Super Mario Galaxy

Released in North America on November 12, 2007, Super Mario Galaxy launches the titular character in the gravity-challenged expanse of space.

Well, I've got an interesting perspective here. I love Mario--while I started playing games with my dad on his Atari 2600, seeing the red-clad plumber run across a TV screen after being beamed out of an NES hooked me. Super Mario Bros. is one of my favorite games ever. We all know the strange story of not-really-a-Mario-game, Super Mario Bros. 2, but I played it...and sucked at it anyway. Then there was the deservedly incredible hype for all-time great, Super Mario Bros. 3. Then the zesty plumber jumped onto the 16-bit SNES with two games that are arguably better than his 8-bit adventures. Then he made the jump to 3D on the Nintendo 64 in a game I believe is pure magic. Then, some cracks started to show. The once infallible plumber suddenly seemed mortal on the GameCube adventure, Super Mario Sunshine. The once legendary Nintendo quality control seemed to have been in a hurry to get that one out the door. The hose mechanic and camera seemed to need at least another 6-months of refinement. The 128-bit game isn't a total disaster or anything--it just doesn't live up to the usual Mario standard of excellence. Then came Super Mario Galaxy.
Launched on the motion control-centric Nintendo Wii, a year after the console hit stores, Super Mario Galaxy received the ravest of reviews, won major awards, and due to circumstances I've already detailed ad nauseum, I missed it completely, along with the entire seventh generation of home video game consoles (obviously meaning I missed Super Mario Galaxy 2, as well). However, I jumped back into the fray with the eighth, absolutely loving Super Mario 3D World for the Wii U, and being slightly underwhelmed by, but still really enjoying the Switch entry, Super Mario Odyssey. Still, the fact that I've never played the Galaxy games has been bothering me.
GameStop recently had the first game on sale for $9.99, complete and in mint condition, and I bit. I've spent the last couple of months playing. Here, nearly 12 years after Super Mario Galaxy was released, is what I think.

The first hours of Super Mario Galaxy are invigorating. It's like the game launches you out of a cannon into the open, loving arms of its universe. This is technically the third 3D console main entry game in the Mario series. The first, the previously mentioned Super Mario 64, opens similarly, as the thrill of first having the once 2D plumber run around in a three-dimensional field of play is exhilarating. The second, the GameCube's Super Mario Sunshine, contains no such feeling, as it simply upgrades its predecessors graphics, and weighs Mario down with an unwieldy water-based jetpack. Sunshine is a weird, funky game, and I'll get around to reviewing it one day (first, I'll have to finally finish it!). For the third, Super Mario Galaxy, it's back to wonder mode, as 3D Mario, upgraded visually above even Super Mario Sunshine, is now running around planetoids in every possible direction, sometimes while upside down. Yes, spheroid gravity is the big hook here, as many stages, particularly early on, feature gameplay where the mustachioed plumber is launched from one little planet to the next, each full of various challenges. Often, those challenges incorporate the fact that you are no longer bound by 180 degrees of movement in relation to up and down, left and right movement.  Flat surfaces are mostly gone, and round (and other-shaped) gravitational surfaces are now in.

I often felt like I was riding a roller coaster in those first hours, even getting a little sick when I'd have to make Mario run upside down for too long. The mechanic is nicely implemented, though it takes a minute to rewrite your Mario-controlling muscle memory. here, Mario is maneuvered with a Wii Remote and Nunchuk combo. Once you're used to it, getting Mario from here to there in the game's earlier portions is a cinch. There's a catch, though...motion controls.
Motion controls were the Wii's initial hook in 2006. They helped the Wii sell over 100 million units--far more than any other Nintendo home console. They were supposed to level the playing field between gamer and non-gamer. Indeed, relatives of mine who never played games before still have Wii's sitting in their living rooms, 13 years later. Of course, most of them only played some Wii Sports, picked up a few Karaoke, Dancing, or Guitar Hero games, and called it a day.
Super Mario Galaxy sold 10.4 million copies, but that means barely 10% of those who purchased Wii's brought Nintendo's flagship character into their home along with it. In the intervening years, a narrative has been created: the Nintendo Wii was a motion control-relying gimmick. That narrative, along with the fact that few realized that's Wii successor, the Wii U, was a separate console, likely contributed to the Wii U's failure.

