User:Nintendo101

Nintendo fanatic and enthusiast. (You probably are too if you're looking at this page.) I'm otherwise an artist and an ecologist. Within my field, I specialize in wildlife and (currently, but not exclusively) insects. I've had an account here since 2012.

I wrote the character sections for Super Mario Odyssey. I contributed a lot to the articles for Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, Super Mario Galaxy (which is now featured - yay!), and Super Mario Galaxy 2, alongside many other people on this wiki who have contributed their time, energy, and passion to writing about video games.

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 COVID-19 pandemic, 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! 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.

For assets I have uploaded to the wiki, I suggest viewing them here.

Sandbox for current project

Prerelease

• Shiggy first mentions that there will definitely be a game for the Revolution during E3 2005 (I think - double check any earlier mentioning, maybe in Japan, though Ninty tends to do initial press announcements in English because their largest sale demographics are in the west)

Reception

Super Mario Galaxy is universally acclaimed. It has an aggregated score of 97.64% from 78 reviews on GameRankings. By the time of its closure in 2019, Super Mario Galaxy was the highest rated game on the site to have at least 20 different reviews. Similarly, Super Mario Galaxy has a 97/100 on Metacritic from 73 accredited outlets (i.e. its "Metascore") and 91% from 3,434 site users as of January 7, 2024, reaching the threshold for "Universal Acclaim" on both accounts. As of January 9, 2024, it has the fourth highest Metascore on the site, following The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, SoulCalibur (1999), and Grand Theft Auto IV (2008).

Reviewers have consistently praised the game's artistic fidelity, complimenting the character animations, lush vistas, environmental affects, and enemy designs. Controlling Mario was notably intuitive and comfortable, instantly understandable for someone who did not have a lot of experience with platform games while also feeling excellent for seasoned players. The level design Super Mario Galaxy was widely praised as some of the best (if not, the best) of any 3D platformer and regularly subverted the player's expectations. There was no certainty on the scope or unique gameplay mechanic that would be introduced in a galaxy. That lack of predictably was exciting. The emphasize on gravity-based mechanics and rounded planets that can be fully traversed along bent the rules of platforming. The game was often likened to Super Mario 64, succeeding the game in many respects and building upon the foundation of what it had established in the 3D platform genre. It was asserted to be a superior game to Super Mario Sunshine, which had a more lukewarm reception.

The unique controls that came from the Wii Remote - spinning and the Star Pointer - were viewed as some of best integration of the Wii console's unique features. The Pointer essentially allowed the player to control two characters at once. Ball rolling and ray surfing were praised as some of the best integration of "true" motion controls on the console. The game's camera, and the ease with which it automatically and "cinematically" followed the player, was described as the best of any 3D Super Mario game and normally functioned well, but was not perfect. It was criticized for obscuring too much of the surrounding in some segments, particularly larger courses like Honeyhive Galaxy.

In terms of criticism, the opening cinematic of Super Mario Galaxy was viewed as superfluous and overdrawn by some. The lack of scripted voice acting for dialogue was more consistently criticized, especially during these cutscene. Some reviewers believed that that Super Mario Galaxy would have benefited from having a more centralized, character-driven story, while others believed narrative elements, such as Rosalina's Story, felt forced and needlessly dark in an otherwise joyful experience. Journalist Tim Rogers was deeply disappointed by the game, feeling that it spent too much time explaining things to the player rather than intuitively show it to them, as was the case in Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario 64. In Rogers' view, Nintendo's deliberate attempt to make the game more accessible to demographics who do not play video games damaged the potential of what it could have been, and ultimately did not meet his expectations on what a sequel to Super Mario 64 "should" be. He also felt the game was too easy, and sentiment shared by outlets that ultimately still thought positively of the game. Most critics felt the game struck an ideal balance between being needlessly difficult and easy.

Famitsu gave Super Mario Galaxy a score of 38/40, praising the rich variety of mechanics offered by the game, intuitive controls, and accessibility. Official Nintendo Magazine gave the game 97%. It was called the best game of the decade and praised for having excellent graphics, sound and gameplay as well as a mixture of new and classic features. The game has been praised by Gregg Mayles, Warren Spector, and Tim Schafer. Fumito Ueda, who played it due to supposed similarities to Shadow of the Colossus, found Super Mario Galaxy to be underwhelming. Additional reviews from the outlets discussed above are provided below.

