Super Mario Galaxy

aka: SMG, Super Mario Wii: Galaxy Adventure
Moby ID: 31282
Wii Specs
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Mario takes to the skies and beyond in another outing to save the Princess. As the Mushroom Kingdom prepares to celebrate the arrival of a comet that appears in the skies every hundred years, Princess Peach sends Mario an invitation to attend. As Mario arrives, Bowser and minions attack the Kingdom and once again kidnap the Princess... and her entire castle. Mario gives chase but is lost as the ship leaves the atmosphere and ends up on a space station built on the visiting comet overseen by the mysterious Rosalina. It's up to Mario to brave new galaxies, find the elusive Power Stars, and bring his friends home.

Super Mario Galaxy plays similarly to Super Mario 64, as Mario explores his latest 3D world defying gravity, crossing various terrains, and even running upside down across the planet surfaces. Bouncing from planet to planet, Mario must collect Star Bits and coins, using his usual jump attacks and spins (now controlled with movement from the Wii Remote). The Wii Remote is also used to collect out-of-reach Star Bits and also can be controlled by a second player.

In addition, Mario can find new suits (similar to Super Mario Bros. 3) that give him the ability to turn into the ghostly Boo Mario, the high-flying Bee Mario, launch fireballs as Fire Mario and skate across frozen lakes as Ice Mario. New challenges also await Mario including ray surfing, balancing on a high-speed ball, floating inside bubbles, and other challenges in his quest to get all 120 stars. Even Luigi lends a hand in the search, making valuable contributions to the adventure.

Players can also take a snapshot of the worlds they've completed along with their best record times and send them to their friends via Wi-Fi.

Spellings

  • ă‚čăƒŒăƒ‘ăƒŒăƒžăƒȘă‚Șă‚źăƒŁăƒ©ă‚Żă‚·ăƒŒ - Japanese spelling
  • 슈퍌 ë§ˆëŠŹì˜€ Wii 가럭시 ì–Žë“œëČ€ìȘ - Korean spelling (Hangul)

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Credits (Wii version)

149 People (129 developers, 20 thanks) · View all

Game Design Concept
Director & Game Design
Level Design Director
Level Design
Script
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Game Programming Lead
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System Programming
Boss Character Programming
Collision System Programming
Enemy Character Programming
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[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 96% (based on 147 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.2 out of 5 (based on 157 ratings with 10 reviews)

A worthy sequel to Super Mario 64

The Good
If there is one thing I remember from Super Mario 64 it's the atmosphere, the awesome feeling you get when exploring the beautiful castle and discover new worlds. Would a second round in the same castle give the same feeling? I don't think so. Instead of the classic castle, we now get to explore space itself. Mario is taken to a giant observatory in space and has to visit various worlds to gather stars. The observatory and indeed all the levels still have a very entertaining atmosphere though, especially the observatory which functions as a HUB-world has a very soothing feel to it.

Because Mario has been taken to space as part of Bowser's latest plans, the designers of the game weren't limited to earth logic anymore. This results in all the levels been galaxies with various planets in them, each planet has its own gravitational pull, so Mario can freely explore the many areas. The designers also went all-out with the creativity, so the game boasts roughly thirty stages with various themes. Not having to make much sense anymore has clearly done the designers some good, as the depths of outer-space can contain literally anything. Aren't you excited about the prospect of been able to explore a galaxy where everything is made out of candy?

The controls have remained relatively unchanged from Super Mario 64 with only a few small tweaks. The first is, of course, the integration of the Wii-remote. By shaking the remote you make Mario spin. This can be used to knock over enemies or damage them, depending on which enemy you are fighting. It can also break scenery and when done near an interactive object (launch stars, vines and underwater) it will use that object. You can also use the remote to pick up "star bits" (which function as currency or ammo) or use some special items.

