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, Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, and 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.

My hope is to help make the SMG article on par with the best of the wiki (i.e. Super Mario World, Super Mario 3D World, the Donkey Kong Country games), and to use it as a reference for other Super Mario game articles. To me, these games are the heart of the franchise and it'd be nice if the articles can have some uniformity between them. I never intended to fully invest in just this one game, but as a person, it can be hard to move on when it feels like there is still work to be done. My hope is to bring some of what is done here to Super Mario Sunshine, Galaxy 2, and Odyssey.

Development
Super Mario Galaxy was developed as a response to the principles of 3D game design established by Super Mario 64. That game was one of the first 3D titles ever published and has a significant influence in how 3D games are made, not just at Nintendo but throughout the entire industry. Despite its influence, Shigeru Miyamoto and Yoshiaki Koizumi felt that it caused a divide between people that did not exist during the 2D era of video games. While some people enjoyed playing 3D games, there were people who believed that they were too difficult. Koizumi attributes this to what he believes are the biggest challenges in 3D game design: depth misperception; the ease with which a player can get lost; and motion sickness. The solutions created to mitigate these problems resulted in systems that were too cumbersome or at least intimidated players.

After Mario 64 was released, Miyamoto assembled a team within Nintendo EAD to develop a sequel tentatively titled Super Mario 128 that would be worked on intermittently for over ten years. At, it appeared as a for the Nintendo GameCube. Directed by Koizumi, it sees the player controlling 128 Marios on a saucer-shaped platform that dynamically changes shape over the course of the demo. Miyamoto took some of the principals from the demo and produced Pikmin (2001), but he did not abandon the intention of producing a successor to Super Mario 64. For Koizumi, he co-directed Super Mario Sunshine at Nintendo EAD, which was assertedly unrelated to Mario 128. This was the last 3D-related project Koizumi was involved with for several years. He came to the perspective that it was difficult to produce the "perfect 3D control environment" where it was fun to play but did not stress the player. He thought the part of the Space World demo where Mario moves freely around the platform could be adapted into an actual product, but implementing something like that would be technically challenging.

In 2004, Koizumi directed Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, a 2D action-adventure platformer for the GameCube. The player controls DK with the DK Bongos, which has fewer input options than the conventional GameCube controller. The experience of developing Jungle Beat with the then brand-new studio Nintendo EAD Tokyo made Koizumi realize they could develop a gratifying and rich experience with few buttons. They had established what Koizumi calls "contextual binding", where available player actions would be changed depending on the timing and context. Koizumi had also observed that an exaggerated presentation would delight and engage bystanders that were not directly playing the game. These were concepts he brought to Miyamoto for future projects.

After Jungle Beat was released, Koizumi and the rest of EAD Tokyo's staff discussed their next project. Producer Takao Shimizu suggested they create an original IP, but Miyamoto encouraged them to be more ambitious and make another title using established characters. A staff member expressed interest in developing the next Super Mario title. It was around this same time that Miyamoto publicly expressed that he was having difficulty working on Mario 128 as its sole director, and that he was taking an "indefinite hiatus" from its development.

In 2005, Koizumi prepared an outline for what he called "Super Mario Revolution" for the GameCube's successor, the Wii. Adapted from the Space World 2000 demo and building on what EAD Tokyo had accomplished with Jungle Beat, the core concept of "Revolution" was to create a 3D Super Mario platformer with Mario running around spherical worlds. This was a concept developed by Miyamoto around the time of Sunshine's development. It was believed that spherical worlds would solve many of the problems with previous 3D games in deemphasizing the need to control the camera. Spherical worlds lDoing so mitigates the chances of the player getting lost and overcomplicating controls, allowing the player to become fully absorbed in play. Koizumi created a small prototype with several other EAD Tokyo employees to present to Nintendo's executives. The prototype was set in space because it was believed that most players would interpret spherical worlds as planets. After three months of work and a successful presentation of the prototype, "Revolution" was officially given the and developed into Super Mario Galaxy at Nintendo EAD Tokyo.

Although Miyamoto was involved with multiple projects across Nintendo at the time, he served as one of the game's producers. He frequently visited the studio to share ideas and oversee development. Super Mario Galaxy is the realization of Miyamoto's long-term goal of creating a "true sequel" to Super Mario 64 and recognizes it as the successor to Super Mario 128.

One of his suggestions was to include a delay between spinning instead of having Mario spin continuously by shaking the Wii Remote, so that the game would be more challenging and interesting to play. A setup was eventually created so that both the Kyoto and Tokyo offices could playtest the game.

The development team made heavy use of play-testers due to the studio's experience while developing Donkey Kong Jungle Beat. One of Koizumi's main concern were the camera angles and the motion sickness that they caused. He thought camera-induced motion sickness was a problem with 3D action games, and found neither Super Mario Sunshine nor Donkey Kong Jungle Beat's solutions satisfying.

EAD Tokyo was pressured to finish the game close to the Wii's launch, as several executives were disappointed by Super Mario Sunshine not being a Nintendo GameCube launch title and thought that an earlier release could have helped the GameCube's commercial performance. However, EAD Tokyo decided that making a polished Mario game was more important. Shigeru Miyamoto described Super Mario Galaxy as "the true sequel to Super Mario 64" during the game's development.

According to Koizumi, the "theme" of development was to create a game where the player "didn't need to think about the camera".

In concert with the goal of making the Wii a system that appealed to demographics outside of their usual core consumers, the team tried to follow loose guidance from Satoru Iwata to make the game playable for anyone between ages "5 and 95".

Pre-release and unused content
•	Guppy was not a dolphin!

Promotion
•	Where exactly did that photo of Mario in the zero-gravity airlock come from?

Legacy
•	SMG released during a period when the strength of Japan-based video game studios was generally thought to be on the decline, in part due to the rise of development in American studios to great financial success and the general marketing trends of the industry

•	Well respected Japanese publishers such as Capcom, Konami, Sega, and Nintendo themselves had attempted to significantly retool some of their established franchises for western audiences; most of these attempts were not received well and sold terribly

•	SMG was not artistically compromised by this trend and it was something noted by commentators at the time; its success at BAFTA over Call of Duty was described as a surprise; its reliance on providing accessible, rewarding fun was considered unique at the time (see comparison to Heavy Rain)

•	Though not attributed as the catalyst to the rival of Japanese studios, the critical acclaim and commercial success of SMG was viewed as evidence that Japan was still a significant player in the video game industry

•	SMG almost immediate influence other titles in the greater Mario franchise, such as Mario Kart Wii; Rosalina has been established as a major recurring character in Mario spin-offs

•	Rosalina was one of the first characters pitched for SSB4

•	Influenced development of Gears 5 (2019), Solar Ash (2021), Mario + Rabbids: Spark of Hope (2022), and Momoka

Remakes and ports
•	Wii U

•	Nvidia Shield

•	Super Mario 3D All-Stars

Adaptations
•	SUPER MARIO-KUN

Notable merchandise
•	Cards

Potential articles to review