Super Mario Galaxy: review

Super Mario Galaxy is a platform video game developed by Nintendo and released in 2007 for the Nintendo Wii.

This project started when Shigeru Miyamoto gave developers the idea to design a remarkably massive Mario game. At the end, Nintendo sought to create something that could appeal to people of all ages.

The game sold over 12 million copies, got praised by critics who deemed this title as one of the best video games of all time, and won the British Academy Games Award for Best Game.

Review

Super Mario 64 was a nice 3D game and while its follow-up Super Mario Sunshine didn’t become a masterpiece that could redefine the platformer genre, these games showed developers from Nintendo were trying to think outside of the box.

Inspiration for Super Mario Galaxy would come from Super Mario 128, a tech demo for the Nintendo GameCube featuring spherical platforms. The developers spent three months building the prototype of this game’s physics with that design.

During the development of the game, designers wanted to make sure all sorts of players could adjust to the Super Mario Galaxy gameplay without much difficulty

Super Mario Galaxy became hit as a result of the care and effort developers put in this title. Its gravity-based space bound gameplay set a new standard for the Mario series.

The ideas found in the Super Mario Galaxy games redefined how fun and imaginative this franchise’s games can become.

This game got praised as masterpiece at the time of its release for good reasons, and it still holds up to this day. Super Mario Galaxy has some of the best platforming and level designs seen in this genre.

Launching Mario to space increased the scope of this title, which makes it feel like this game has higher stakes than other entries in the Mario series.

It all starts at the star festival, where Mario is hanging out with Princess Peach until Bowser shows up in a fleet of airships and steals the entire castle. Mario tries to stop him, but ends up getting thrown into outer space.

Mario will have to fight his way back by helping a cosmic lady known as Rosalina (Rosetta in Japan). He has to collect stars to power her floating observatory.

This opening expands the world very effectively, it’s both cinematic and dramatic, which lets players know this isn’t your typical Mario game.

More often than not, Mario games don’t feature complicated mythology; and they don’t try to tell a complex and unpredictable story. They instead focus on offering a fun and memorable gaming experience.

While Super Mario Galaxy also keeps the focus on the gameplay the opening story sequences do a nice job at making you feel you’re working for something.

In this game, Mario can perform his usual assortment of long jumps, back flips, and wall hops. However, Super Mario Galaxy adds a new spin move useful for attacks or solving puzzles.

Experienced players may realize developers came up with the idea of a spin attack because they understood Mario’s usual tactic (jumping on a foe’s head) would become too tricky to pull off in a completely three-dimensional platform.

If that was the case, they were somewhat right because sometimes it’s hard to tell where you’re going to land, but the spin move helps you out by giving you some extra air time or beating foes when you get surrounded by multiple of them.

It’s such a good addition to Mario’s moveset, that it feels completely natural to the character. It’s one of the ways that developers took the added challenge of designing their levels around planetoid-like spherical platforms and rose to meet it.

Traversing the tiny galaxies from this game feels awesome, and Super Mario Galaxy always returns to the core concept of gravity and the way it affects players’ travel from one area to the next.

Sometimes switching from one planet to another will make the controls to reverse or get kind of wonky, but it’s worth it for all the gravity shenanigans.

Each area is creative, varied, and different, most of them taking advantage of the galactic setting. The missions also have variable lengths, some of them will be quick but hard, and others feel like enhanced versions of trendy Mario levels.

All the levels are weird and unique just like the NPC players meet in their journey like Rosalina and her baby stars.

However, the most frustrating parts of the game are the sections in which Mario has to balance on a ball. The forced motion could be annoying if you’re not used to them. Fortunately, they’re only a small percentage of this game.

The soundtrack was outstanding. Super Mario Galaxy was the first game in this franchise to feature an orchestral score. The composers Mahito Yokota and Koji Kondo gave each galaxy its own piece of music with a truly cosmic feel.

This game earned his reputation by offering a crazy and fun gaming experience. We highly recommend Super Mario Galaxy.