mellorine
On one hand, Virtual Boy Wario Land is the 2D Mario game of my dreams.
On the other hand, Virtual Boy Wario Land is an undercooked, underdeveloped game that doesn't always stick the landing.
The game has some of the best pixel art I've seen in a 2D platformer and one of my favorite Kazumi Totaka soundtracks rendered on a very interesting sound chip.
On the other hand, by virtue of being a Virtual Boy game, the graphics are in monochrome, and the stereoscopic aspect of the game is hard to emulate today, making for some less-than-precise platforming every now and then.
This is probably as close to a Metroidvania as I can realistically see Mario going, and I'd love to see this idea expanded on further with more levels and expanded interconnectivity like found in the traditional 2D Mario games.
But as it is, Virtual Boy Wario Land's level progression is linear, which means that in order to backtrack to collect missed treasures, the player would have to play all the levels in reverse until they reach the level they want to go treasure hunting in... and then play through all the levels all over again.
Virtual Boy Wario Land's powerup tier system is interesting once you can understand it, and the ultimate tier powerup, once obtained, is extremely satisfying to use.
On the other hand, a single hit takes Wario from any form all the way back to his small form, just like in Super Mario Bros., and will force the player to build up his power again from scratch.
The fact that Wario always has a maximum of only two hits especially makes what bosses Virtual Boy Wario Land have extremely unsatisfying, especially the final boss whom I cheesed by taking advantage of the fact that it does an extremely predictable and counterable attack immediately after getting hit.
As it is, I'd still call it better than the other Wario Land games, and better than a decent handful of mainline 2D Mario games. The movement is good, the level designs are varied with lots of unique mechanics, the level themes are surprisingly unique, and I genuinely think this game offers some of the most interesting platforming and exploration of both the Mario and Wario series.
But it's like the Virtual Boy. A very interesting idea that could have had some potential was not given enough time and resources, and ended up being simultaneously too safe and too bleeding-edge.
And we know how everyone remembers the Virtual Boy.
On the other hand, Virtual Boy Wario Land is an undercooked, underdeveloped game that doesn't always stick the landing.
The game has some of the best pixel art I've seen in a 2D platformer and one of my favorite Kazumi Totaka soundtracks rendered on a very interesting sound chip.
On the other hand, by virtue of being a Virtual Boy game, the graphics are in monochrome, and the stereoscopic aspect of the game is hard to emulate today, making for some less-than-precise platforming every now and then.
This is probably as close to a Metroidvania as I can realistically see Mario going, and I'd love to see this idea expanded on further with more levels and expanded interconnectivity like found in the traditional 2D Mario games.
But as it is, Virtual Boy Wario Land's level progression is linear, which means that in order to backtrack to collect missed treasures, the player would have to play all the levels in reverse until they reach the level they want to go treasure hunting in... and then play through all the levels all over again.
Virtual Boy Wario Land's powerup tier system is interesting once you can understand it, and the ultimate tier powerup, once obtained, is extremely satisfying to use.
On the other hand, a single hit takes Wario from any form all the way back to his small form, just like in Super Mario Bros., and will force the player to build up his power again from scratch.
The fact that Wario always has a maximum of only two hits especially makes what bosses Virtual Boy Wario Land have extremely unsatisfying, especially the final boss whom I cheesed by taking advantage of the fact that it does an extremely predictable and counterable attack immediately after getting hit.
As it is, I'd still call it better than the other Wario Land games, and better than a decent handful of mainline 2D Mario games. The movement is good, the level designs are varied with lots of unique mechanics, the level themes are surprisingly unique, and I genuinely think this game offers some of the most interesting platforming and exploration of both the Mario and Wario series.
But it's like the Virtual Boy. A very interesting idea that could have had some potential was not given enough time and resources, and ended up being simultaneously too safe and too bleeding-edge.
And we know how everyone remembers the Virtual Boy.
2019
monster hunter? more like dragon chaser!
...i'm not funny.
...i'm not funny.
Good going, Konami. You've managed to make a game that embodies everything that's wrong about multiplayer games in the middle of a pandemic and lockdown.
