User:Spencer PK/SandCube

Sandbox for a potential, maybe controversial addition to Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Nintendo Music).

Notes

• Super Mario Galaxy 2 reuses several themes from Super Mario Galaxy. The Nintendo Music release of Super Mario Galaxy 2 is missing these reused themes, despite these themes already being on Nintendo Music as part of the Super Mario Galaxy release. Songs excluded from the Super Mario Galaxy 2 release include:
  • "A Chance to Grab a Star!"
  • "Course Select"
  • "Rainbow Mario"
  • "The Toad Brigade"
  • "Fire Mario"
  • "Pipe Interior". Super Mario Galaxy 2 primarily uses "Pipe Room" for hidden pipe areas, but four pipe areas play the Super Mario Galaxy theme "Pipe Interior" instead. These four pipes can be found at Rightside Down Galaxy, Slipsand Galaxy's second mission, "Sailing the Sandy Seas", Upside Dizzy Galaxy, and Slimy Spring Galaxy.
  • "Chase the Bunnies!", which plays when chasing the Star Bunny in Cosmic Cove Galaxy's hidden third mission, "Catch That Star Bunny".
  • "Aquatic Race", the theme that plays in minigame challenges, like Fluffy Bluff Galaxy's second mission, "The Chimp's Stomp Challenge".
  • "Bowser Appears"
  • "Cosmic Comet"
  • "Purple Comet"
  • "Buoy Base Galaxy", which plays in Space Storm Galaxy's second mission, "To the Top of Topman's Tower".
  • "Enter Bowser Jr.!", which plays when fighting Bowser Jr.'s Boomsday Machine.
  • "Lava Path", which plays in the fiery parts of Shiverburn Galaxy.
  • "Ice Mountain", which plays in the icy parts of Shiverburn Galaxy.
  • "Rosalina in the Observatory 3", which plays in the ending as well as the final planet of Grandmaster Galaxy's second mission, "The Perfect Run".
  • "Dino Piranha"
  • "King Kaliente"
  • "Major Burrows"
  • "Kingfin", which is the song that plays when fighting Bouldergeist at Boss Blitz Galaxy.
  • "Gusty Garden", which is the first song heard during Grandmaster Galaxy's second mission, "The Perfect Run".
  • "Egg Planet", which is the second song heard during Grandmaster Galaxy's second mission, "The Perfect Run".
  • "The Galaxy Reactor", which is the third song heard during Grandmaster Galaxy's second mission, "The Perfect Run".
• This soundtrack release, with one exception, does not feature any of the song variations heard while riding Yoshi. The exception is that the "Megahammer" theme uses the Yoshi variation, which instead omits the non-Yoshi version from the soundtrack release. Other releases on Nintendo Music of games that have similar song variations, such as Super Mario World, New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, and Super Mario Bros. Wonder feature song variations as separate songs or as the second loop of a song. Songs affected by the Yoshi versions not being featured include:
  • "Yoshi Star Galaxy"
  • "Starship Mario 1"
  • "A-wa-wa-wa-wa!"
  • "Hightail Falls Galaxy"
  • "Pipe Room"
  • "Starship Mario 2"
  • "Beat Block Galaxy"
  • "Starshine Beach Galaxy"
  • "Teleporter Melody"
  • "Haunty Halls Galaxy"
  • "Bowser Jr.'s Fiery Flotilla"
  • "Starship Mario 3"
  • "Sweet Mystery Galaxy"
  • "Bowser's Galaxy Generator"
  • "Cosmic Comet"
  • "Gusty Garden"

Sandbox notes

• "To the Observatory Grounds 1" and "To the Observatory Grounds 2" is missing in the SMG2 release. SMG2 has a unique version of this fanfare, but it is still reused. How should this be handled, and how should this fanfare having two names be dealt with?
• "Hightail Falls Galaxy" has a variation which plays while riding Dash Yoshi that is not in the soundtrack release.

