Tucked away in the last stretch of Nintendo's Wii section near the exit was SD Gundam. The SD series turns the giant Gundam mechs into cute little chibi versions. This particular game had a cel-shaded look to it, and while it isn't too terribly impressive visually, the use of the controller is what really makes it a lot of fun.

The game is setup like a standard third-person action game, but with a fixed camera looking down on the playfield at a shallow angle. Enemy Zakus and other baddies from the Gundam world shoot bullets and missiles trying to take the hero Gundam down. At the end of the demo, a boss air carrier type of enemy appears, and the demo ends after destroying that.

The player's Gundam machine has two main weapons. A giant spiked mace, and the traditional beam sword/beam rifle combo (interchangable at any time with the C button). Movement is done with the analog stick on the nunchaku. Also on the nunchaku is the Z button, used for jumping into the air.

The primary attack with the spiked mace is to flick the Wii remote forward and down, which hurls the mace at enemies and other objects. The harder it is flicked, the stronger the attack. In addition, it was possible to flick the controller over to the sides a little bit, and the mace appeared to also shoot a little more to the side you flicked it towards. An on-screen indicator tells the player at which angle the controller is being held at, making it much easier to see how the game sees the controller. Switching to the beam combo, the B trigger on the remote fires the rifle, which is chargeable. The beam sword is activated in the same way as the mace, although three flicks in a row will trigger a beam sword combo attack. No special combo motions were needed, just three regular forward flicks.

Two bars at the bottom of the screen indicated the status of the player's Gundam. A green bar was for HP and a brown bar was the energy level of the Gundam. Energy is consumed when performing special moves, such as jumping. Jolting the accelerometer in the nunchacku forward caused the Gundam to perform a shield charge in the direction the it was facing. This was good for clearing space in front of the player, but it requires some energy as well.

The demo had a lot of stuff to destroy, like buildings and giant boulders. It was possibly to chip away at the obstacles with the beam sword, but the best and more powerful weapon was the mace, which can topple buildings with a good flick. The gameplay is rather basic, but the reason why it's fun is because it feels like you have a lot of control over the mace as it's flicked. If you give it a lot of oomph, the action on the screen will pause and indicate how big of a hit that was scored on other enemies. It would be extremely montonous if it was pressing a button over and over again, but with the Wii remote, it was a lot of fun.

One of the fights in the middle of the demo briefly shows how the game would probably feel like with everything coming down at you at once. Three or four enemies were all shooting directly at the player, and it was necessary to run for cover behind buildings and jump into the air to avoid things. Switching between the beam rifle from a distance and the mace up close worked fantastically, and there's no waiting to swing the ball of death after switching. It saved me from a tight spot the second time I played through.

SD Gundam is probably easier to play than most other games on the show floor because the controller isn't used for looking around in a first-person perspective. Sensitivity and disorientation wasn't an issue. The demo was simple to pick up, but still needed some skill to get to the end without going down. Hopefully more Wii games will have properties similar to this one.