This Week In Retro: Super Mario Galaxy

November 1, 2007: Land, World, Sunshine…Galaxy

by Diamond Feit

Space. The Final Frontier. That's not just a clever line from a classic television program, it's the objective truth. Sure, we haven't quite explored every nook and cranny of our planet, but we've taken remarkably high-quality images of nearly its entire surface and we're working on documenting the last hard-to-reach bits under the water. Outer space, though? Even if we spend the next 300 years recording data and perhaps sending vessels outside of this solar system, we'd be fortunate to document even 1%* of the Milky Way galaxy, let alone all of space.

Given that our planet is surrounded by an impossibly vast void that we still know precious little about, creative folks have long used outer space as a backdrop for fiction in order to free themselves from the constraints of terrestrial storytelling. Amongst an infinity of unknown qualities, anything we imagine that might exist in outer space could very well be true, lowering the bar of disbelief from the audience to nearly zero. That's basically the secret behind the success of Doctor Who; a man in a time machine who can essentially go anywhere and do anything and we accept it as plausible because why not? In space, no one can mark your work [citation needed].

Video games have been keen on outer space from the very start, both for that aforementioned narrative freedom and the economical fact that no background and a black background are functionally identical. Yet even overlooking decades of interstellar shooters, going to outer space remains a viable option for just about any video game franchise in need of a new idea. Regardless of where the series began, you can take any popular title and set the next entry in outer space without any need for lengthy explanations. Some games decidedly set on Earth will toss in an extra-terrestrial level just for fun!

15 years ago, after serving as the face of Nintendo for over two decades, Mario took one great leap for plumbers and one giant leap for the Mushroom Kingdom when he starred in his first outer space adventure, Super Mario Galaxy. The 2007 release also served as Mario's very first game on the Nintendo Wii, a hail-mary of a video game console that found tremendous mainstream success upon its launch the previous fall. Super Mario Galaxy would keep that success rolling, reminding millions of fans just why they fell in love with Mario in the first place.

Super Mario Galaxy begins in the familiar setting of the Mushroom Kingdom with Mario making his way to visit Princess Peach in her castle, a now familiar sight thanks to Super Mario 64. Speaking of familiar, King Koopa appears on an airship and starts causing trouble, firing cannons and generally disrupting the peace enjoyed by Toads everywhere. In a twist, however, Koopa declines to kidnap the princess and instead absconds with her entire castle, slicing the ground with laser beams, firing heavy chains into the foundation, and lifting the entire structure into the sky (Her Majesty included). Mario attempts to pursue but Koopa's faithful Magikoopa knocks him off the now-airborne castle doorstep, sending him plummeting to his presumed death.

And yet…Mario lives! He awakens on a King Kai-sized planetoid where he makes a new friend named Rosalina, an ethereal woman who says "I watch over and protect the cosmos." She entrusts Mario with the power to travel through space, which manifests itself by making his white gloves glow. He cannot simply flap his arms and take flight, but by spinning like a top he can launch himself via Sling Stars from planet to planet. Rosalina agrees to aid Mario and implores him to rescue seven Grand Stars from Koopa's clutches, as she fears the serial kidnapper is misusing their power for his own selfish purposes.

Just as Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine did before it, Super Mario Galaxy drops Mario into a hub world which grants him access to a series of smaller areas, unlocking more destinations as he collects stars from each level. Rosalina's floating space hub is called Comet Observatory, offering passage to small clusters of planets called Galaxies. This always irked the science nerd in me, for a galaxy includes hundreds of stars with thousands of orbiting satellites—three planets are hardly a galaxy—but given the title of the game, Nintendo opted to keep things simple.

Even though Galaxy sticks to the same formula as the previous three-dimensional Mario games, it substantially trims the largess of having players revisit levels six different times in order to collect all the stars there. Rather, most planets have three or fewer stars to discover, and some have only one. This does wonders for keeping the game's overall momentum moving forward, giving players more incentive to visit new planets and experience new situations.

Super Mario Galaxy arrived a full five years after Super Mario Sunshine debuted on the Nintendo GameCube, a hiatus second only to the six-year gap between Sunshine and Super Mario 64. Thankfully, this time Nintendo refrained from saddling Mario with any permanent gimmick. His only new technique is the aforementioned spin attack, a short-range maneuver that knocks away enemies, breaks certain structures, and gives him a few extra centimeters of vertical reach if he performs it mid-air.

Galaxy recenters the Super Mario experience on mastering movement as every stage introduces players to impossible physics and uncanny geometry. The series has never pretended to be "realistic" but by traveling to outer space, Galaxy has free license to put Mario in stranger situations than ever before. Gravity exists in a constant state of flux, as many planets require him to run up walls or even upside down. When two planets exist in close proximity, Mario may flip himself from surface to surface with a quick hop.

Galaxy also brings back classic power-ups from the 2D games such as the Fire Flower and invincibility Star. However, it also expands his abilities with the new freezing powers of the Ice Flower, limited flight via the Bee Mushroom, and a ghostly Boo Mushroom which grants him incorporeality. Later in the game he can unlock Red Stars for fully independent flight. However, none of these effects last long, either expiring after a set time period or when the level ends. Even though Galaxy allows Mario free reign to visit stages over and over again, he cannot hoard power-ups from one area and bring them to another.

