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 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 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.

Sandbox for current project

Music

The majority of the music in Super Mario Galaxy was composed and arranged by Mahito Yokota, who penned the entirety of the soundtrack for Nintendo EAD Tokyo's first title, Donkey Kong Jungle Beat (2004). Longtime series composer Koji Kondo contributed four tracks himself and mentored Yokota in developing a sound appropriate for the title. It is the first Super Mario game to feature a fully orchestrated soundtrack. The game's orchestra performed at the Sound Inn Studios in Tokyo and consisted of roughly fifty members dubbed the "Mario Galaxy Orchestra". Koji Haishima, who had conducted pieces from Square Enix's Final Fantasy and Capcom's Monster Hunter series, served as conductor.

Yokota was classically trained in orchestral music and championed the use of an orchestra to producer Shigeru Miyamoto during the game's development. He was met with reluctance due to the anticipated expenses and the thought that it would detract from the player's immersion, which is why live orchestras have seen only occasional use in prior Nintendo games. A live orchestra saw minimal usage in promotional pieces for The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (2006), another title Yokota had contributed music to. It was ultimately decided that a live orchestra would be appropriate for Super Mario Galaxy after three months of Yokota struggling to establish a sound appropriate for the game. Based on the music of prior titles in the series, Yokota's first attempts derived from Latin and pop music. Though approved by director Yoshiaki Koizumi, Kondo was displeased. After Yokota presented his work to him, he remarked, "Yokota-san, if somewhere in your mind you have an image that Mario is cute, please get rid of it... Mario is cool." This experience and the strenuous three months of work briefly made Yokota consider leaving the project.

A musical direction was definitively established when Yokota presented Miyamoto with three pieces – one orchestral, one a mix of orchestral and pop, and one entirely pop – and asked which he felt was the best style for Super Mario Galaxy. Miyamoto chose the fully orchestrated one, remarking that it sounded "the most space-like". This piece, titled "Egg Planet", was penned by Koji Kondo. It accompanied the game's debut trailer during E3 2006 and is incorporated as the level theme for Good Egg Galaxy in the final product. Miyamoto's preference for it is what allowed Yokota to find his sound.

Mahito Yokota composed roughly thirty pieces for Super Mario Galaxy and oversaw their recording at Sound Inn. Unlike most orchestras, a metronome was used during recording sessions that was set to a tempo adjacent to Mario's running speed. He did this because he did not want the music to sound like it was coming from a CD player – he wanted to make it sound like an organic element of the game.

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• First Super Mario title to benefit from a full orchestra

• Longtime ambition of Koji Kondo to see proper orchestration integrated into a video game

• Kondo was met with reluctance due to expenses, but it was explored with promotional pieces for The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

• Ultimately given the greenlight in this case in part due to complementation of the game’s premise; orchestral soundtracks have accompanied some of the most recognizable movies in science fiction, such as Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyssey

• Majority of pieces written by Mahito Yokota, who had previously contributed to Twilight Princess and penned the soundtrack for Nintendo EAD Tokyo’s first title, Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat, in its entirety

• Kondo took him under his wing, and directed him in developing a bold, orchestral sound for Super Mario Galaxy

• Quote from Kondo on “if you think Mario is cute, stop that. Mario is cool.”

• Scenario where both Kondo and Yokota presented pieces to Miyamoto for his opinion, validating Kondo

• Formation of Mario Galaxy Orchestra

• Music was written, scored, and recorded in tandem with the production of levels; footage was played for the orchestration to adjust things based off of Mario’s navigation through the stage

• Jungle Beat sound engineer wanted to integrate what he had developed for Jungle Beat, where certain sounds would be emphasized and adjusted based on the player’s input

• When Mario Galaxy gets “quiet”

Staff

• First Super Mario game developed by Nintendo EAD Tokyo, a younger development team that had previously made Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat

• Jungle Beat’s development and the quality of the finished title informed Miyamoto’s decision to allow them to develop a mainline Super Mario title, the first new one since New Super Mario Bros. and the first 3D one since Super Mario Sunshine

• Director is Mahito Yokota, a friend and protégé of Shigeru Miyamoto who has been involved with Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask

• SMG is his debut as solo director, after co-directing Super Mario Sunshine with “what’s their face”

Development

• Of Super Mario 128 and the unreleased sequel to Super Mario 64

• Yokota on addressing issues with spatial navigation in 3D games

• Miyamoto on his dissatisfaction with Super Mario Sunshine’s development and the finished title, and how this informed development choices in SMG

• Review Yokota’s keynote and the Iwata Asks

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

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