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1. Super Mario (working title) — I honestly believe this could be a game of the year candidate. The world’s most famous plumber makes his first proper appearance on the Nintendo 3DS, and it’s shaping up to be every bit as good as Super Mario Galaxy. Of course, the game has to have its own identity separate from the Wii series, and Super Mario 3D (Let’s call it that for now.) has a more modular design. The levels are square-shaped and blocky where as the Galaxies games have a spherical, more amorphous-looking stages.

It actually harkens back to the Super Mario Bros. 3 days with the airships and the tanooki (ie. raccoon) suit. Both of those make an appearance in Super Mario 3D. In terms of gameplay, it borrows heavily from previous games across all consoles. I could see a little New Super Mario Bros. in the design with its dash button that makes you run faster. For some reason, just moving the circle pad doesn’t do it. The R button is used to butt stomp. Mario can also grab fire flowers, mushrooms, bounce off of musical note blocks and such.

The Tanooki suit is there, but it allows Mario to float down but not fly. What I like best about the game is how Nintendo consciously plays of the 3-D/2-D angle, almost like the developers are joking with you. There are 2-D cutouts of goombas. There’s even a top-down Zelda-inspired level that leverages the strength of the 3-D. It would have been really hard to do elsewhere. All in all, it looks like Super Mario 3D could be a definitive entry to the long list of quality Mario titles. 2. Mario Kart (working title) — My three cousins bought the Nintendo DS Lite just to play Mario Kart on that system. Will Nintendo have the same success with the 3DS version? I think so. The big change in the racing title is that Mario and his buddies now have vehicles that can soar through the air and dive down underwater. It basically takes the series off-road.

An interesting tidbit about Mario Kart is that Retro Studios helped design some of the tracks. During my hands on with the game, I found that it used the 3-D better than most games. It gave me a sense of speed on the ground and and the feeling of flying when I was gliding through the air.

But be warned, players shouldn’t over do it on the flying part. The way the courses are designed, they can easily overshoot their mark and end up falling off the track. As for the actually driving and items, it’s still the same — players drift, collect coins and shoot turtle shells. The item that benefits most from the 3D seems to be the squid, which will blot out the screen giving players a nice effect and disrupt them. From the look of it, Mario Kart 3D is shaping up to be a solid title with some innovation to the genre. 3. Kid Icarus: Uprising — I only played a portion of this at GDC this year. It reminded a lot of Sin & Punishment: Star Successor. The flying portion was a fast-paced, frantic rail shooter in 3-D. I was fine with that. I thought it would still be good with the 3-D visuals. But what surprised me most was the secondary characters that were revealed at E3. It totally changed my mind about the game and gave it more, for lack of a better term, dimensions.

Thankfully, it’s not going to be a straight-up shmup. The new heroes to Kid Icarus: Uprising looks like they’ll add some action game elements, along with a multiplayer mode. Seeing it in action made me believe that this revival starring Pit will be better than most are suspecting. 4. Star Fox 64 3D — Pilotwings Resort, a flying game, was the best way to show off what the Nintendo 3DS could really do. The title gave players a distinct sense of flying and it also showed what a benefit the 3-D can be to gameplay. With Star Fox 64 3D, I was expecting something similar, but somehow the same technology running on that game didn’t do it for me.

I didn’t get that same feeling of depth and flying when I took on three other people in a multiplayer dogfight. The map was a familiar one, Macbeth, and it took a while for me to get adjusted to the controls. Still, the action was fun, and it definitely brings back memories. The one thing that did work for Star Fox 64 3D was the viewable reactions from your rivals using the front-facing camera on the 3DS. Seeing how people reacted to kills and defeat made the match more impactful.

Those expecting smooth video though will be disappointed. The game just shoots occasional pictures of players and relays them to rivals during and after the game. It’s still a good innovation, and I hope to see more features like this on the system. 5. Luigi’s Mansion 2 — I played a little bit of the original Gamecube game, but it’s been so long that coming to this game was a new experience. Partly developed by a Canadian studio Next Level Games, it puts players in the shoes of Luigi as he hunts ghosts in a series of haunted houses. The game is a slow-paced and methodical as he searches for the spirits.

In my quick hands-on, I was fascinated by how the developer used the motion controls to let him look up and down the world as he nudged and fidgeted with items around the mansion. Tilting the 3DS actually solves some of the issues of not having a second analog stick, plus it’s intuitive as well. As far as looks go, it’s one of the more gorgeous titles I’ve seen on the system. The 3-D works well, giving players a sense of depth to an environment they’ll spend a lot of time exploring.

I know this isn’t much to go on because quite frankly I ended up stuck in the room pictured above, but maybe after a few hours with the game in the future, I can get a better handle on it. But for now, Luigi’s Mansion 2 is on my radar. Maybe I’ll go back and play the original on my Wii. Wanna know what I’m playing? Follow me on Twitter. Gieson Cacho

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