All of that to say, while the motion controls may have been a gimmick to draw in the non-gamer, there are some great games for the Wii. There are even some great games, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, in particular, that make excellent use of the Wii's motion controls...even utilize them so well, they become a strength. Super Mario Galaxy is a very good game, but the way it utilizes the Wii's motion controls are not a strength.
Do you like violently shaking your wrist? You'll have to do so time and time again to perform Mario's spin-move as an attack, or to use it to launch from a star portal from planet to planet. I don't like violently shaking my wrist, so these portions of the game, which are interspersed into much of its run, did not thrill me.
How about holding your arm out and delicately pointing the hypersensitive Wii remote in what you hope it will interpret as the direction you're trying to head in? You'll have to do so in areas where Mario rides atop a large ball on tiny, twisty platforms over a bottomless pit, or when he surfs through a winding course of razor-thin, cage-less, airborne rivers. These segments are the most frustrating in the game, and perhaps in any Mario game. The entire reason the first Mario games found such success, and received such acclaim, is the purity of the controls. Running and jumping feel absolutely perfect to this day. Even as an eight-year old, I knew that any time I died in Super Mario Bros., it was my fault, and not the game's. I should have jumped earlier. I should have run, then jumped.  I wasn't paying attention to that Goomba's location. The twentieth time I died on the stupid, worthless Gizmos, Gears, and Gadgets level in Super Mario Galaxy was not due to my own negligence. It was due to Nintendo implementing an imperfect, unreliable mechanic into their flagship series.

I may be biased, as the Italian plumber showed me just how great video games could be, but Mario deserves as near perfection as possible. Sticking him with a lousy mechanic, just to utilize the selling point of your new console, is not fair. Any area of the game involving Wii Remote aiming of Mario in locomotion should have been jettisoned for traditional controls. If not, and the motion controls absolutely had to be utilized in this way, the game should have been delayed so that they could be greatly polished. I gave myself a month after I completed the game to review it, so that I could cool off about the things I hate, and reflect more on the things I loved, but I feel the rage already returning. While I am raging, let's talk about another element of Super Mario Galaxy I hate, that works in conjunction with what I've already negatively mentioned, to create several nightmarish moments.
When Mario originally entered the realm of 3D in Super Mario 64, his ability to take damage increased. It had to--moving through a 3D space, gauging 3D jumps, and attempting to take on multiple enemies in a 3D game is more difficult to do than it is in a 2D game. That feels like a subjective statement...but for me, it is most definitely true. Add to that the fact that Mario can be completely surrounded from all directions in a 3D space, as well. Death can come quickly. By nature of the fact that there are obviously far more directions to travel in a 3D space, exploration is more of a factor. Nothing discourages exploration like quick death.

As I alluded to above, Nintendo countered this difficulty by giving Mario an 8-hit meter. In the old 2D games, Mario could take one hit if he was small, two if he was "Super." This addition to the damage Mario can take seemed very fair, and made Super Mario 64 far more enjoyable, while not taking away from its difficulty (which, in later levels like Tick Tock Clock and Rainbow Ride, is considerable). It also made exploring the open worlds of Super Mario 64 a joy. Thankfully, Super Mario Sunshine kept the 8-hit mechanic (the lousy camera would have been even more maddening if it hadn't). Super Mario Galaxy ditches it.
In Super Mario Galaxy, Mario's hit-meter sits at a whopping three. This adds a sense of...danger to the game that I don't exactly love. Now, the impetus is more on staying alive than exploring. I realized early into the game that I wasn't quite finding myself as relaxed as while playing previous Mario games...even World 8 in the original NES game, the last levels in Super Mario Bros. 3, or even during Champion's Road on Super Mario 3D World on the later Wii U.
In Super Mario Galaxy, I was almost always worried about dying, which most definitely sucked out a little of my enjoyment, particularly considering all of the planets the game offers to explore...then again, each world has a bit more of an on-rails feeling than the ones found in previous 3D Mario games. And frankly, despite the galactic vibe and number of planets found in Super Mario Galaxy, there's actually a lot less to explore.