Every major level has a special challenge that randomly shows up as you play the game. These challenges will slightly alter the level and rules. Daredevil challenges will have you going through a level with only 1 hitpoint, Cosmic challenges will have you race against a clone, speedrun challenges will put you on a timer and Fast-Foe challenges will give opponents a speed-boost. If you're a real man, like me, you of course go for the 100% and do all of these extra challenges. Even if you do just a few of them, you'll notice that they are quite fun and give a good incentive for players to get better at the game.

Each galaxy only has five or so stars in it and some minor galaxies only have one. Why is this a plus? Well, I actually found that most of the levels in Mario 64 were fun, but started to get annoying very fast after you went for star number eight in that level. It would still be a good level, but the minor changes that game made for each new star were not impressive enough to keep me interested. Galaxy instead limits itself to three main stars, one hidden and a challenge star, resulting in much shorter, but also more plentiful levels. There are also no "6 red coins" missions and collecting a 100 coins is only used as an unlockable bonus mission after completing the game.

Finally, I must say that the characters in this game are genuinely enjoyable. Mario games have never been focused much on their characters, we all know and love Mario, but it's still no Shakespeare. Galaxy however does have some cool upgrades in this field though. First of all is the character of Rosalina who, despite her design been kind of a lazy Peach-rehash, is pretty awesome. If you want you can go into the library and read a whole book about her back-story, it's a nice lore, but not the most convenient way of telling it. The familiar Toads have also been upgraded and are now a core-part of the missions. They go to locations on their ship and track down stars for Mario. They are helpful, but never lose their characteristic cowardice.

The Bad
Because each planet has its' own gravity and is pretty small, you can go upside-down and walk all around the planet. It sounds good, but when you try to do this, the game runs into a few problems. Going upside-down is not a familiar angle for the Mario engine and it isn't sure what to do with it. The controls are sometimes reversed, but the camera can get stuck or the other way around. A Problem I ran into a lot was trying to go under a planet, but the second I got there the controls would reverse and Mario would turn around and walk up it again, going in an endless loop of reversing controls. You can also freak the game out a bit by long-jumping near the edge of a planet, this has allowed me to skip sections of the game on occasion.

The game wants to introduce a little story into the series, which isn't inherently a problem (Sunshine did it too), but the execution is very lacking. Every time you start a new game you'll have to sit through this very long story for children with some kind of lullaby in the back-ground. It's very obnoxious and it serves only to scare away older people who might be playing this.

The power-ups in this game are not terribly fascinating. By finding mushrooms and flowers you can transform Mario into different versions of himself (other suits), it sounds okay, but it isn't. The only three suits are a bee-suit, boo-suit and spring-suit, all three of which serve only for having Mario fly or at least jump higher. The boo-suit also allows Mario to pass through walls, but this is rarely used for good puzzles. This means that in a situation in which you are put into the spring-suit, you think something along the lines of "I could have done this same puzzle with those other two suits too". The flowers are an ice and fire suit for Mario, pretty basic, but functional.

Some of the hidden stars can get very obnoxious in this game, in the sense that the method of obtaining them is very vague at best. In one level you had to travel from planet to planet using the wind, but this was in a linear fashion, so once you went somewhere, there would be no way back. Some brilliant mind looked at this and figured "let's make the item you need appear only after the player has picked up five random coins in these winds". Can you see where this goes wrong? You have no reason to think the coins will give you the item and even then you'd have to do this all in a perfect shot or restart the entire level.

The game is a little too easy if you ask me, there are a total of 105 stars that you can obtain in a single play-through, but you only need 60 of them to unlock the last boss. This means the game can be finished in maybe two days time and you'd never have to worry about getting stuck along the way. I did this the first few times as well, but now that I went for a 100% completion, I suddenly found levels that I had never visited before and which happened to be totally freaking awesome.

The use of a live-system has perplexed me ever since I was little, it makes sense in arcade halls where you need to pay to play the games, but why use it on a console. What is the point of sending me back to the title screen after I die an arbitrary number of times if I can just click start and resume from where I left off? Here it's even more weird because Mario loses lives when he loses races... why? Do the lives represent Mario's ego? Also strange is that you can't save your lives, whenever you turn the game on and off you're back to four lives. This means that you can farm yourself crazy for hours and leave with maxed out 1-ups and lose it all with a literal press-of-a-button.

