As Bee Mario you can fly, although only momentarily, and not too far either. Mario's little bee wings can only haul Mario's heft for a few seconds and a few feet through the air before the Fly meter, which appears near Mario when he takes off, depletes and Mario falls victim to gravity.
The Bee suit also allows Mario to cling onto and clamber up honeycomb walls, and alight on hovering flower platforms that would otherwise cave under normal Mario's weight. Water is the suit's big weakness though - touch it and you lose it.
This makes for some awesome platforming, with one section consisting of a series of hovering flowers surrounded by water-spurting pipes.
The ultimate aim of the Bee World is to reach the giant queen bee (who sports the most amazing fur shading ever, by the way). She has an itch, which turns out to be caused by star shards. You climb around her grabbing the shards to complete the shooting star which pings you through the air to one of the 120 power stars to be found in the game.
The other suit revealed is in a darker level made up of a series of floating wooden ships - like the ones out of Super Mario Bros. 3. It's the Boo suit, turning you into one of the round white ghosts and allowing you float around and through walls.
The Star Dust galaxy is just like the level Nintendo showed a year ago. Unlike the Honey Bee galaxy, it's made up of smaller floating spheres and structures, littered with different enemies and obstacles. It has that bit where you pull Mario through space by pointing the Wii Remote at blue crystals in the air that levitate Mario towards them. It's good fun.
Levels aside though, plenty of new play mechanics have been introduced. The so-called two-player functionality is one of the biggest - a second player can grab a Wii Remote and, using their own (yellow) pointer on the screen, can offer the main player some help by grabbing enemies, collecting items and generally manipulating the world.
It's not really a proper two-player mode, but we suppose it'll be cool when you need to help your little brother or rubbish girlfriend through a section of the game.
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