Super Mario 64's worlds each have six power stars to collect (stars open new worlds in Super Mario 64, and new galaxies in Super Mario Galaxy), which are received by performing various tasks (involving exploring, platforming, boss-fighting, etc.), as well as a 100-coin challenge. Super Mario Galaxy's galaxies have three stars each to collect, on average. Galaxy's stars take considerably longer to obtain on average than the ones in Super Mario 64 do...which makes the ease of dying even more frustrating...especially when it involves motion controls.
Of course, in Super Mario 64, Mario's hit-meter can be refilled by finding coins. Each level has more than 100, and one coin replenishes one bar on the meter. It's the same for Super Mario Galaxy, though coins are far harder to come by. This also brings up the one major blessing of Super Mario Galaxy's motion controls, that at select moments doubles as a curse: the star bits.
Super Mario Galaxy adds a shiny, colorful collectible called star bits to the mix. They are collected by pointing a Wii Remote-controlled cursor at them at any given moment that they appear on screen...and they appear onscreen a lot. Collect 100 star bits in any given galaxy, and you receive an extra life. Star bits are also used at selects moments to access special new galaxies.
It's undeniably fun to point the Wii Remote at the screen, and attempt to scoop up as many star bits as possible. Super Mario Galaxy even brings back question mark blocks, which, when Mario jumps up and hits them from below, often give him star bits. That's the thing, though. When you're down to one hit, you don't want star bits...you want coins. In those instances, receiving star bits is frustrating.

Then again, Super Mario Galaxy does give more opportunities to attain extra lives than in any other Mario game...but I'd much rather stay alive to complete a challenge, than get an extra life that just grants me the opportunity to start the challenge over from the beginning, or from one of the game's galaxies' scattered save points, if I die, over and over again. These extra lives are really just sparing me the indignity of having to start over from the game's title screen, and having to traverse the game's hub area to get back to the galaxy I had challenged again. I'm having a lot of trouble with the verb tenses in this review.
Thankfully, the game offers many opportunities to save: after each power star is attained, when the game is quit, or even when the player experiences a game over. After that game over, it's back to the hub. Galaxy's hub world is a roving space station, full of rooms connected to the game's many galaxies, but once you unlock the rooms high up in the space station, it's quite frustrating to climb there over and over again after a game over...particularly considering you'll be getting more game overs from the galaxies the higher rooms offer...

...Frankly, I only complain this much about stuff I care about...check the five paragraph brevity of my review of the awful Armorines. Super Mario Galaxy truthfully offers many hours of fun--in the long run, far more hours of fun than frustration. The majority of its galaxies are not motion-control-centered, quick death hell. A significant enough portion are to rankle me, but the lion's share of Super Mario Galaxy has that Mario magic. When motion controls are not, or are minimally involved, the titular plumber controls just as great as expected. Jumping, flying through the stars, bouncing on a Goomba's head--all a joy. The music, the first symphonic Mario score, is beautiful, featuring some truly gorgeous string pieces, evocative of the stellar settings. The game isn't a huge graphical leap over its GameCube predecessor, but it still looks great, a primary color visual bath. Some of the stages, like the both super chill and challenging Gold Leaf Galaxy, are among my favorites of the series. The general star-going vibe the game achieves is primal video game escapism at its best. And the feeling of soaring through space is so very, very blissful.

Super Mario Galaxy may not have aged as gracefully as its brethren due to its strange controls. It may not tick off all my "ideal Mario game" boxes due to several of its mechanics. However, it is distinctly a Mario game, with that Nintendo seal of greatness, even it isn't as shiny as usual. For that reason, despite my own reservations, I can't help but recommend it.

9.0

Graphics

Nothing absolutely mind-blowing, but what on the Wii is? It looks great.

9.0

Music and Sound

Excellent symphonic score, along with the classic, Charles Martinet-voiced Mario exclamations.

8.5

Gameplay

Mario 3D platforming magic, slightly flummoxed by some lousy motion controls, and an emphasis on frequent death over exploration.

8.5

Lasting Value

So many collectible stars, and once you beat the game, you can play through the whole thing again with Luigi...but by that point, will you really want to?  

8.6  FINAL SCORE