The Bottom Line
Mario Galaxy is, like I said, the true sequel to Super Mario 64 for me. Unlike Sunshine the gameplay felt much better, the atmosphere was a lot more enjoyable and the missions were all very fun and clever. I had a lot of fun with this game to say the least and getting a 100% completion is a recommendation for the fun of it alone. There are some flaws, naturally. power-ups aren't very fun, the physics are somewhat dodgy and the story could be better implemented, just to name a few.

I can recommend this game to many people; children, die-hard gamers, Mario fans, parents... just consider this a global recommendation.

Wii · by Asinine (957) · 2012

Mario Galaxy is by far the best 3D platformer ever made.

The Good
The game is beautiful, the worlds are huge, it makes the game look like something on a Xbox 360, and that's a huge achievement. The control is easy to learn and very tight. There are different gameplay mechanics included through out the game, weather its riding on a manta ray or balancing on top of a ball through a obstacle course. The soundtrack is amazing, all the music was composed by a symphony, with some sci-fi sound thrown in in a few levels. it just amazing. The bosses are huge and have a unique design to them, ranging from the dino piranha to Bowser himself. The game is very long, there's plenty of replay value, with 121 stars to collect with both Mario and Luigi, you will be playing for a long time. The co-op mode is fun, as the second player can help you but also affect your progress through the game.

The Bad
There's barely anything bad about this game. Its awesome in every way. Its just a little too easy, but that's a small complaint.

The Bottom Line
Get it. Its worth every penny. This game proves the Wii is capable of making games as good as the other next-gen systems without the powerful hardware. its amazing.

Wii · by samsam12 (714) · 2008

Breathes new life into platformers, but still doesn't go beyond it's true potential

The Good
All in all, fans tend to let Nintendo get away with a lot of shit. For any proof all you need to do is look at the empty Super Mario Sunshine box sitting at the bottom of any gamer’s collection. The prodigal think tank over in Japan thought they could pass of cleaning up rainbow colored slime the consistency of diarrhea as having some sort of entertainment value. Granted, while the game did have its highs and lows, our exploration into the wonders of irritable bowel syndrome wasn’t exactly my cup o’ tea. However, fanboy logic is a much more alien form of logic than other humans’, and while any other company would have been punished vehemently for such an atrocity, Nintendo knows that they’re holding the whip in this situation. As such, Nintendo has once again tried to resurrect their main franchise, with our lovably stereotypical Italian friend Mario digging deep into our pockets once more while he orders us to bend over.

Super Mario Galaxy has it good only because it has to compete with Sunshine, and that’s roughly equivalent to having the jocks pick on the special kid in your gym class. Still, Galaxy gets little more concession because, as Nintendo claims, this game is supposed to be the “true sequel” to Super Mario 64. Well, Nintendo, if you’re claiming to beat a game that was terrific 10 years ago, then you better live up to your promise.

Galaxy does do many things well, however, starting off with the revival of the classic platform game play. Some say the platform genre is dead, but as we all know Nintendo is a pretty stubborn company, and in the end it’s probably for the better because mass marketing only seems to result in Mario trying to break-dance for us. Nintendo has a lot of experience in the platforming area so it’s no wonder that they create one of the best platformer games out there.

The introduction of the whole galaxy theme has been criticized by some as a gimmick but I honestly think it’s one of the better parts of the game. It allows Nintendo to come up with more original puzzles and game mechanics than if they were limited to a more Earthly setting. One of the best aspects is that a galaxy is obviously large and open, meaning that you can actually fall off platforms and die in one hit now instead of falling onto some jagged rocks. As well, each level essentially takes place in a gigantic open void, meaning Nintendo could fill it with whatever crap they wanted to put there for any level design they had in mind. Thankfully, Nintendo doesn’t hold back on the puzzles, and they deliver a ton of new and challenging obstacles to overcome.

