when you think about the fact that the true milestone of the whole gaming history till this day is a '80s classic 2d platformer about an italian plumber with a sexy mustache who somehow lives in a kingdom where almost everyone is an anthropomorphic mushroom (but you also eat mushrooms for power ups... cannibalism ?) except for his brother who in this game is just a color swapped version of mario and i dont even know if it was already established to call him luigi and a princess who later on will be called peach but now is just generically referred to as princess toadstool and if you follow the story (which was probably written in a dirty ass guide book since this game has 30 words in total i think) the kingdom is being invaded by other ??? mushroom ??? like ??? creatures or whatever and an army of walking turtles led by the hot and tempting king koopa aka daddy bowser who in this game is ugly as fuck and gets a third degree burn and kidnaps princess toadstool because sexism and because he wanted to fuck her or something i havent read the guide book anyway i was saying really makes you realise we live in a simulation

italians are so cool ♡ wish they were real

in theory, sunshine and galaxy should probably mean more to me than they do. super mario sunshine was the first 3d mario that i owned, and i very distinctly remember getting my wii a few years later and tearing into super mario galaxy - it was either the holidays of 2007 or 2008, i can't recall. i definitely recall being fascinated by galaxy's breadth and expanse, its scale and the variety i found in its ideas, constantly throwing new planet types and level gimmicks my way. i maintain galaxy does have moments of excellence that i was spot on for remembering as a kid.

it's really a bummer to return to this one with a lot more worldliness and experience in my early 20s, with my new outlook on what motivates and captures me in art and expression, and see galaxy for what it is to me now - not the milestone masterpiece that i thought it was, but a really good game too shy of pushing itself to take that step and become that masterpiece.

another writer here put similar thoughts together with a lot more expanse than i care to, but in summary, i feel that galaxy wants to have those moments in which it borders on subversion of what mario as a series has been, with a grander scale with lightly-dipped themes like the cycle of life and a nice layer of isolation and ambience thrown on top... but then for every moment of that, there's three in which the game loudly babies and parades itself around as another Quirky Nintendo Game with kiddish (not in the sense of childlike wonder, but patronizing babyish tone) aesthetics, music and design. galaxy is simply too afraid to be what it wants you to think it is, and given that this title ushered in the era of the mario mandate, a phenomenon which still exists in which the diverse edges of the mario series would be dusted smooth, corporate and conforming, this doesn't come into retrospection with a lot of surprise. ultimately, it's hard to take galaxy's moments of attempted profundity or emotional outreach all that seriously, because the GAME doesn't take them all that seriously. this is different from a game like earthbound, in which these themes are all tonally consistent and the quirk and charm are part of the grander narrative; it's just a clash of ideas vs. mandates that comes off a lot less inspired than sunshine, a game i'd still say is an overall substantially less completely worthwhile experience.

and that's nothing to speak of some of my gripes with the gameplay; while the planet navigation with its warping gravity is mostly good and certainly impressive, mario himself never feels quite right, with queer changes to his flow of movement inconsistent between various types of traversal. an archaic lives system returns making itself even more fruitless with the game's constant barrage of extra lives - which, now that i'm thinking about this while writing, actually begs an interesting thought about the galaxy experience itself..

q. if the concern is to make super mario galaxy accessible to newcomers, why even bother with the concept of 1-ups at all? why not forgo the system for infinite lives, allowing newcomers to continue until they complete the levels, and for veterans to not fan to belabor meaningless game over screens? to that point, if this was supposed to be a new step for a wider-than-ever target demographic, why all the back-steps and throwbacks to super mario bros. 3? why all the typical "mario series tropes" that steal away from galaxy's original identity? if this is supposed to be a new mario for a new generation of players, why are we stuck on all of these old ideas, even when in execution several of them are WORSE than they have been in previous entries (the camera controls, the star-based mission structure, the coin collection missions, forced control gimmicks in "special levels" which add arbitrary unneeded difficulty)???

a. "because this is nintendo, this is mario, and this is the way we've always done things. tradition overwrites innovation."

"princess maker but for mentally ill e-girls" is a polarizing concept. i was excited by the grim premise, but also concerned that it could come across less as parody and more as a disturbing fetishization of itself in the same kind of way "milk outside a bag..." ended up

i'm happy to say it sticks the landing as the former. while ame is definitely easy to get attached to for her convincing and genuinely excellent writing (hats off to the localization team - you guys fuckin' nailed it) it's still abundantly clear that the relationship between the streamer and her producer is a codependent and mutually destructive one

the self awareness goes two ways, and thankfully no punches are pulled. for every funny reference or silly moment there's an equal measure of rightfully tactless and bluntly disturbing content that's bound to transport you back to your most emotionally abusive relationships. ame's a fucking mess and the game never wants you to forget that, but it also doesn't shy away from pointing out that you're a shitbag too

check it out, but don't take it too seriously. after all, this is an idol management sim where the best outcome results from getting therapy and abandoning streaming altogether

actually - take that last part extremely seriously