I'm 30 now, so I really do appreciate those retro-flavoured nods to my youth. There are many nostalgic moments like this that I won't spoil here.
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One stage even sees you riding a dinosaur named Plessie down a series of waterfalls to the penguin race tune from Super Mario 64.
It's a superb mix of mechanics and powers that make traversal across every stretch of platforms, sliding platforms and hazards a joy to navigate. There's also an ice skate variation on the Goomba shoe in some ice levels, cannon helmets and more. This arsenal has been bolstered by the all-new Cat Suit, which gives the heroes a new claw swipe attack, gliding air pounce and most-usefully, the ability to climb up sheer walls for a little while. Mario's stock of classic moves has returned across all characters, including his butt stomp, crouching jump Fire Flower power-up, and the Tanooki suit. What follows is a charming, addictive and colourful adventure across many themed worlds. This time he's captured a troupe of ludicrously adorable fairies and bottled them up in jars, spreading them and his legion of minions across the land. Seeing as Princess Peach is a playable character - and in my opinion, the best one thanks to her floating jump from Super Mario Bros 2 - Bowser has to focus his kidnapping ways elsewhere. This is an exemplary title, even if it falls short of Galaxy's stratospheric achievement. You're never too far from a new trick or toy that makes you approach the format a little differently. True to form, Shigeru Miyamoto and his team have crafted some ingenious mechanics that - in many cases - only last a single stage, but what they do is ensure that the tempo of levels keeps bubbling along at an enjoyable pace. So while Mario's inaugural 3D outing on Wii U doesn't follow the same planetoid format as Galaxy, it's still a truly superb entry to the series. This particular brand of platformer simply doesn't exist elsewhere, and I get the impression it'd be foolish for other publishers to try and emulate it. While it's clear Super Mario 3D World doesn't follow the same template as its predecessor, it's still a thoroughly enjoyable and imaginative platforming experience that Nintendo has long made its own. It'd take something pretty bloody spectacular to top the brilliance of Super Mario Galaxy.
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Super Mario 3D World does things only Mario games can, but how does it stack up against the Galaxy series? VG247's Dave Cook takes the final code for a spin to find out.