This, I think, is combined quite cleverly with the new gravity system. Mario sticks to any large object he lands on, making jumping around quite a bit of fun. Essentially, this liberates Mario from the traditional up down, side to side, left and right style and allows him to go upside down, sideways, back-ways, no-ways, Wonka-ways, and any other way you might think of. This, once again, is cleverly shown off by the developers, as they utilize the function well in creating unique puzzles and scenarios.

However, for all those used to the “falling off the bottom of the screen” method of dying, don’t fret. Falling off of platforms still has its negative consequences. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a platformer, right? In areas where the developers wanted you to be punished for your bad timing, they add these black holes below where you’re standing to act a interfering source of gravity in case you fall off the platform. The effect is that if you fall off the platform you were supposed to be occupying, this new source of gravity hopelessly sucks you into its grasp while simultaneously crushing Mario into a tiny singularity. Judging between free falling sections and these traditional “platforming” sections is not hard, as it will usually make these black holes obvious or will simply make sections occur on flat surfaces. Obviously this new Mario game requires a bit of different thinking than what we’re used to, and I thankfully welcome a change of scenario and a change of puzzles.

The new galaxy setting also serves the game pretty well because it pretty much gives Nintendo an excuse to come up with weird wacky world without any one giving them mouth. After all, it’s a big galaxy so anything could happen, right? The space station you’re flying on serves as your “Peach’s Castle” in this game, acting as a hub to reach outlying levels. Get more stars, get more levels of course. You’ll find your basic staples of world themes here. There’s a fire world, an ice world, and not so ironically, a fire and ice world, and so on and so forth.

While seemingly generic, Nintendo gives you lots to work with, so a lot of the puzzles in each world are pretty much all different. As well, the amount of secret content is pretty gob-smacking incredible. It’s quite amazing to find that the secret levels (which there are tons of, by the way) actually having more secret hidden stars within them. There are so many levels that a 100% completion rating is a challenge reserved only for the mentally insane.

For what it’s worth, Sunshine did have one good strength which was its terrific, sparkly graphics. It might have been shit, but at least it was colorful, sparkly shit. This strength pulls through to Galaxy, because good God does it look marvelous. Nintendo brings back their palette of bizarre and exotic colors, which is good because it makes Mario more entertaining. Each level is a smorgasbord for the eyes, entertaining you with a seizure-inducing handful of LSD-inspired level designs.

The Bad
However, there is a good reason Mario games leave a bad taste in many people’s mouths, and that is probably due to the fact that while we’re usually handed a game on a golden platter, we usually get shafted in some area such as difficulty, linearity, or length. In this case, it’s all three.

I don’t know what the hell has happened to Nintendo’s definition of a game, but as far as I know, games usually offer some form of a challenge which needs to be overcome. Unfortunately, Nintendo is one of those companies which try to remove every single frustration in the game, thereby removing the challenge in the first place. I mean seriously, I know these games were designed for children, but the point is to challenge us to think and work to overcome obstacles. For the first half of the game I felt like all I had to do was follow the friendly signs guiding me to the star. I explicitly remember one level required me to dive into a pool of water and swim a bit to retrieve a shell so I could throw it at a chest to unlock the star. What a rush.

As well, all of the bosses are terribly predictable. Half the time all you have to do is bat their projectiles back at them like in Ocarina of Time way back when. Nintendo has still stubbornly chosen to stick with the "three hit" system that's so frustratingly irritating due to the fact that the battles are over before they've even begun. Don't expect to see anything terribly new when it comes to enemy AI either. Goombas still act like goombas and giant freaky honey bees will continue to ask you to crawl all over their bodies...yeah.

As well, for being a galaxy it sure is terribly linear. In my mind I envisioned an open space to explore and hop around between planets. Instead, what I got what was a game which for most of the time held my hand through the entire experience. I mean, we’re not even talking multiple pathways or even shortcuts. There was only one entrance and exit to each planet. Making each planet you jumped on more of an independent “challenge” which you had to overcome in order to move on to the next “challenge” until you eventually reach the star.