I wouldn't expect anything less from your corporation.
I wouldn't expect anything less from your corporation.
The graphics and tech are really impressive for the time, and it was an incredible idea to make an early home console fighting game so focused on reading boss patterns in a way that essentially transforms each fighter into a puzzle, but I find that in execution, it's much too difficult to solve the puzzle in real time in the increasingly narrow timing windows the game expects you to do inputs in.
I think I'm okay not besting Mr. Dream.
I think I'm okay not besting Mr. Dream.
In October, Nintendo opened a limited-time buffet.
"589,00 Norwegian Krone to enter!" they said. "Come now or miss a chance to try some of our best hits!"
Nintendo? They had always been a pretty good chef. I'd always enjoyed their dishes, even if I've had a bone to pick with many of their newer recipes.
"Say what you will about their lows," I thought to myself, "but their highs have always been some of the highest I've ever tried. All right, I'm interested."
I walked in, thanking my boyfriend for being willing to get the reservation as a Christmas-turned-Valentines-turned-Easter-turned-birthday present for me.
"Thanks for waiting. Here's your spaghetti, served with mushrooms and alfredo sauce just like you remember it!" Nintendo said, getting me settled at a table. "And the tropical fruit salad, and one of our most beloved specials: the black forest cake!"
And they served it all up on one big plate.
I froze for a second, and looked up at the corporation serving me my plate.
I asked: "Um, wouldn't it have been better if you worked on how you'd serve this up just a bit? I mean, it's kind of weird to imagine eating spaghetti, salad and cake all out of one plate, and I thought a chef like you would know better."
"Not at all!" Nintendo immediately responded, so quickly they almost snapped. "This is the most direct way of serving you our classic recipes just how you remember it, isn't it? No nonsense!"
I blinked. "Maybe? I mean, it still all tastes good. But shouldn't I get to pick my own plate at a buffet? It's how you used to do at The VC."
"Oh, we decided that we know what's best for you." Nintendo casually said, waving their hand with confident nonchalance. "It's like our Switch Online cookbook, right? You get to try our repertoire exactly the way we decide you should!"
"...sure. but why are you closing down in April?"
"I, well, you see... it's to encourage everyone who wants to come to get their reservations!"
And with that, Nintendo walked away.
I get it, Nintendo. You've had a rough year, and you probably wanted to make sure your fiscal year would end on a profit, even if it involved resorting to pretty desperate measures.
But we've all been hit by recent events. We're all getting quite impatient with a lot of things, and I'd like to think our tolerance for hostile decisions is getting lower by the day.
I liked the spaghetti and the salad, right? And the cake was fine, I guess. I don't necessarily regret that, but if this is the kind of ventures you see fit to do more regularly from here on, I think I'll be happy looking for my noodles elsewhere, even if nobody makes spaghetti like you do.
It's funny how both of my All-Stars review ended up being food-themed.
"589,00 Norwegian Krone to enter!" they said. "Come now or miss a chance to try some of our best hits!"
Nintendo? They had always been a pretty good chef. I'd always enjoyed their dishes, even if I've had a bone to pick with many of their newer recipes.
"Say what you will about their lows," I thought to myself, "but their highs have always been some of the highest I've ever tried. All right, I'm interested."
I walked in, thanking my boyfriend for being willing to get the reservation as a Christmas-turned-Valentines-turned-Easter-turned-birthday present for me.
"Thanks for waiting. Here's your spaghetti, served with mushrooms and alfredo sauce just like you remember it!" Nintendo said, getting me settled at a table. "And the tropical fruit salad, and one of our most beloved specials: the black forest cake!"
And they served it all up on one big plate.
I froze for a second, and looked up at the corporation serving me my plate.
I asked: "Um, wouldn't it have been better if you worked on how you'd serve this up just a bit? I mean, it's kind of weird to imagine eating spaghetti, salad and cake all out of one plate, and I thought a chef like you would know better."
"Not at all!" Nintendo immediately responded, so quickly they almost snapped. "This is the most direct way of serving you our classic recipes just how you remember it, isn't it? No nonsense!"
