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 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 small planets and other planetary bodies. Some are shaped like spheres, but many are not. Most planets have their own gravitational pull, which prevents Mario from falling down bottomless pits 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 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 the gravitational pull is 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, auroras, and starry skies. Three-dimensional objects – including Mario himself – exhibit a soft 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, tranquil, and surreal elements comparable to those found in children's books. Locations are reached via a palace-like starship called the Comet Observatory, the game's hub world. It is overseen by a princess named Rosalina 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. There are planets and entire galaxies that look like dessert.

According to director Yoshiaki Koizumi, the inception for Super Mario Galaxy was to create a Super Mario game with spherical worlds. It was thought that these worlds would make it less likely for players to get disoriented or have to reposition the camera. These were issues he observed during the development of Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and Super Mario Sunshine that prevented complete immersion. The decision to stage the game in outer space was made because the development team thought that the spherical worlds would most intuitively make sense as planets. In 2017, a figure was released by Nintendo that conveys that Super Mario Galaxy is structurally viewed 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 the ones in its predecessors, particularly in the robust six-mission galaxies and the large planets that do not have their own centers of gravity. These principals derive from, or "garden-in-box", and Koizumi cites it directly as an influence behind the worlds in Super Mario Galaxy.

Galaxies
In Super Mario Galaxy, levels are accessed inside of domes on the Comet Observatory. They are spatially distributed across the hub, similar to the access points for levels in Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine. However, with the exception of the Garden, each dome contains a set of five different galaxies instead of just one dedicated course. Domes are unlocked unilaterally as the player completes certain criteria. These make the domes homologous to the worlds of the 2D Super Mario games like Super Mario Bros. 3. However, as in its 3D predecessors, the player is not restricted to linear course progression in Super Mario Galaxy.

Each galaxy contains objectives referred to as missions. Completing a mission has Mario acquire one of the galaxy's Power Stars, the same tokens used in Super Mario 64 for unlocking levels. One mission correlates with one Power Star. The start of each mission has a brief cinematic preview of the galaxy that hints at the location of the Power Star, as was similarly done in Super Mario Sunshine. Once a specified number of Power Stars has been accumulated, a new galaxy becomes unlockable at the player's discretion. Only half of the Power Stars in the game are required for progression. The minimum number of Power Stars needed to access the game's final level is 60 in a game that contains 120 total. Consequently, a player who completes as many missions as possible within one dome may unlock all the galaxies within the next all at once when they enter it for the first time.

Every dome has a Pull Star at its center. Entering the Pull Star brings Mario to an interactive selection screen previewing of all the dome's galaxies. The galaxies orbit around the Pull Star (the ). The display is directly comparable to models of solar systems, with each galaxy following a circular trajectory around the Pull Star. The distance of these orbital lines from the Pull Star has a positive correlation with the number of Power Stars required to unlock the galaxies and a negative correlation with the number of mission available within them. (i.e. The galaxies closest to the origin typically have the greatest number of missions and require the lowest number of Power Stars to unlock. The farthest ones contain the fewest and are the easiest to unlock.) Using the Terrace as an example, a dome contains three different types of galaxies:


 * "Robust galaxies" that contain at least six missions. They either feature a high number of visitable planets or a small selection of large planets to explore. The missions build off of each other environmentally or narratively. (i.e. The events that occur in one mission foreshadow the events of the subsequent mission.) Two or more of the six missions typically involves a boss battle. Most domes contain two or three of these galaxies, and they are the first ones listed on the in-game Star List. They are the only galaxies orbited by Prankster Comets. The robust galaxies of the Terrace are Good Egg Galaxy and Honeyhive Galaxy.
 * "Mystery galaxies" that each contain one mission. Before being unlocked, they are represented by course preview models shaped like ? Blocks. These galaxies are highly distinctive in theme and mission. Some of them entail minigames like Ray Surfing or Star Ball. Others are athletic obstacle courses. Mystery galaxies usually require completing a certain mission in another galaxy in addition to accumulating a specific number of Power Stars to unlock. Each dome contains one or two mystery galaxies. In the Terrace, they are Loopdeeloop Galaxy and Flipswitch Galaxy.
 * "Boss galaxies" that each contain one mission. They feature linear obstacle courses that lead to a boss battle. Half of them involve Bowser Jr., either directly or as the inciter for another boss to go after Mario. The other half feature Bowser himself. With the exception of the Garden, each dome contains one boss galaxy and it is always on the outermost ring in the dome. Completing the mission in these galaxies is a criterion needed to unlock a subsequent dome and are required for game progression. They often have the highest Power Star threshold. The preview model in orbit resembles a bust of Bowser’s head with glowing eyes. The boss galaxy in the terrace is Bowser Jr.'s Robot Reactor.

There are galaxies available outside of the domes. With the exception of Gateway Galaxy, these ones can also be categorized as mystery or boss galaxies. Most of these are unlocked by feeding Hungry Lumas a requested number of Star Bits. These Lumas appear on the Comet Observatory once certain criteria are met within the dome galaxies. There is a Hungry Luma associated with every dome, essentially functioning as an extra level for each dome. A tiny house that rests on a grassy platform orbiting the observatory called the Gate grants Mario access to Gateway Galaxy. This galaxy is the first level of the game, but it can only be revisited via the Gate once "King Kaliente's Spicy Return" is completed. Though it is not a dome, there is a Hungry Luma associated with it as well. A planetoid called the Planet of Trials orbits the observatory and has four galaxies of its own. It becomes reachable only once all three of the secret Green Stars have been collected. Bowser's Galaxy Generator is only reachable by speaking to Rosalina.

Mario encounters Luigi in four galaxies: Good Egg Galaxy, Honeyhive Galaxy, Battlerock Galaxy, and Ghostly Galaxy. In Ghostly Galaxy, Luigi is at the end of the "Luigi and the Haunted Mansion" mission and will give Mario a Power Star when reached. After Luigi is rescued, he can be seen in the observatory and helps Mario locate secret Power Stars. When Luigi appears in other galaxies, Mario receives a letter from asking for help, including a picture that hints at his location. Locating him within a galaxy awards Mario with a secret Power Star.

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

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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