When Eric featured Cid2Mizard's homebrew game Super Mario Galaxies, we all didn't know what to expect. Actually, that might be wrong, as we definitely expected something more along the lines of the wonderful Wii game this homebrew project rips its name from. Instead, what we got (as Eric puts it) was nothing more than "a simple shoot-em-up in which you dodge Bullet Bills and floating sprites that look like Care Bears riding Star Wars landspeeders." It was like Mario had gotten lost in space or something.

But for those of you out there who found the game to be fun or were looking for some more features before taking the plunge, the latest update to version 0.8 adds the following (based on machine translation):

• Difficulty has been tweaked
• Enemies now explode when destroyed
• Fixed some bugs
• Adjusted the score graphic
• Added "stylus screen transitions"
• Extra life now rewarded every 5,000 points

Any of you homebrew aficionados out there going to give this a play?

[Via QJ]

We feel guilty whenever we put the spotlight on these half-baked homemade projects, partly because it's unfair to judge a game so early in production, and partly because we don't take enough time to feature the great homebrew work out there. Even so, we felt compelled to pick on Super Mario Galaxies, if nothing more than to contrast Cid2Mizard's release with the game it owes its namesake to.

While Mario is definitely in an outer space setting -- evidenced by the spacesuit and the speckled black background -- and appears to be shooting star bits, the similarities between Super Mario Galaxies and Super Mario Galaxy end there. You won't find any 3D platforming, planet hopping, or manta riding in this homebrew release. That might be a lot to expect from a single programmer, but when a game is titled Super Mario Galaxies, it sets our expectations pretty high.

Instead, Super Mario Galaxies is a simple shoot-em-up in which you dodge Bullet Bills and floating sprites that look like Care Bears riding Star Wars landspeeders. Knocking into the latter enemies decreases your life bar, but you can shoot star bits at them to put some numbers in your score. Running into one of the invincible Bullet Bills, however, gives you a Game Over.

The game is actually more fun than you'd expect, and we could see ourselves playing it pretty often if it had more depth; just don't expect it to be anything like Super Mario Galaxy.

[Via DCEmu]