The star you choose to try to “find” on the opening screen of each level makes a big difference, as each star has a different “level configuration”, bringing you to different challenges though you may revisit older planets in a different order. This is a pretty disappointing portion of the game, because you no longer really even have to search for a star, nor can you even choose to go after a different star than you chose which is what made Super Mario 64 so fun. As the game progresses, these obstacles do become a lot harder and the levels do become a lot longer, but please don’t deprive me of free roam exploration and then claim to be better than Super Mario 64.

And then, of course, we come to Nintendo’s most infamous f*** up, the game length. I can’t help but feel that due to both the easy difficulty and startling linearity that each level was a bit too short. The final boss can easily be taken on eons before you even need to start “trying” to get stars. However, getting 100% is so difficult and takes so long, it’s hard to understand even trying to go any further than the boss, making the game a trifle bit short. If you do choose to continue to 100% for more game time, then be my guest, but I would have preferred if the game would have forced me to go farther rather than going easy on me and simply getting me to the end of the game quickly.

And while we’re still bitching, I have to complain about Mario’s voice. Him screaming the title of the game every time you turn to it on the Wii screen is so loud and high-pitched its makes you embarrassed to even be playing the game. It seems like Mario’s voice gets higher pitched every new game that comes out. I’m sorry Mario, but you were a lot cooler when you were mute.

And if you're looking for story, well, don't be too surprised but it involved the princess getting captured and you going after her dumb as too rescue her. You can fill in the details from there on, I think.

The Bottom Line
Super Mario Galaxy is good, but not terribly great. It’s fun to play, pretty to look at, and all around is a great refresher for the Mario series. If it does anything terribly well, it breathes new life into the extinct platforming genre, and its fun to play these games because they pretty much don’t exist except in the form of crappy kids TV show or movie games.

However, the game’s flaws are what keeps from being truly great. If only Nintendo could learn to let go of the leash a little and let us gamers do the thinking for ourselves. I promise we won’t cry if we can’t figure out the puzzles Nintendo. Just make the games longer and harder, please.

However, the game accomplishes what it sets out to do, and if you need a game to give to kids, I can’t recommend a game more highly. If it’s kept me entertained, Super Mario Galaxy will undoubtedly keep young ones perplexed and staring bug eyed at the screen for hours on end.

Buyworthy: By now it should have gone down in price, so why not.
Rentworthy: Definitely.

Wii · by Matt Neuteboom (976) · 2008

[ View all 10 player reviews ]

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Super Mario Galaxy appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Cover

In the fall of 2007, it was discovered that certain letters on the box cover are marked with stars, and they spell the phrase "UR MR GAY" (you're mr. gay). The question is, how did this get past Nintendo's proofreaders?

References

The airships from Super Mario Bros. 3 make an appearance complete with the original music.

Sales

According to publisher Nintendo, Super Mario Galaxy sold 12.59 million copies worldwide (as of September 30, 2015).

Awards

  • GAME British Academy Video Games Awards
    • 2009 - Best Game
  • GamePro (Germany)
    • March 28, 2008) - Best Console Game in 2007
  • GameSpy
    • 2007 – #4 Game of the Year
    • 2007 – #3 Console Game of the Year
    • 2007 – Wii Game of the Year
    • 2007 – Wii Game of the Year (Readers' Vote)
    • 2007 – Wii Platformer of the Year
  • Official Nintendo Magazine
    • 2010 - Game of the Decade 2000-2009

Information also contributed by optrirominiluikus and sgtcook

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Guy Chapman.

Wii U added by Michael Cassidy. Android added by firefang9212.

Additional contributors: Sciere, Freeman, gamewarrior, samsam12, Cantillon, ymihere, CalaisianMindthief, Patrick Bregger, Grandy02, provisional_account, FatherJack.

Game added November 25, 2007. Last modified February 17, 2024.