Proposal stuff

Overturn the proposal to make articles for every gear item in the Mario & Luigi series

Over four years ago in 2021, a proposal passed to make articles for every gear item in the Mario & Luigi series. Over a year ago in 2024 another proposal revisited this with the topic of overturning it. Now in 2025, the original proposal is currently the oldest unimplemented proposal and has some progress made for Superstar Saga only. I think this should be revisited again to give my thoughts on this.

These 9 images represent all 174 gear items in BISDX.

The primary way the wiki currently covers gear items in the Mario & Luigi games is to make a list article per-game. This list is broken up into multiple sortable tables to break down all pieces of information of the item, with each row being one gear item. This is able to cleanly and quickly talk about the relevant information to allow a reader to effectively use the wiki. Formatting the information of the gear in this way allows readers to easily compare and sort gear items to get better ideas of what the system as a whole is like. Players when looking at gear items in-game will be comparing them, so formatting the wiki to make comparing them easier makes sense. Additionally, it is important to remember that every single gear item, with the exception of the Starbeans Cafe items of Superstar Saga, uses a generic icon to represent the type of gear it is. This means that each gear item does not really have an image to represent it.

I am going to start by listing the obvious positives and negatives. I will then dig deeper into these points to explain how this is not as simple as it seems.

Positives

1. Some gear items have special effects. A dedicated article would give it the space to explain how it works.
2. Some gear items are recurring and appear in multiple Mario & Luigi games. A dedicated article would be able to explain the history of it.
3. Individual articles would be able to contain just its "names in other languages" table.
4. Individual articles would be able to easily include a picture of the block the gear item is found in to aid readers in finding it.

Negatives

1. This would require a lot of work. Hundreds of articles would need to be created and would be repetitive. The scope of this is explained later in the proposal.
2. These hundreds of new articles would be relaying information already documented, but with a worse format. The current lists separate all the information into columns that are in consistent places and are sortable. I see these individual gear articles just taking a row of a table but turning it into sentence format. This would cause the information to be harder to find for a reader as they would need to find the sentence that says a POW increase instead of looking in the POW column. These gear items are very number-driven, and making the numbers, something a reader is likely looking for, harder to find in a block of text would make the reader's experience worse.
3. Not every gear item has a special effect, and every game aside from Bowser's Inside Story DX are willing to tell the player outright that an item has "no special effect". All of the wear/clothing of Partners in Time does not have a special effect and is purely stat-focused for an example.
4. I do not think that something like a "gear infobox" could be made, as some gear items appear in multiple games but have different stats or special effects. All of this information would not easily fit one infobox.
5. This would break the "repeated content" rule of the manual of style. While there are genuine cases for breaking this rule that would make a reader's experience on the wiki better, I feel like duplicating technical information, like gear stats and special effect information, goes against the spirit of the repeated content rule and would pointlessly scatter the information and require more places to be kept up-to-date.
6. This would actively make the wiki harder to use for a reader. Hundreds of links would need to be added to navboxes that would just send readers to other individual gear item articles, while at the same time of making the list articles more obscure. This feels like unnecessary bloat because the current list articles are already fine and are easier for a reader to use and compare gear items.

Now that these obvious positives and negatives have been presented, I would like to dig deeper into these points and how they may interact.

To start, we need to actually quantify how many gear items there are. I made a spreadsheet of all gear items, including the documented unused and unobtainable ones. Of the big list of gear items, I merged items that have the same name or were clearly renamed due to changing writing styles. This includes stuff like Stache Gloves to STACHE Gloves, as well as SP Socks to BP Socks due to the Special Point to Bros. Point change made in Bowser's Inside Story DX. One thing I did not merge was Paper Jam having paper gear items that have the same name as non-paper gear items, but are actually completely different items. Many games feature Thin Wear, but Paper Jam only features paper Thin Wear that only Paper Mario can wear while not having normal Thin Wear that Mario or Luigi can wear. This oddity in handling paper gear items is a problem that has not been brought up in the original 2021 proposal or the 2024 revisit proposal. Once all the numbers are tallied up, we get some...concerning numbers.

