IGN Talks Mario Galaxy ‘Secret’ Levels
First up, we tackled the stage we didn’t get to play at Leipzig – Keepers of the Sky Gauntlet. It’s a level packed with vicious Thwomps that try to crush you at every turn. Alongside these are rotating Toxic Boxes from Super Mario 64, which can only be avoided by looking for the hole in one of their six sides, which you can hide in as the box smashes to the ground when you try to sneak past. Furthermore, to add to the Mario nostalgia the music is a remix of the classic Underworld track from Super Mario Bros. – a tune we were humming for some hours after we’d finished playing.
However, perhaps the most impressive thing about the level was its actual design. You see, in the centre of the stage are two spiralling black holes and between them a torrent of water rages from one to the other – creating a kind of bizarre anti-gravity rapids. The course itself is made up of a narrow concrete walkway that spirals around the two black holes. It’s like nothing we’ve ever seen in a Mario game before and certainly goes to show the kind of imaginative stages the development team at Nintendo is able to create thanks to Galaxy’s planet-based setting.
There’s a lot more information that IGN talks about including gameplay details from the two ‘secret’ levels. They say the levels are not exactly full worlds like most of the galaxies shown, but they seem more like small areas accessed by either a warp pipe or star.