Reviews
Release	Reviewer, Publication	Score	Comment
Wii	Aaron Linde, Destructoid	9.6/10	"To say that they've succeeded almost isn't enough; Super Mario Galaxy is so incredible that it improves upon flaws in Mario 64 that I hadn't even noticed until, y'know, Galaxy did it better. And though there's little in the way of "innovation" of the genre, it's the refinement of the genre that solidifies Galaxy as the most essential platforming experience yet created."
Wii	Edge	10/10	"Since the end of the N64 era, as Nintendo has explored new pastures and methodically tended old ones, it's been easy to forget the times when every major release from the company felt like this. It's a bravura piece of design that pulls off stunts no one else has even thought of."
Wii	Margaret Robertson, Eurogamer	10/10	"The great challenge in making a follow-up to Mario 64 was always that to do it justice, you'd have to make a game which is as much its own as Mario 64 was. That's no easy task when you also have to integrate the traditions of two decades of Mario games and the expectations of millions of fans. Sunshine, despite its dazzle, ultimately collapsed under that weight, becoming repetitive and sometimes cumbersome as it tried to find the balance. Where Galaxy matches Mario 64 is not quite in its quality of execution - alongside the brilliance of some stars are others which fall a bit flat, and there isn't the overall sense of implacable perfection that that game had - but in its confidence and originality. Another decade needs to go by before we'll know whether it will come to be as revered as 64 did. For now, all that matters is that the waiting is finally over."
Wii	Alex Navarro, GameSpot	9.5/10	"The stellar presentation and fantastic level designs combine to make Super Mario Galaxy the Wii's game to beat and one of Mario's greatest adventures yet."
Wii	Matt Casamassina, IGN	9.7/10	"Galaxy isn't quite perfect. There are some minor issues -- tiny blemishes, if you will, hiding on the backside of a supermodel. There's the auto-camera, which works exceptionally well most of the time, but every so often stumbles. And there's the overall difficulty -- a little too easy to 60 stars and to defeat bosses for my tastes. But even with these potential drawbacks, Nintendo's Tokyo studio has created a platformer that deserves its place among the very best and will surely be remembered in another decade as a classic."
Wii	Anthony Dickens, Nintendo Life	10/10	"Super Mario Galaxy is a fantastic game, a game that displays Nintendo's continuing ambition to explore the possibilities of a 3D platformer, something that no-one else has really managed to do. It's considerably better than Super Mario Sunshine on all accounts, with the new emphasis on gravity it becomes once again a game that requires skill and timing rather than just an exploratory mind. This will be an instant hit and surely go down as one of the best Mario games. A must have for all."
Wii	Tom Orry, VideoGamer	9/10	"In the hands of anyone who's been longing for a true sequel to Mario 64, Super Mario Galaxy could well be the game of the year, but it's nowhere near as revolutionary as Mario 64."
Aggregators
Compiler		Platform / Score
Metacritic		97
GameRankings		97.64%

Sales

Super Mario Galaxy was a commercial success, selling 350,000 units in Japan within its first few weeks of sale. In the United States, the game sold over 500,000 units within its first week of release, earning it the highest first-week sales for a Super Mario game in the country at the time. Within its first two days on sale in the United Kingdom, the game was the fifth best selling piece of software. In 2008, Nintendo reported that the game was one of the titles that significantly contributed to a rise of console sales for the proceeding fiscal year. Super Mario Galaxy has the ninth best lifetime sales of all Wii software and the third best of software to have never been bundled with the console, having sold 12.8 million copies worldwide as of September 30, 2023.

Accolades

Among game media outlets, Super Mario Galaxy was regarded as 2007's "Game of the Year" by the editing staff of IGN, GameSpot, Kotaku, Yahoo! Games, GameTrailers, and Edge. It recieved the award for "Best Audio Design" from Edge as well in their annually published "Edge Awards".

Within a month of the game's release, Super Mario Galaxy won two awards at Spike TV's 2007 Video Game Awards in the United States. The game subsequently received thirteen nominations from six different organizations throughout 2008. On February 8th, the game won the award for "Adventure Game of the Year" from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences at the 11th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards. It was nominated in five other categories, including "Overall Game of the Year" for which it was a finalist. At the 8th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards on February 22, Super Mario Galaxy received nominations in two categories, one of which was another "Game of the Year" award. In March, the game was nominated for five awards and won two at the 7th Annual NAVGTR Awards from the National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers, an organization made up of game journalists in the United States. In Japan, Super Mario Galaxy won "Game of the Year" alongside Capcom's Monster Hunter Freedom 2 at the 2007 Famitsu Awards. This award was graciously accepted by Yoshiaki Koizumi. At the government hosted Japan Game Awards 2008, the game received the "award for excellence" in the "Game of the Year Division" from the Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association. The game was nominated for three awards at the Golden Joystick Awards 2008 later that year.