I blinked. "Maybe? I mean, it still all tastes good. But shouldn't I get to pick my own plate at a buffet? It's how you used to do at The VC."
"Oh, we decided that we know what's best for you." Nintendo casually said, waving their hand with confident nonchalance. "It's like our Switch Online cookbook, right? You get to try our repertoire exactly the way we decide you should!"
"...sure. but why are you closing down in April?"
"I, well, you see... it's to encourage everyone who wants to come to get their reservations!"
And with that, Nintendo walked away.
I get it, Nintendo. You've had a rough year, and you probably wanted to make sure your fiscal year would end on a profit, even if it involved resorting to pretty desperate measures.
But we've all been hit by recent events. We're all getting quite impatient with a lot of things, and I'd like to think our tolerance for hostile decisions is getting lower by the day.
I liked the spaghetti and the salad, right? And the cake was fine, I guess. I don't necessarily regret that, but if this is the kind of ventures you see fit to do more regularly from here on, I think I'll be happy looking for my noodles elsewhere, even if nobody makes spaghetti like you do.
It's funny how both of my All-Stars review ended up being food-themed.
2007
Super Mario Galaxy is the most beautiful game that has ever disappointed me.
I should make it clear that I didn't always feel this way about this game. I'd never owned the game until the unfortunate 3D All-Stars collection, but it was always around me with an air of wonder to it: some of my first memories on the Internet include watching pre-release footage of this game and getting absolutely stunned that video games had the capacity to be so breathtaking; the few times I was able to play it at friends' houses was nothing short of magical, and as an early teenager who unfortunately refused to listen to anything but video game music, the Super Mario Galaxy soundtrack was a mainstay on my music library.
This isn't my first time playing this game. I emulated it back in 2015 alongside Super Mario Sunshine and enjoyed my experience enough, but the more I've thought about it ever since, especially with the release of Super Mario Odyssey, I've found my feelings on it shifting around in somewhat cynical ways.
But that's enough trying to force parallels out with my Super Mario Odyssey review. It's true that I feel that Odyssey and Galaxy are mirror images of each other, most of their strengths being the other's shortcomings and vice versa, but Super Mario Galaxy deserves a slightly different approach. It may be my least favorite 3D Mario game in the series; it may be close to being farthest removed from the formula that Super Mario 64, the video game of all time, one that's time and time again defined my entire relationship with video games, had established... but that could have been its strength.
So let's not start with the controls. Let's not start with the game progression or pacing. Instead, let's talk about the single galaxy in the game that I understand the least:
And that's Buoy Base Galaxy. It's a pretty unique galaxy, with a fully orchestrated theme unique to it, complete with an underwater variant that brings out a pipe organ, with a really intense atmosphere to it that's only rivalled by a few other galaxies in the game. It also only has two Power Stars to it, oddly enough.
Have you ever stopped to think about why it exists before? Have you ever thought about why this galaxy only houses two Stars?
I've come up with two different interpretations of this Galaxy, if you'd care to let me speculate. The first is that as an old, unused fortress, it makes sense that there's not a lot of missions left to do in this place. Its stories have already been taken place long ago, its battles already fought, and Mario is visiting a relic of the past, a constant reminder of the battles that continue to go on in the world, and the vigilance he ought to maintain in a time of current conflict, just as Buoy Base continues to be maintained in the slight chance that it may be important in battle again one day.
The other interpretation is that the developers intended it to be a full-sized galaxy with six full stars (which the Super Mario Wiki also believes), but backed out, maybe because its tone was a little too intense, to focus more on more conventionally themed galaxies like the Sea Slide, Dusty Dune and Gold Leaf Galaxies.
I assume my intent in bringing this up should be pretty apparent: Buoy Base is a perfect metaphor for the dichotomy I feel Super Mario Galaxy suffers from, its Two Big Ideas that are completely at odds with each other in the specific way Galaxy goes about executing them.
So let's get a bit more direct as we explore the First Big Idea. In its best moments, Super Mario Galaxy has some of the most interesting concepts, tones and themes ever explored in the Super Mario games.
