User:Nintendo101

Casual Nintendo historian. Otherwise an artist and a professional zoologist. Bio degree. I've had an account here since 2012.

I wrote the character sections for Super Mario 64, Super Mario Galaxy 2, and Super Mario Odyssey. I contributed much of the article for Super Mario Sunshine and am currently working on Super Mario Galaxy.

I have been a fan of Nintendo since a very young age. My first Mario games (and three of the first video games I ever owned) were Super Mario World: Super Mario Advance 2, Super Mario 64 DS, and Mario Kart DS. These games were good company for a young kid who moved around a lot and had difficulty keeping long-lasting friends.

During the, I sequentially played some of my favorite games in the Super Mario series to 100% completion. This includes, in order, Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario Galaxy 2, and Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker. I will complete this marathon with Super Mario Odyssey. It's been really fun so far! These are great games, and I always wanted to marathon a series like this before but never had the time. It has been interesting to see where the series began and where it has ended up. The design philosophies, the characters, the art directions, world building, level design, narrative, etc. All good stuff. It might be fun to write something about it some day.

My favorite video game character is Yoshi.

Setting
Super Mario Galaxy is set in outer space. With the exception of Grand Finale Galaxy, which is staged on Princess Peach's Castle Grounds in the Mushroom Kingdom, all levels – refered to as "galaxies" – are staged on other worlds far removed from Mario's homeworld. This is first entry in the series to explicitly include an outer space setting since Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins, and the first time it has been realized by the core Super Mario team at Nintendo EAD. A galaxy is an isolated cluster of planetary bodies. Most planets have their own gravitational pull, which prevents Mario from falling down a bottomless pit and enables him to return to his starting position if he just keeps moving forward. Mario's movement, physics, and trajectory bend to organically fit around the planet's shape. Because they have their own pull, most planets can be directly traveled between just by jumping towards them. Otherwise they can be reached via floating, stellate objects called Launch Stars and Pull Stars. Not all planets have their own unique gravity: some are shaped like the more traditional courses of Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine and instead have their gravitational pull below their mass, but this is conveyed through context. The space setting permeates throughout the artistic design of Super Mario Galaxy. Many galaxies include distant asteroid belts or views of massive, unreachable planets orbiting suns that peak over their horizons. Depending on the distance from the game's camera, the light from the sun visually retracts, mimicking the behavior of real celestial light. The of the galaxies feature nebulas and vast, starry skies. Three-dimensional objects – including Mario himself – exhibit a soft, celestial glow in certain positions as if struck by the light from distant stars. Black holes occur in place of bottomless pits in many galaxies. Super Mario Galaxy includes some motifs derivative of, including communities of robots, fortified battle facilities, UFOs, and starships.

and are reached via the Comet Observatory, the game's hub world. The Comet Observatory itself is set in orbit around Mario's world and is a nursery for spacefaring star children called Lumas.

Many galaxies contain unique people, cultures, and problems reflective of the levels' individual mechanics. For example, the Honeyhive Galaxy is the first galaxy to introduce the Bee Mushroom and has sections built around using the bee suit. The first mission in Honeyhive introduces a community of peaceful, sapient Honeybees ruled by a Queen Bee. They share details about their way of life or specific mechanics on how to use the bee suit when prompted by Mario. The first mission also includes a diminutive bug enemy called a Flipbug that chase down Mario in his bee suit. The subsequent mission builds upon these details in introducing a similar but much larger bug enemy called a Mandibug that prey on the Honeybees and are established as neighboring species. This escalates in the third mission with a full on Mandibug invasion and a boss battle with a giant member of the species, Bugaboom.

Galaxies
Power Stars make a comeback, last being seen in Super Mario 64. The main goal of the game is to collect a minimum of 60 stars and defeat Bowser. Similar to Peach's Castle in Super Mario 64 and Delfino Plaza in Super Mario Sunshine, the Comet Observatory acts as the game's hub area. There, Mario can access the galaxies from domes. New areas in the Comet Observatory become accessible as Mario gains Power Stars and Grand Stars. A minimum number of Power Stars is required to have enough power to go to each multi-star galaxy, single non-Grand Star galaxies with a ? Block icon when locked are bonuses for finishing certain star missions. At the end of each dome, the player enters a galaxy where they alternate between fighting Bowser Jr. and Bowser, represented by Bowser's head on the world map (though after a Bowser Jr. galaxy is cleared, the head changes into the actual galaxy itself). The game has a level intro for each star, as in Super Mario Sunshine.

Mario encounters Luigi in four levels (located in the Good Egg Galaxy, the Honeyhive Galaxy, the Battlerock Galaxy, and the Ghostly Galaxy). In Ghostly Galaxy, Luigi is at the end of Luigi and the Haunted Mansion holding a star. After Luigi is rescued, he can be seen in the observatory and helps Mario reach secret stars that he could not get alone. When Luigi is in other galaxies, Mario receives a letter from Luigi every time Luigi has found a Power Star, including a picture which helps Mario find Luigi. After the main game is finished, Mario can return and collect up to 120 stars. Super Mario Galaxy contains a few different types of stars, including red, green, and comet stars. The Green Stars are secret stars which are used to unlock the Trial Galaxies and one Red Power Star appears when Mario returns to the gate, which allows usage of the Red Star in the Comet Observatory.

After finishing a level, Mario's highest score of coins for the galaxy is recorded and the collected Star Bits are transferred to the Comet Observatory, where Mario can later use them to feed Hungry Lumas. The requirements for opening up each galaxy is listed below, with Star Bits if the galaxy is created by a Hungry Luma. Note, however, that some galaxies are not unlocked by simply obtaining a number of stars but by completing a specific star. This is true for all Hungry Lumas except the first, and all bonus galaxies from Buoy Base Galaxy onward.

There are a total of forty-two galaxies in the game.

The amount of Power Stars and Star Bits listed after a galaxy is the amount of the corresponding collectibles that is required to unlock the galaxy.

Prankster Comets
Prankster Comets are objects which interfere with a Galaxy, giving it an extra attribute. The 30 comet stars are obtained by completing special challenges in the major galaxies, such as speed runs of certain missions, "daredevil" runs (in which Mario is defeated if he takes a single hit), racing cosmic clones of Mario or Luigi, and doubling the speed of enemies and obstacles. They only appear after the corresponding regular level (e.g. Ghostly Galaxy's Bouldergeist battle) is completed, sometimes immediately, and at other times, only after another galaxy's level is completed. Prankster Comets appear and disappear every other level completed. After a level is completed while a Prankster Comet is active, all the Prankster Comets are removed until yet another level is beaten. In some cases (like the Space Junk Galaxy), the entire galaxy has to be beaten first. There are two Prankster Comets in each of the 15 major galaxies: one of the comet types just described, plus one purple prankster comet that appears after beating Bowser's Galaxy Reactor for the first time, forcing missions where the player must collect 100 Purple Coins.

The Comet Observatory
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The Library
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