Getting a review copy of Kororinpa: Marble Mania is provingtricker than finding good prime time drama on ITV, so it's tothe world of previews that must travel for the moment. The gamehas just seen a European release: should you be interested?

The problem with fantastic, original ideas is that they don'tstay original for terribly long. When Edison stumbled uponelectricity on a field late one night, we bet his entire townflooded out, kites and keys aplenty to grab some of thatexciting electric stuff for themselves. Videogames haven't beenany different: Mario created decades of imitators and Tetrisno doubt lies awake at night, ravaged with guilt at the leaguesof substandard, third party identikits it has spawned. So itwas only a matter of time before Sega's Marble Madness-inspired heart warming, simianrollick Super Monkey Ball would send rival designers scurryingto the photocopiers. To be fair, much of this copying and pasting has been done by Sega themselves, who haven't been shyabout pumping about sequels, but everyone loves Sonic's fathers,so we'll leave off.

The bizarrely named Kororinpa: Marble Mania takes on much ofdrapings and mechanics of SMB: Banana Blitz, and its confidence in the effect the Wiimote's motion sensitivity could have on theMarble Madness lineage. Banana Blitz got us used to the idea ofphysically tilting the Wiimote to tilt the game level, andKororinpa escalates this control, extending movement to the previously chaste Y axis. So you can raise the maze up, andspin it around. A natural worry about a descent into gimmickyuse is assauged by reports that Hudson have crafted levels which take full advantage of this dramatic extension of control:the environments are stock full of tunnels, platforms, magnets and movingbits. You'll be twisting and dancing with that Wiimote.

This aside, it adopts the same cheeryquirkiness and mannerisms that SMB added to the 'marble' genre.It avoids placing hairy, tailed, branch-swingers as the protagonists,but it does succeed its original steel marble with penguins,pigs, and, wonderfully, felines. You can even roll around UFOs,strangely, in your task to collect crystals and reach the endpoint.Penguins rolling around in ballssounds charming, but we can't help but pine for Sega's simians.

Kororinpa adds some extra selection and diversity to the levelsand the rollables, in attempts to solder some sort of idiosyncracy that the concept seems to prohibit. Differentballs have different characteristics, while your travels willtake you to a range of different landscapes. The title seemssincere enough, though reports about patchy, sketchy executionillicit little surprise. Kororinpa has all the hallmarks of agame that is trying to get away with cheeky imitation, thatmight offer some interesting diversions, but will probably be relegatedto a mere footnote when they come to write about the Wii'syear of software ('they', presumably, being people like us).

Truthfully, all discussion or pondering about Kororinpa is thatlittle bit uncomfortable: you have to bite your lip to preventyet another mention of monkeys or bananas. The game will finddifficulty in standing on its own terms, like the youngerbrother who somewhat desperately stands on street corners with hisolder sibling and his hard-drinking friends. Kororinpa lookslike an entertaining, if short-lived and sort of shallowexperience. The sort of thing that will keep you occupied for acouple of evenings, and that's only really when you're alreadytired of Banana Blitz.

We can't decree with the authority of a proper review, butwe're betting it will be passable, but, you know, no Super Monkey Ball. But what is? Super Monkey Ball is, I suppose.

Still, that Kororinpa, eh? Crazy name.