Subject	# of gear
Superstar Saga	96
Superstar Saga + Bowser's Minions	126
Partners in Time	72
Bowser's Inside Story	128
Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr.'s Journey	174
Dream Team	158
Paper Jam	182
Brothership	174
Sum of gear without duplicates	748
Number of gear recurring because of a remake	187
Gear only in one game	444
Gear in two games	257
Gear in three games	38
Gear in four games	7
Gear in five games	2
Gear in two games (minus remakes)	70

The original proposal at the time before Brothership was even revealed and released, assuming I made no mistakes in merging recurring subjects in the spreadsheet, was talking about the creation of 620 articles. This number and scope was never mentioned in the proposal. And now that Brothership has released, the total number of unique gear items is now at 748. Of these 748 gear items, 304 are recurring and appear in multiple games, which is less than half. Of the 304 recurring gear items, 187 are recurring only because of a remake, leaving the recurring amount minus remakes at 117. The only gear items that are in five games are Picnic Wear and POW Gloves for those wondering.

On the point of gear items having special effects, I do not see how making individual gear item articles would make explaining this easier. It is entirely possible to add detailed special effect information to the gear lists, which I have done for Partners in Time, Bowser's Inside Story, and Bowser's Inside Story DX. Some gear items have simple to explain special effects, like increasing POW by 10%. Others may have more complex effects, but it is still possible to explain in the list articles. A benefit of covering all of a game's gear in one list article is that some gear special effects get reused across gear items. By using the reference function as footnotes, it is possible to explain deeper mechanics or small rounding details for multiple gear items while only writing one explanation. I do not think it would be a good idea to duplicate things like the technical explanation of how the Shroom Force effect works to the Mush Badge, Mush Badge A, and Mush Badge AA articles. Another benefit of explaining everything in the list articles is that many gear items have interactions when multiple different items that give the same effect are worn together. Do the bonuses stack multiplicatively or additively? Do they not stack at all? Stacking information is another thing that is good for a footnote to reference multiple times, which articles for individual gear items cannot use without duplicating information. Bowser's Inside Story DX has five gear items that increase Badge Energy gained, and they stack additively, but there is a cap to the bonus that is real and needs to be noted for an example.

On the point of some gear items being recurring, I feel like this is the strongest positive for the original 2021 proposal, and I can see the idea behind it. But still, I do not think making articles for individual gear items would be the best way to communicate this because these articles would need to put in the work to be an actual article of the subject with all the consequences of being an article. I do not know of a good alternate solution to document recurring gear items, but maybe a big "list of Mario & Luigi series gear" article could be made? Could an article like that continue to be managed if another Mario & Luigi game releases? Maybe the current lists could mention in the notes recurring gear items? But I'm not sure how useful it would be to a reader looking specifically for Bowser's Inside Story information to see, in the list of Bowser's Inside Story gear article, the table of gear having a note that the item is in Dream Team, which has no effect on the stats or performance of the gear to specifically Bowser's Inside Story.

To dig deeper on the point of recurring gear items, what even makes a gear item recurring? Does it have to be that it has the same English name? Are the stats/effects a factor? I am afraid that deciding what is recurring will cause some very similarly-named gear items to get merged, when it is unclear if it is the same gear item. Partners in Time has Golden Pants that the babies can wear, but Dream Team and Paper Jam have Golden Wear the brothers can wear. Are Golden Pants and Golden Wear the same subject? This is an edge-case, but it is worth noting. As mentioned earlier, there is also the problem of Paper Jam having paper gear that has the same name of some non-paper items. Will these paper items have split articles? Would there be a Thin Wear article and a Thin Wear (paper) article? What benefits would this cause, and would it even be worth it?

On the point of articles for individual gear items being able to easily fit just its names in other languages table in, while this is a genuine upside, I feel like the negatives offset it. As mentioned in the replies of the 2024 proposal, having a "list of [game] gear names in other languages" is something that would work perfectly fine on a per-game basis. This is already done for articles like List of Power Moon names in other languages by kingdom (A–K).

