One of the DS games on display at this week's Nintendo Media Summit was Planet Puzzle League, the newest title from the developers of Tetris Attacks and Super Paper Mario. The game is a block-based puzzler along the lines of Bejeweled and Tetris and offers easy, accessible touch controls. You use the stylus to grab blocks and pull them left or right to line up three blocks of the same color to make them disappear. Like many games of its ilk, the goal is to create chains and combos by lining up multiple sets of blocks at once. All the while as you do this, the game is constantly shoving more blocks up from the screen, forcing you to react quickly.

While playing the game, you hold the DS like a book, something thats always felt a little awkward to me. The controls are entirely touchscreen based, and the top screen (or left screen in this situation) gives you level detail and your score. The levels themselves look nice, with lots of bright flashing lights and pleasing music and the gameplay was entertaining, if not particularly original. The game also offers online play with full voice chat for two players and supports up to four players over ad-hoc wireless. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get any versus play in while I was at the event, but I heard from some other writers that the game really started to shine when in a heated battle over WiFi.

Planet Puzzle League comes out next month, and it should definitely make puzzle game fans happy, as long as they're not too burnt out on moving blocks around for points. And really, who ever could get tired of that?

Circuit City in their most recent flyer guarantees Super Paper Mario to be in-store April 10 by 2 PM or the bamboozled customer receives a $20 gift card. Those addendums you see there represented by "3" and "**" are that the offer is only good this week and the $20 needs to be used on a future purchase, which means if the game isn't "in-store" tomorrow that's an insta-twenty bucks off -- that's a free greatest hits title on any system.

We really are having a hard time seeing the downside to this deal. If the product isn't there, that's an automatic $20 gift card. Or the product is there and we get a new game -- and not Gamestop's definition of "new." Then again, we could check Gamestop today and maybe they'll have a video of the Super Paper Mario ending and save us $50 right from the start. Definitely worth the trip to Circuit City if you were looking to pick up Super Paper Mario, the newest Gamecube title for the Wii.

[Via WiiFanboy]

You've already been able to see some of our impressions of Super Paper Mario from GDC and watch the first 30 minutes of the gameplay, but watch the first TV commercial? Not until now.

The "Wii would like to play" campaign is slightly creepy, just because we don't want shadowy Nintendo agents watching us while we get our game on ... but if they come bearing Wiis and games, we wont complain too loudly.

You can also watch the introduction of the game after the jump. It's a lot shorter than the 30 minute gameplay video, and much easier on the patience. With all of the videos available, where's the game already? Looks like fun.

We fought through the GDC crowds to give you our impressions, and this GameTrailers interview about Super Paper Mario shows off the game's creative controls. While it's just one of the Wii's titles, here's hoping this April game brings showers to counter the perception of the Wii game drought.

Anticipate the rain -- and watch the video -- after the break.

Paper cutout Mario and friends image from Paper Forest and GotOrion.

If you only saw screenshots like the one above, you'd be forgiven for mistaking Super Paper Mario for an All-stars-style update of the original Super Mario Bros. When you see the 95 percent complete build on the GDC show floor, though, it's easy to see that the game is a true continuation of the Paper Mario series, with a few significant changes thrown in.

Everything you remember from Intelligent Systems' two Paper Mario games is here -- the irreverent writing style, the smoothly animated flat characters set in a detailed polygonal world and the items and leveling structure will all be familiar to Paper Mario fans. The now-familiar Paper Mario sidekicks also return in the form of Pixls -- little hovering companions that can perform specialized functions like turning into bombs or grabbing nearby enemies.

What's changed is how you interact with the enemies -- through platform-style jumps instead of turn-based battles. It's amazing how the lack of jarring, momentum-stealing battles every 30 seconds transforms the game into a more fluid and much more enjoyable experience.

The other major change, as has already been shown in countless online videos, is the ability to switch between a 2D side-view and a 3D over the shoulder view with a tap of the A button. It's interesting to see the familiar 2D environments converted into sometimes-complex, layered 3D environments, though the puzzles that used this mechanic in the demo seemed pretty facile.

The Wii's motion-sensitive controls allow for some occasional aerial acrobatics, but for the most part, the game brings back the simple run and jump control scheme of the NES Mario games with little embellishment. Which is just fine by us. Just because the Wii allows for motion-sensitive controls doesn't mean they should be shoehorned in when other, simpler controls work just as well or better.

Since its announcement at E3 2006, Super Paper Mario has made a format shift and still managed to keep a suspiciously low profile. It's a game that has been developed in the shadows, with only occasional flashes to give the poor gaming press anything to write about. At last, though, Super Paper Mario is coming out into the open. Nintendo today confirmed an April 19 release for Japan, which means that Super Paper Mario (like the Wii itself) is going to debut in North America. The new 16:9 screens here show how beautiful the game has become and, although Wii Remote functions are yet to be properly explained, Famitsu reports that Peach's umbrella can be used to access secret areas. (Here come the Super Mario Bros. 2 flashbacks.) We're intrigued to see how Super Paper Mario can flit from 2D to 3D at the press of a button and retain some sort of consistency. America can discover on April 9 whether Intelligent Systems' ambitious project has succeeded -- and more importantly, find out whether Bowser ends up marrying Peach. The horror.



[Image credit: Famitsu]

Portly paper plumber platforming news now, with Nintendo announcing a release date of April 9 for Super Paper Mario. Initially developed as a Gamecube title, the Wii adventure sees Mario switching between charming 2-D and 3-D landscapes in an effort to thwart the ill-advised marriage of Princess Peach to Bowser. Who knew a mere platformer could provide such sweeping social commentary on the liberal, inter-species marriage laws of the Mushroom Kingdom?

The platformer also underlines the state of the ongoing Wii games drought. Short of Sonic's Wii debut later this month and Wario's notable appearance early this year, the console's Q1 release schedule has been decidedly barren. Ideally, Super Paper Mario will kick off a more vigorous second quarter, complete with the evolved form of an overlooked Gamecube ape.

IGN's Matt Casamassina is reporting that Super Paper Mario, currently planned for the GameCube, will come out for the Wii instead. The comment came in response to a question on the IGN Wii mailbag, along with a rather cryptic hint about "reading between the lines" of the rather direct statement that "Paper Mario will be headed to Wii and not GameCube."

Super Paper Mario was one of the bright spots for GameCube owners in a largely 'Cube-free E3 for Nintendo. Since the game's announcement, there has been next to no additional information released, save a couple of leaked videos from Japan's World Hobby Fair. With that game's official release date of Oct. 9 quickly approaching and no Japanese release or additional information from Nintendo forthcoming, many sites have updated their projections for the game's release to Q4 '06 or even Q1 '07.

In the same mailbag, Casamassina also points to a blog post where he speculates that the Wii will not ship with previously-announced DVD-playback. The feature is not mentioned on Nintendo's official spec sheet for the system, and the Nintendo big wigs refused to answer Casamassina's questions about the issue.

We've put in a call to Nintendo for an official comment on these rumors, and we'll be sure to update once we hear back.

[Update: A spokesperson for Nintendo has given the stock reply that they do not comment on rumors or speculation. However, Casamassina has reiterated to Joystiq that his statement was not pure speculation and was based on information he's heard from insider sources.]