Twenty-two years after Mario first appeared in a video game, and six since his last major outing the moustachioed plumber returns with a new digital adventure, Super Mario Sunshine

And the importance of Mario to Nintendo's Gamecube cannot be underestimated

Nintendo GameCube
The game is essential to Nintendo's fortunes
Mario is one of the few globally-recognised video game characters, known to millions of people who do not even play the games

The character is a key weapon in the company's drive for sales and more than 400,000 copies were sold in Japan in just four days while 350,000 units passed into eager hands in the US in just 10 days

Day-glo colours

His creator Shigeru Miyamoto is a legend in the video games world - the man who created Donkey Kong - and as such expectations around the game have been high

Super Mario Sunshine
Colour and fun are key features
In the latest incarnation, Mario is given a three-dimensional world of gingerbread buildings and day-glo colours in which to cavort

Elegant simplicity has always been a feature of Miyamoto's games and in Sunshine Mario must wash clean huge swathes of graffiti from Dolphin Island in order to win his freedom

Okay, it's not exactly mind-bending stuff but the game's graphical beauty, exuberance and charm more than compensates and will appear to a wide age spectrum