During 2009, in what was recognized as a "surprise" by the press, Super Mario Galaxy won "Best Game" at the 5th British Academy Games Awards and was the first Nintendo game to ever receive the award. It was accepted on behalf of the development team by Rob Lowe, the senior product manager at Nintendo UK, who reportedly took the opportunity to defend the title against claims that it is not a "gamer's game." Super Mario Galaxy was nominated for the "Gameplay" and "Use of Audio" awards as well, but lost to Activision's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Electronic Arts' Dead Space, respectively. At the 2012 Kids' Choice Awards, Super Mario Galaxy was nominated for "Favorite Video Game" a year after its sequel was. It lost to Just Dance 3. Each organization to recognize Super Mario Galaxy and its respective award nominations are listed below.

Awards
Date	Organization	Country	Award	Result	Ref.
9 December, 2007	Spike Video Game Awards	United States	Best Action Game	Won
			Best Wii Game	Won
8 February, 2008	Interactive Achievement Awards	United States	Overall Game of the Year	Nominated
			Console Game of the Year	Nominated
			Adventure Game of the Year	Won
			Outstanding Innovation in Gaming	Nominated
			Outstanding Achievement in Game Design	Nominated
			Outstanding Achievement in Game Play Engineering	Nominated
22 February, 2008	Game Developers Choice Awards	United Kingdom	Game of the Year	Nominated
			Game Design	Nominated
25 March, 2008	NAVGTR Awards	United States	Game of the Year	Nominated
			Control Design	Won
			Control Precision	Nominated
			Game Design	Nominated
			Game Sequel Children's	Won
26 April, 2008	Famitsu Awards	Japan	Game of the Year	Won
9 October, 2008	Japan Game Awards	Japan	Award for excellence	Won
31 October, 2008	Golden Joystick Awards	United Kingdom	The Sun Family Game of the Year	Nominated
			Nintendo Game of the Year	Nominated
			BBC 1Xtra Soundtrack of the Year	Nominated
10 March, 2009	British Academy Games Awards	United Kingdom	Best Game	Won
			Gameplay	Nominated
			Use of Audio	Nominated
31 March, 2012	Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards	United States	Favorite Video Game	Nominated

Controversy

Super Mario Galaxy was the first Super Mario game to be officially localized to French for Quebec, Canada. This region had previously received games in English. This followed a deal between the Office québécois de la langue française and the video game industry to have every game available for that region in French by 2009. In the Quebec localization, non-playable characters (particularly the Lumas and the Toad Brigade) make heavy use of Joual, a social dialect of Quebec French. This localization choice sparked a minor controversy, with representatives of the Office québécois de la langue française and the Union des artistes criticizing it for promoting poor literacy to children. A Nintendo representative responded that the localization was made with "localizing for the market" in mind, as the Quebec market made up 25% of sales for Nintendo of Canada at the time.

Following the negative press surrounding Super Mario Galaxy and the similarly localized The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, nearly all subsequent Québécois releases have been in standard French. As of 2024, the only exception has been Paper Mario: Sticker Star (2012), which also features the Joual dialect.

Themes

Mario after being stirred by the Apricot Luma towards the beginning of the game, with his home world far in the distance and unreachable. This is a particularly resonant moment for Jacob Geller.

Super Mario Galaxy has been noted for its narrative themes, the very presence of which has been described as exceptional when compared to other titles in the Super Mario series. The game explores themes of isolation, grief, found family, acceptance, and rebirth.

The game invokes feelings of isolation and sadness through its outer space setting. Most galaxies are enveloped by vast, dark skies pierced by stars and distant suns. There are story scenarios, missions, locations, and musical queues interlaced in the game that intentionally draw attention away from its more vigorous, joyful elements to focus on the dispassionate coldness of space, amplifying Mario's relative insignificance to a vast, endless universe. Video essayist Jacob Geller notes that these conditions give the player a moment to decompress after action-orientated gameplay and foster contemplativeness. Such conditions are interpreted as existentialistic and sad, but not despairing. Grace Benfell of GameSpot describes the evoked feeling as an "existential, joyful melancholy."

