Nintendo mascot Mario finally gets back to the business of saving princesses in full 3-D (instead of the 2.5-D of Super Paper Mario) on the Wii. It has been five years since Super Mario Sunshine on GameCube, a game which, while competently executed, didn't exactly win over fans of the classic series. Whatever Nintendo missed in Sunshine gets put right in Galaxy, an innovative platformer that pays homage to the Mario of old while throwing in just enough new tricks that keep things fresh from start to finish.

Just like any other Super Mario game, Mario's arch-nemesis Bowser nabs Princess Peach in a daring daytime abduction, and the do-gooder plumber sets off to save her. This time around, Mario goes where no man has gone before, starting on a deep space observatory, where he meets Princess Rosalina. The Princess, a self-appointed keeper of the stars (any less likely than a plumber who never actually does any plumbing?), tells Mario that the only way he can rescue Peach is by recovering several Grand Stars. Once they've been captured, the observatory can fly into deep space where Bowser is keeping Peach hostage. The story alternates between charming and nonsensical and at times, and, as always, the dialog is just plain eye-rolling.

The lack of anything more than a cursory plot serves to highlight the game's strength -- imaginative layouts that we'd call level design for the Ritalin generation. Instead of long levels that take hours to complete, the game is broken up into galaxies, which are further divided into smaller galaxies. Each smaller galaxy contains its own terrain, platform and theme (e.g. Space Junk Galaxy, Rolling Green Galaxy, Battle Rock Galaxy) and requires Mario to endure a series of obstacles to collect a star, which ends the level and sends him back to Rosalina's observatory.

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In the larger galaxies (each comprised of around five galaxies), one of the planets leads to big boss battles, which get more challenging as the game goes on. Like all Mario games, beating these big boys requires figuring out a boss' attack pattern and then using a combination of the environment and Mario's attacks to defeat them. Some of these battles are just downright difficult and will require a combination of patience, determination and a steady hand to conquer.

These short and sweet galaxies keep the game moving at a rapid clip and, with a few exceptions, there's little level fatigue. Some galaxies require repeat trips to find all of the stars and others just require one go-round to collect the star and head back to the observatory.

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