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Kororinpa: Marble Mania
By Sparky | May 7, 2007
One of the delightful things I found this weekend was a copy of Kororinpa: Marble Mania for the Wii at Gamestop downtown. It was a Japanese Wii launch title, but the localized version has just recently to US shores. It’s another marble game similar to Archer Maclean’s Mercury for the PSP, Marble Blast Ultra on the Xbox 360, or the Super Monkey Ball series available on various platforms, but this is the cleanest control implementation I’ve seen yet. It uses the tilt sensors on the Wiimote to control the playing field, but with far more precision than any other game I’ve played of the genre. It even allows (requires even on a few levels) turning the wiimote sideways or upside-down to navigate the 3-demensional mazes and catch your marble on a platform as it falls through space.
Having always been a fan of the marble maze genre I’m happy to see it continue to gain traction in the gaming market. Kororinpa: Marble Madness is tied for best implementation with Mercury in my book, although by using the tilt sensor on the Wiimote I would have to say it edges out Mercury in the controls book, but lacks the depth of Mercury – Marble Mania only manages to have about 50 levels, (with a mirrored option after you beat them all) and I was able to ‘beat’ it in an afternoon. I still will get some playability out of it as I need to improve my time in most of the levels to get the gold medal (and thus unlock a few more secret levels, and some new marbles to play with), but for most gamers it will be a fairly short lived title.
Here’s to hoping that Archer Maclean’s Mercury gets a Wii port at some point in the future, and that Marble rolling games in general continue to find homes on consoles, both in this generation and the next!
Topics: Gaming, Technology |