Benfell also comments on the the integration of Lumas in the game. The childlike creatures are predestined to become celestial bodies at the end of their life cycles. The objects Mario directly interacts with are implied (and sometimes even directly demonstrated) to have once been Lumas themselves, with Launch Stars having once been yellow Lumas, Pull Stars once blue ones, and so on. As a gameplay mechanic, Hungry Lumas permanently transform into wholly new planets and galaxies once fed a requested number of Star Bits. These planets are instantaneously lush with flora and sometimes already bear communities of people and creatures living on them. As Benfell argues, this mechanic implies everything in the game, from whole worlds to animals to small objects, are "made" out of Lumas. This interpretation is confirmed directly in the game. The cycle of rebirth in Lumas likely derives from the life cycle of real stars and the knowledge that the majority of elements, including all the ones that make up living things, were created and distributed across the universe by dying stars. Benfell equates transformation with death, an often negative theme in art. However, she elaborates that it is in dying that new life comes to be, including newborn Lumas, so it is an essential component to how the universe functions in an entropic cycle of continuous rebirth.

The game's themes are most deeply and explicitly channeled through the characterization of Rosalina. As overseer of the domestic Comet Observatory and caretaker of the Lumas, she is widely perceived as a maternal figure that supports a warm, securing environment only amplified by the contrasting, cold backdrop of space. She is also presented as a figure of reliable support with godlike abilities. She is omnipotent, wise, and a timeless entity that has lived for centuries. Mario cannot be harmed on the Comet Observatory, and it is implied that she is the one who brings him back to safety if he falls off the side. No harm can come to the player as long as they are with her.

However, despite the security and warmth she radiates, she is simultaneously presented as reserved, longing, and melancholic. The context for this is not explained to the player unless they enter the library on the observatory, an optional element of the game not tied to any completion criteria. It is here that she reads a storybook detailing her past. Long ago, Rosalina lived on Mario's home world. Her mother died while she was a child, and she was still grieving that loss when she encountered one of the Apricot Luma's predecessors. He too had lost his mother before crash-landing on her world, and he was waiting for her to return to him. Rosalina befriended and chose to wait for her with him. After several years of waiting, they traveled into space to directly look for her. It is while in space that Rosalina takes on the role of "mama" for the Luma, when he comes to tearfully accept that his mother is really gone. Over time, more lost Lumas come to Rosalina and recognize her as their mother. Towards the story's emotional climax, with Rosalina overwhelmed with memories of her mother, the Apricot Luma transforms into a comet so that she may be able to travel the stars and visit her home world again. It is through this selfless act that Rosalina realized that she was not truly alone. She realized her own purpose in life, embracing the role of mother for the Lumas, her family, as her own mother did for her.

Sociologist Ciara Cremin of the University of Auckland adapted Gilles Deleuze's analysis of cinema to Super Mario Galaxy, providing a foundation for how video games can be studied as a discrete artform. She understood it to be a "masterpiece" of the form.

Legacy

In-house (conceptual)

• Miyamoto considers it the true sequel to Mario 64 (as opposed to Sunshine)
• Last Mario game to see "serious" involvement from Miyamoto until Super Mario Run (ref)
• Last game directed by Yoshiaki Koizumi, who would be given greater roles as producer for other Mario projects, while Galaxy level designer Koichi Hayashida would be given directorial duties for subsequent entries
• Fostered a direct sequel - SMG2; one of the only Mario games to receive a named sequel (they're all kinda related to each other though, so how important is this actually?)
• Muted narrative elements in SMG2, per the explicit requests of Shigeru Miyamoto, and incorporated desired elements for the first game that were omitted (Starship Mario, Yoshi)
• Experience and mechanics streamlined and simplified
• SMG2 would be the last time Nintendo attempted to create a platformer with spherical worlds (have they ever said why?)
• heavily influenced design and structure of subsequent 3D Super Mario games, especially SMG2, SM3DL, and SM3DW as a course clear-style Mario game
• 3D games would become progressively more linear and more comparable to 2D Mario games; increasingly deviating from hakoniwa design philosophy of Mario 64
• When sandbox-style game did return with Odyssey, Galaxy's influence is still apparent (particularly in the lunar kingdoms, where gravity is less intense, giving Mario a floaty feel comparable to the feeling of moving in Mario Galaxy)
• Apparently Odyssey's Photo Mode derived from the developer's attempt to mitigate the complexity of camera controls (ref)
• Miyamoto expressed that Nintendo is open to developing a third game (his comments suggest Nintendo continued to pursue design choices that would make 3D games less daunting to 2D-players, hence why SM3DL and SM3DW appeared they way they do, but of note, the author of this work aligns SMG with SM64 and SMS as a sprawling adventure-type game) (ref)
• Folks clearly missed the idea of having a 3D Mario game that felt like an adventure (ref)

