on my lunch brake a work the other day, i was reading the issue of electronic gaming monthly with the picture of Niko (gta4) on the cover page. i looked over a story discussing how the franchise influnenced gaming. at the bottom of the page there were a few pics such as true crimes, saint's row, and im like, "mmk ok, they're clones". then my eyes popped out when i saw mario galaxy. WTF?!?!?! so i say to myself, ok ok, i have to find the explanition of this.

later on in the article the author states, "... games such as Super Mario Galaxy, which took from the GTA's open world gameplay and used it to give tha game more appial to its audience." hmmm. now before i rant about how mind bottlingly stupid that sounds to me, and y i NEVER take gaming magazines seriously, i will say that its been many years since ive played mario 64 (plan on down loading it on the vc). ever since launch to be more precise. so i was far too young to remember most of the gameplay elements of that game, but as far as i can remember: ur at peaches castle, each world is represented by picture frames, u pick a world, play through the games levels designs, find the star, then move on to the next one. correct me if im wrong, but its the same concept for galaxy. instead of having picture frames, u have bed rooms. oh and not to mention the whole "3.5 D" element (i sware to god that better not be what the author as refering to, or im writting a letter to the editor).

so it seems to me that galaxy was influenced by mario 64, NOT GTA. i have no freakin clue where this guy gets off saying that. ive been racking my brain about this, and all i have to say that its just plain false. if any of u find ANYTHING, please tell me, or i will forever loose confidence in game magazine journalism .