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 Princess Peach's Castle Grounds in the Mushroom Kingdom, all levels – refered to as "galaxies" in this game – are staged on other worlds far removed from Mario's home planet. This is the 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 organically around the planet's shape. Because they have their own pull, most planets can be directly traveled between just by jumping. 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 theme of space is communicated in various ways throughout 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 a visible sun retracts, mimicking the behavior of real sunlight. 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, such as humanoid robots, fortified battle facilities, UFOs, and starships. Much of the game's setting include whimsical, gentle, and light-hearted elements. Locations are reached via a palace-like starship called the Comet Observatory, the game's hub world. It is in orbit around Mario's world and is a nursery for spacefaring star children called Lumas. In lieu of s, the people found living in the galaxies include Star Bunnies, Honeybees, and Penguins. Star Bits, small collectibles that fall from the sky like shooting stars, resemble and are eaten by the Lumas.

According to director Yoshiaki Koizumi, the developmental catalyst for Super Mario Galaxy was to create a Super Mario game with spherical platforms that had their own centers of gravity. It was thought that this would be a good way to address an issue observed by Koizumi when he directed Super Mario Sunshine, which was that players inexperienced with three-dimensional platformers had difficulty navigating a 3D environment and controlling the camera. This concept was also influenced by the Nintendo GameCube demo "Super Mario 128", which featured a malleable dish-like platform that impacted Mario's physics as it was pulled. The decision to stage the game in outer space was made because the development team thought it was the most intuitive setting for such concepts. In 2017, a figure was released by Nintendo that conveys that Super Mario Galaxy is structurally seen as a different type of 3D Mario game from its immediate predecessors – the "sandbox-style" games Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine. Nintendo aligns it with the succeeding games Super Mario Galaxy 2, Super Mario 3D Land, and Super Mario 3D World as a linear "course clear-style" game. However, many of the levels in Super Mario Galaxy are structured similarly to its predecessors, particularly in the robust six-mission galaxies. The principals that influenced Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine derived from, or "garden-in-box". The purpose behind hakoniwa is to create intricate, miniature landscapes in a closed space, and Koizumi cites it directly as one of the level design principals behind Super Mario Galaxy.

Galaxies


Super Mario Galaxy is highly distinctive in how its levels are accessed. In the proceeding Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine, levels become available as Mario accumulates golden s (Power Stars and Shine Sprites, respectively). Entry points to individual levels are dispersed throughout each respective game's hub world. Mario must physically move towards and enter these points to access the levels. In Super Mario Galaxy, the majority of levels are accessed in little habitation rooms across the Comet Observatory called domes. Domes are a little similar to the course access points of the previous 3D Mario games in that Mario must walk to them in, but each one contains a set of five levels. They are homologous to the worlds of Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World,

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


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.

The Library


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