In-house (referential)

• Direct Galaxy-based iconography is present in every subsequent 3D game (Galaxy 2, obviously; Rosalina, Lumas, Octoombas, Comet Observatory in SM3DW; 8-Bit Rosalina and Star Bit-shaped regional coins in Odyssey)
• Rosalina would be incorporated into subsequent ensemble/spinoff games, Nintendo's marketing, have a direct presence or homage in subsequent main series games, and would become a largely beloved character
• Immediately appears in Mario Kart Wii, which was being developed simultaneously with Galaxy, and has been a fixture of every subsequent Mario Kart title
• Clampy would be incorporated as "the" clam enemy in the 2D games, one of the few enemies to have been introduced in a 3D game to become a recurring stable of the 2D ones
• Captain Toad rises in prominence within Nintendo's games and be playable in his own title; distinguished from the Toad in coming years
• Lumas and Toad Brigade would also become less frequent but consistent elements
• Space-themed portions in subsequent ensemble/spinoff games would often incorporate allusions to SMG

Industry at large

• Very few studios would attempt making platformers with spherical worlds (I recall some developer somewhere mentioning the technical difficulty with trying to do this)
• When a game does try this or attempts something comparable, it is often referred to as "Galaxy-styled" even though SMG was not the first platform game to attempt this design (Sonic Adventure 2, Ratchet & Clank, Yoshi's Island)
• Low-effort theme park-tie in clearly based on (maybe even directly stole from) Galaxy
• Both Sonic Colors (in a positive sense) and Sonic Lost World (in a negative sense) likened to Galaxy
• Cited influence behind:
  • Super Smash Bros. 4
  • Armillo
  • Solar Ash
  • Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope

Rosalina was proposed as a new playable character in the earliest phases of Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS / Wii U during 2012, explicitly with the desire to replicate the feel of Super Mario Galaxy in her aerial movements.

The game has been cited as a source of inspiration for Armillo (2014), Gears 5 (2019), Solar Ash (2021), and Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope (2022).

Retrospectives

• Eurogamer considers SMG the game of the generation (ref)

In 2011, Super Mario Galaxy was ranked number fifty-first in Game Informer's "Top 200 Games of All Time" listing. Nintendo Power ranked it as best Super Mario mainstream title in its May 2012 issue, as well as the third-best game ever released on a Nintendo console in its final issue.

In Japan, a 2021 poll conducted by TV Asahi with over 50,000 participants found Super Mario Galaxy amongst the top 100 video games of all time, ranked number 56 out of 100.

Things to read

• 15 Years Ago, Super Mario Galaxy Made It Cool to Be a Gamer
• Super Mario Galaxy: In Space No-One Can Hear You Mamma Mia
• Super Mario Galaxy Showed Us Something The Series Hadn't Before, And Hasn't Since
• 15 years later, Super Mario Galaxy is still the series' most stellar entry
• Super Mario Galaxy Coming To Nintendo DS Thanks To Fan Project
• In Battle of Consoles, Nintendo Gains Allies
• E3 Interview: Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto
• E3 – 2006 : LIVE :: Massive Wii games ‘hands on’
• Halo 3 Arrives, Rewarding Gamers, and Microsoft
• Nintendo: Wii play now, but Wii ship later
• One on one with Nintendo at E3
• E3 2005: Shigeru Miyamoto Interview
• TGS 2005: Hands-on the Revolution Controller
• Super Mario Galaxy and the Videogame Aesthetic
• Super Mario Seriality: Nintendo’s Narratives and Audience Targeting within the Video Game Console Industry
• Redesigning Super Mario : Creating realistic versions of some characters and animations featured in Super Mario franchise
• The Fine Line Between Rehash and Sequel: Design Patterns of the Super Mario Series
• The evolution of the introductory section
• Molecular Mario: The Becoming-Animal of Video Game Compositions
• Impact of an Active Video Game on Healthy Children’s Physical Activity
• It's a-me Density!
• Super Mario 64: an exercise on freedom and style
• AusGamer Review
• Is the Japanese gaming industry in crisis?
• Nintendo defies recession with record profits
• Nintendo Wii: Lessons learned from noncustomers