As I mentioned in the negatives, I see these articles using sentence format, flooding navboxes, and making it harder for a reader to find the list to easily compare everything. These exact problems are what is already happening with the Super Mario RPG gear items on the wiki. Super Mario RPG was used as an example for what the individual articles would look like in the original 2021 proposal, which makes me even more afraid of continuing with the proposal. Super Mario RPG's gear items each have individual articles that are effectively relaying a row of a table's worth of information, but in sentence format, making it harder for a reader to find a specific stat at a glance. These articles are flooding the game's navbox, making it harder to compare gear items, and burying the list of gear that is much more useful deeper into the wiki. The list of gear for Super Mario RPG does not even have an article for it, making it be a part of the game's article and even harder for readers to find.

One reason for making articles for each gear item that was brought up in the 2024 proposal was because of status quo of how other things are already handled on the wiki. For major wiki changes like this, the status quo needs to be critically analyzed to see if it is a good idea to apply it elsewhere. The gear items of Mario & Luigi are most similar to the gear items of Super Mario RPG, which are already split. I already explained above how I do not think the wiki's current handling of Super Mario RPG gear items works well, and I feel like applying that to Mario & Luigi would just make everything worse for all the negative reasons I have already described. Another thing that sounds similar, but are actually completely different systems is how Paper Mario has badges, and Mario & Luigi has badges. Paper Mario badges currently do have "list of badges" and individual badge articles, but that works for Paper Mario because badges have greater depth as well as each badge having a unique icon. The biggest reason for giving every Paper Mario badge an individual article is that there are a good number of them that grant entire new moves, which have action commands, damage values, elemental effects, status effect chances, FP costs, and in TTYD, effects when multiple copies of the badge is worn. While badges in Superstar Saga (DX) and Partners in Time can also give special effects, they are usually smaller, simpler effects that can be effectively explained in the list of gear articles perfectly fine. The badges of Bowser's Inside Story (DX) and Dream Team are actually an entirely different system that happens to involve items called badges, so those are out of the scope of the 2021 proposal.

Finally, the end of the proposal for the voting options. Some individual gear item articles have already been made for Superstar Saga, so if the original 2021 proposal is overturned, those articles would need to be turned back into redirects. Additionally, there are the Starbeans Cafe items that have had articles predating the original 2021 proposal. Of all the gear items to potentially have articles, I feel like just the Starbeans Cafe items make the most sense, due to them having unique icons, the icons referencing other Nintendo subjects, and unused content in the Game Boy Advance original confirming these Nintendo references were meant to be more involved. These items have deeper stories that would work best for proper articles. It would not make sense to say that the Great Force is the Triforce in the list of gear article for an example. Because of this, there are three voting options:

• The first voting option is for overturning and undoing the original 2021 proposal, which includes merging the Starbeans Cafe items into the gear lists.
• The second voting option is for overturning and undoing the original 2021 proposal, while leaving and allowing only the Starbeans Cafe items to still have articles alongside the gear lists.
• The third voting option is to continue with the original 2021 proposal; the "do nothing" of this proposal.

Proposer: {{User|{{subst:REVISIONUSER}}}}<br> Deadline: {{subst:#time:F j, Y|+2 weeks}}, 23:59 GMT

Support option 1: overturn 2021 proposal, Starbeans Cafe items lose their individual articles

1. Spencer_PK (talk) Secondary choice.

Support option 2: overturn 2021 proposal, Starbeans Cafe items get to keep their individual articles

1. Spencer_PK (talk) Primary choice. As explained in the proposal, there are many reasons why I want to overturn the original 2021 proposal. The positives of the 2021 proposal are far offset by the negatives. I have been especially bothered by the 2021 proposal because of how it presents a small problem (talking about recurring gear items), fails to fully explain the scope of what it passing will cause, and is now causing an even bigger problem to exist that has been looming over the wiki for so long, unsolved. It is entirely possible for the existing list of gear articles to talk about the special effects perfectly fine. Editing other Mario & Luigi-related articles on the wiki has been a constant problem because I keep on bumping back into the 2021 proposal, which has caused me to delay or stop working on my own wiki contributions several times because of how far-reaching the original 2021 proposal is. The uncertainties the original 2021 proposal is causing is having a real effect on the wiki. Nobody wants to work on the original 2021 proposal, and nobody is even aware how much work and lasting work this will require.