind, they'll need to find their way back blind or, more likely, die. If you do die, you'll lose a life and get resurrected in a bubble which can be popped by another player (or not) to bring you back into play - a very clever multiplayer reworking of the Baby Mario mechanic from Yoshi's Island. Just so you don't feel completely helpless, you can shake the Wii remote to gravitate your bubble to the nearest player who'll probably end up popping you then, whether they want to or not.
Lose all your lives and you're out of the game, though. The balance between self-interest and community spirit is perfect, since on one of the harder levels we tried, a mini-boss castle, it was noticeably more difficult (though not impossible) to proceed solo than with at least one other player around. The level was classic stuff - Dry Bones, ascents through treacherous moving stone slabs and see-sawing platforms that could be given an extra push with a tilt of the Wii remote (another "secret" control detail - I suspect there will be more).
The only new item we see is the propeller suit, a hilariously cute colour-coded romper-suit and helicopter-helmet combo. It's a shake-driven permanent spin-jump, essentially, which combined with the exaggerated bounce physics while spinning causes all sorts of ricochet madness between the players. It already seems a smarter addition to the canon than any of the DS New Super Mario Bros' slightly gimmicky offerings. In terms of the classics, we also see the fire flower, whose extra range is key when it comes to racking up points.
And believe me, you will want to rack up points. This being a 2D Mario, there are so many different scoring opportunities - enemies, coins, super coins, items, secret areas, based on both level-knowledge and skill - that you'll always be racing to get something ahead of your competitors, but never short of an alternative objective if you fall a little behind. Coin-filled caverns down pipes (everyone follows a single player down a pipe, after a short pause) are pure, mad scrambles for score.
It's all topped off with a fitting finale at the end-of-stage flagpole. After the first player grabs it, everyone else has a few seconds to get there and get higher up it for a higher point finisher. Scores are then totted up, and positions on a cumulative leaderboard shuffled accordingly, and it's on to the next level.
The question mark over New Super Mario Bros Wii is naturally how worthwhile it will be to play alone. But maybe that's the wrong question. It's a multiplayer game through and through, a totally open-minded, open-ended one that doesn't see the difference between rivalry and friendship. If you have at least one other to play with who can get along with the concepts of left, right and jump, then this game could be Mario remade - in a way that Super Mario Galaxy 2, however lovely it looks, can't hope to be.
New Super Mario Bros. Wii is due out worldwide this Christmas.