Undoubtedly one of the Wii's biggest sellers and most successful games; how could it not be? The much-loved Mazza returns in a game promised to tread new ground à la Mario 64.

I will briefly share some M64 thoughts with you. I got it bundled with my N64 the first Christmas following its release (along with Lylat Wars). My previous consoles consisted of my Megadrive then before that, my brother's SNES (so not mine at all really), the Amiga 500 he gave me (not a console I know) and his Atari before that. Holding that controller in my hands... I knew it was right!!

The N64 gave me my first proper 3D experience, though I had played games like Pandemonium and Crash Bandicoot on (again) my brother's PSone previously, but these are semi-on-rails type games that don't give you the full 360degrees freedom to roam environments.

Even the first level had me falling off bridges and ledges and running into enemies because getting to grips with controlling something in that environment with the control stick just took a while! It was fantastic (if frustrating at first) to realise the new direction games were taking and to be part of it and enjoy it.

M64 set the bar for that gaming generation and it did a great job of it. We've been waiting for something like that to happen again ever since... does Galaxy deliver?

Well, in some ways, most definitely. The graphics are just lovely; endearing, fun, bright and detailed. It's a game that makes you happy, which is a refreshing change from all these green-brown-grey things coming out on the other consoles which tend to involve some sort of marine (human or otherwise) fighting bloody battles against other humans-or-otherwise in "super-real" environments. These, I think, can get depressing, however impressive the graphics and gameplay are.

Simlar to M64, you are seriously disorientated by the ability to run in a spherical manner around an environment. You run to the edge, expect to stop, but keep going and end up in a whole different plane full of different stuff. Like M64, this takes some getting used to! So they achieved their goal in that respect, of providing something new.

The worlds are generally lovingly-designed with the gaming staples of fire/ice etc. cropping up. There is some Banjo-Kazooie creeping in with the addition of the star bits to collect (cf. golden musical notes in BK) which can only be a good thing, in my opinion! This also provides the opportunity for a less-able gamer to help out as P2 can have a cursor which can pick up these collectible items (similar to the co-op mode in Jet Force Gemini in a way, as you can also fire them at enemies).

There are some ingenious "power-ups" for Mario to experience along the way; I won't spoil these for you but some of them had me giggling away.

So, on to the negative side.
Again, I found it to be a bit on the easy side - but perhaps this is just because I have more gaming experience and can adapt to new things more quickly, or am used to the gaming formula. I found I could unlock all the galaxies (sets of levels) without getting stuck at all, whereas in M64 the sprawling game threw its blocked doors at me with huge demands of stars that I had to go back finding some and doing those really tricky ones I'd left behind. Not so with Galaxy, I feel. It does get very, VERY tricky, to say the least, if you want to complete the game 100% though. I've lent it to someone else before achieving that!

Next up, the bosses are quite pitifully easy. The only one I found at all challenging was a raving, angry mole, but feel free to share your experiences on that one.

NO YOSHI!

Other than that, I can't think of much else to criticise. I think the sheer brevity of it got to me, but as I said, perhaps I'm too used to ol' Mazza. There are, I think, the same amount of stars as in M64.

Galaxy is definitely worth the cash. It's a new experience in many ways, it does work hard to make you love it.