Though not quite a power up, Super Mario Galaxy also introduces Star Bits, a colorful collectible found in abundance in every stage. Gathering 50 Star Bits earns Mario an extra life, and the game keeps a running tab of Bits found throughout the game. They are no mere tchotchkes, however, as hungry allies will periodically ask Mario to feed them Star Bits in order to unlock new paths or even planets. They also serve as a makeshift projectile; using the Wiimote, players can aim and fire Star Bits at the screen to stun certain enemies or uncover hidden coins.

Star Bits also play a major role in Co-Star mode, a new feature in Super Mario Galaxy that allows a second person to join the game and influence the field of play. The second player doesn't get their own on-screen character, but they do have their own dedicated pointer, enabling them to interact with objects and enemies as an active partner. Player Two can collect and fire Star Bits, freeze certain enemies in place by holding down a button, and shake background elements like patches of grass to loosen any potential secrets. Both players may make Mario jump, and by working in tandem, they can trigger an extra-high jump that he cannot otherwise perform.

As fun as all this must sound, I've got plenty of personal gripes with Super Mario Galaxy. For Mario's third consecutive 3D outing, camera control remains unstable at best, though the game does generally keep the most important information on screen automatically. With the new Star Bits, gaining 1-ups is easier than ever before, but saving the game does not record your stockpile of extra lives. Every time I put the game down to do something else with my life, I had to start each new session frantically building up lives again, especially in the later, more challenging Galaxies.

Yet these are mere nitpicks compared to the truly irritating inclusion of mandatory motion controls. The Wii accomplished a great many things thanks to the intuitiveness of the Wiimote controller. Pointing at a menu on screen just works, and Wii Sports offered a fun grab-bag of mimicry-based activities that had millions playing make-believe baseball, bowling, and golf. I neither need nor want to shake my hands or take careful aim with the controller when playing a demanding action platformer like Super Mario Galaxy, but Nintendo decided to bake such functionality directly into the game's core.

In order to perform Mario's aforementioned spin attack, an absolutely essential technique for both combat and mobility, players must shake the Wiimote. That means players exert an excessive amount of furious, uncertain energy to execute what should require nothing more than the press of a button. Collecting or firing Star Bits also requires Wiimote manipulation, asking players to aim the remote's IR sensor at the screen to control an on-screen cursor—all while moving Mario around with the analog stick in their other hand. I find that incredibly awkward and unnecessarily complex; having a second player flail a Wiimote at the screen is no big deal, but if I'm steering a plumber through an interplanetary adventure, I don't have time to wiggle my mitts.

While I capitulated and never finished Super Mario Galaxy as a result of these annoyances, that didn't stop Nintendo from selling 2.5 million copies of the game to Wii owners in 2007. According to Nintendo's own financial data, Super Mario Galaxy has sold nearly 13 million copies in its lifetime, surpassing Super Mario 64 and more than doubling the numbers for Super Mario Sunshine. Galaxy performed so well, Nintendo actually released a sequel three years later, a most unusual move considering how seldom new 3D Mario games tend to appear. As of this writing, it's been five full years since Super Mario Odyssey debuted on the Switch and we've heard nary a peep out of Kyoto regarding a follow-up.

Of course, I say that even as Nintendo has actively ported a variety of past Mario games, both 2D and 3D, to the Switch to keep fans from getting too antsy. This includes Super Mario Galaxy as one-third of the Super Mario 3D All-Stars collection released in 2020. Since my Wii and its many cables are well out of sight and out of reach in a closet, this Switch version is how I revisited Super Mario Galaxy to prepare for this column, and it impressed me far more today than it did 15 years ago.

Aside from a visual upgrade that makes Mario's outer space shenanigans really pop, the Switch port of Galaxy does what it can to mitigate the frustrations of the original's motion controls. When playing in handheld mode, simply touching the screen replaces the need to aim the cursor. When using the detached Joycons or a Pro Controller, the cursor does indeed require aiming to function, but at least Mario's spin attack has been mapped to a dedicated button command—a huge improvement. Since the Switch can suspend a game and resume the action hours or even days later, there's no need to reacquire loads of extra lives after taking a break, another much-appreciated upgrade.

Softening the stressors that drove me away from Super Mario Galaxy enabled me to appreciate the game's strengths. The stages are broken into small chunks, making each and every course feel like a miniature adventure all its own. The gravity-bending layouts give the game a feel unlike any other 3D Mario game I've ever played, and that includes Super Mario Odyssey which had an entire outer space level of its own.

I can't say I'm a complete Galaxy convert, but at the very least, playing the game on a user-friendly platform proved to be more fun than I expected. And few things are more fun than discovering a game I wrote off years ago might be better than I initially thought, at least until I remember that Nintendo pulled the 3D All Stars collection from store shelves and doesn't sell Galaxy on the Switch eShop in any format. Then I get mad all over again.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts on Twitter and playing games on Twitch.

*One episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation set in the year 2364 claims that Starfleet has "charted just 11 percent of our galaxy" and that's an optimistic fantasy number written in 1987 when the Space Race was still an active, competitive venture