i'd like to set up a scene with lighting similar to what you can see on recent (wii) mario games

i'm not referring to the rim/fresnel effect, easily obtainable either with shaders or the envmap trick
what i'd really like to understand is how they get this flat/saturates/toony lighting effect

i know for sure (cause i have extracted source models) that they are baking AO at the vertex level
so could it be that there are no lights at all, ambient light is pure white, every model has colors and shades just from texture + vertex color?

Please post some screenshots from the official game that illustrate what you're after.

sorry Kryzon, I didnt got notified of your answer

let's start with my attempt to replicate the feeling of a mario galaxy world

Doesnt look like they are using directional or spotlight. Looks like ambient occlusion and that is it.