With the highly anticipated Super Mario Galaxy about to be released on November 12th in North America (November 16th in Europe), there has been rumours of the game being leaked onto the Internet three weeks earlier. According to the Neograf forums, it has been reported that at EBGames, there are copies of the game with a 10 minute restriction, however, if played on a normal Nintendo Wii, the restriction does not exist. One of the EBGames employees burned a copy of the disc and uploaded it onto the Internet.

According to people around the net, once you try the game on your modified Wii, it looks as though the game works since you see the “Super Mario Galaxy” title screen, however, you are asked to update your system firmware. For those who are brave enough to try that, the game ends up not loading and shows the message “error 001 unauthorized device has been detected”. There have also been talks about new security features on Nintendo Wii games to prevent pirating…unfortunately, I think it’s only a matter of time before piraters can circumvent these measures. In the case of the game being leaked from EBGames, I would assume there will be major repercussions, from huge losses in sales to possible legal action by Nintendo. However, since it appears that the leaked version is yet to be playable, I guess it isn’t time to be alarmed.

I guess in the end, it’s up to ourselves and our conscience when we decide to pirate games. Though it’s not my duty to tell you what is wrong or right, I believe that we should definitely support the companies whose products we enjoy, or else they’ll ultimately cease to exist.

*Note* The above picture is from the Neograf forum and is NOT my copy of Super Mario Galaxy.

-Stephen