I was thinking about this and honestly I don't think I personally need a story to play a Mario game. Playing Super Paper Mario made me realize this. Way to much talking in that game, and I started to understand why Mario games have never had too much story, its to keep the amount of Dialogue to a minimum. I think a good Mario game really only needs a story line capable of giving you some clear goals, although I am sure they will go a bit farther than that.

In the end the story takes a back seat to gameplay for me and I have no problem with a good storyline as long as it is not to intrusive to the flow of the game.

 The beginning of Super Paper Mario was one of the longest and most boring beginnings of any game. So much text and unnecessary story elements and convos.

Yea the beginning of SPM was unnecessarily long. The rest of the game was ok tho.

SMG went way way up on my wanted list to #1 once I found out there would be real-sized worlds and not just a bunch of tiny spheres. More/better powerups would be great too, Sunshine *really* sucked that way (oh boy my water nozzle changed, *snooze*). The stupid water gun made the controls too complicated/frustrating too, my fiancee couldn't stand it and just gave up halfway through the game.

Btw Double Dash got my fiancee playing co-op with me using the items while I drove, otherwise she never would have played at all, so A+ in my book. :D

And...when was that confirmed?

I know, technically, the use of planets accounts for a low polygon count which greatly helps with graphics. But it's a nothing short of a brilliant idea... and boy does this look amazing?

I mean, for my taste, I'm thinking this is the best looking game I've ever seen. I liked Paper Mario's style, enjoyed Strikers, and was trully impressed at Brawl... but this just blows me away. I have yet to see a single shot that doesn't look perfect to me, gameplay or otherwise. Not just graphics, but animation to. Unbelievable.

 Yes, aesthetically this is the best looking game on the Wii for sure.

I dunno if you guys knew this but according to the 1UP people there are 120 'areas' in the game which I'm assuming 120 levels or worlds?

If this is true I will be very happy.

They haven't confirmed that there will (or will not) be online for smash. In fact, the few times they've discussed it at all, it seems like it will have it (the way they phrase their responses), but it wasn't an explicit confirmation.

If you want to take their silence on the subject as proof that it won't have it, okay, but that's a bit of a stretch, given how secretive Nintendo always is :p 

Awesome, something else I read by one of the folks who tested it at E3 said the Dev that was showing him the game mentioned that the 4 levels they were demo'ing were selected because they were short.  Which has me hopeful that we will have plenty of mid-sized levels to explore.

PS - There is no doubt this is the best looking game thus far on the Wii, and people who are being honest know the Wii is graphically weaker than the PS3/360.  But for me at least, SMG level graphics is all I need for the graphics to not interfere with immersion.  A lot of people see Mario and don't understand the difference between art style and art quality.  Mario just has a different style than Killzone or Halo, but the textures and details of the Mario art get pretty close to that quality, if not on par. With that said, I expect more improvements from the 360 and PS3 as developers learn the hardware.

This is so disorienting, I got a headache from watching those videos...