Super Mario Galaxy 2

He's still able to eat just about everything that crosses his path, too. It's a mechanic that's handled with absolutely no fuss, by pointing with the remote and then pressing the trigger, and which comes into its own when you stumble across Burp Fruit in the Tail Trunk Galaxy.

Burp Fruit inflates Yoshi like a balloon, which is perfect for exploring a level built around a series of vast trees with landing zones made from branches. Holding a button down allows you to conserve your air somewhat, but with a short timer you really want to be chaining one fruit to the next as quickly as possible.

It's not an entirely new idea for Mario by any means, but it benefits from some intricate staging, as you float uneasily through a spinning wheel maze and around the edge of a rolling log filled with moving platforms, avoiding spiny plants and trying to keep afloat as long as you can.

Yoshi crops up in a few other levels in the eight or so areas revealed so far, and elsewhere there's a similarly pleasant blend of old and new ideas. One level plays the old gravity-reversal trick, with sections that tug you towards the ceiling and others that pull you back to the floor, but there's a greater sense of mischief on display, with moving platforms, crackling laser grids and regular patrols from Octogoombas.

Another challenge, meanwhile, creates a looping, backswitching racecourse peppered with - erm - peppers, which provide Yoshi with a burst of gravity-defying speed. It reminded me of Quackshot for the Megadrive, which was brilliant but not very cool, and so nobody ever mentions it any more.

Nintendo has stated that Super Mario Galaxy 2 is more than just a sequel - it's a new game, with a "new feel". In truth, it's hard to pinpoint that much - other than a chummy dinosaur and a slightly crueller streak - which feels noticeably different on this outing.

That's partly down to the fact that we're being shown a range of different levels out of context, perhaps, but the deeper truth is that adding fresh elements to Mario Galaxy was never going to shake it up that much.

That's because the game's whole design was already based around throwing in new things every few minutes - generously busting ideas other series would probably build a whole game around, and cashing them in on a mere five-minute distraction.