If you really like thinking about this game, you may have watched a video titled The Quiet Sadness of Super Mario Galaxy: it's a fantastic, sentimental essay that gushes about one of (in my opinion) the best parts of Super Mario Galaxy, and watching it will undoubtedly help in understanding what I mean here, but I'll provide an interpretation of my own, using a quote from the long-time Super Mario composer, Koji Kondo:
"I try to evoke something in the silence, in the absence of sound. Rest notes are very important to me, and the connecting space between sounds." - 2001 interview from Game Maestro, translated by shmuplations
Let's think back to the opening of Super Mario Galaxy. The assault on Peach's Castle is easily the most exciting, cinematic intro to any Mario game ever, and the stakes have never been higher, with the castle uplifted far out of reach, and Mario flung out into the reaches of space - all hope seems lost.
It's at this moment Super Mario Galaxy takes a moment to breathe, to take a step back and zoom out from the Gateway into showing a vast space encircling it. Constellations and stars visible in the distance but very much currently out of Mario's reach represent a sort of Mu (無) that I think is best represented by a quote from One with Nothing:
"When nothing remains, everything is equally possible."
This sense of space between sounds, space between sensations is something that pops up every now and again in Super Mario Galaxy. Space Junk Galaxy, better known as Stardust Road in Japan, is a standout example of this, serving as a bit of a comma in the game's pacing and somehow making the idea of random objects strung together in space into something beautiful, almost introspective. Rosalina's Library can serve this purpose as well, but there's more thematic cohesion to it than just this aspect that I'd like to bring up later.
This sense of space is perhaps more important to Super Mario Galaxy than it might be for any other Mario game if only because of the intensity that's spaced apart by these moments of quietness. Super Mario Galaxy is quite maximalist in its louder moments, with an odd emphasis of war and battle; warships are common imagery within this game more than any other in the series, boss battles are found in almost every major galaxy and many minor galaxies, Bowser and Bowser Jr are fought six times compared to 64's three and Odyssey's two, and the Battlerock and Dreadnought Galaxies serve as mascots of this aspect of the game, representing the almost sci-fi militaristic aesthetic that the game adopts every now and then. The contrast makes for a very interesting tonal balance that I wish was explored in more depth, and more consistently.
I've ended up doing a lot more reading for the purpose of analyzing Super Mario Galaxy's themes than I'd expected to, going into this review. A specific Japanese idea that I've found that I feel Galaxy uniquely tackles unlike the other games in the series is mono no aware: (物の哀れ) treasuring the ephemeral, seeing beauty in the transience of everything, accepting change and letting go, but simultaneously holding those memories of the past close to your heart.
Rosalina exemplifies this idea through and through, in both her backstory, and in the ending. The storybook is one of a small (but growing) list of video game moments I've cried to, and I can't really do it justice except by saying it represents these ideas very well.
The ending literally sees the end of the universe as we had known it for the entire duration of the game, and lets it go, embracing elements of it in every new galaxy created from the ashes of the old one, accepting that this is the true purpose of stars and lumas, to constantly undergo growth, change, evolution and rebirth.
There's a lot of really fascinating ideas reflected in Super Mario Galaxy that I admire very much, themes that mean so much to me represented in such an approachable fashion. With all this said, you'd think I would adore Galaxy just as much as the other 3D Mario games, elevated just as high as Super Mario 64 and Sunshine, wouldn't you?
But transitioning into the Second Big Idea, Super Mario Galaxy came at a slightly tumultuous time in Nintendo and Mario history, after Super Mario Sunshine failed to live up to expectations, and the GameCube itself landed in third place behind the PlayStation 2 and even the Xbox. Nintendo needed the Wii's new Mario to be a solid, indisputable win, one that didn't suffer from the excess complexity that the late Satoru Iwata speculated was a contributor to Sunshine's failings. Super Mario Galaxy, a game that so far aimed to subvert Super Mario, now also needed to define it, be completely identifiable as what people envisioned a Super Mario game to be while also presenting something beyond what Super Mario had done. So what did they do?
They compromised.
I'd started talking about Super Mario Galaxy's themes by highlighting a couple of fantastic galaxies that emphasize the game's biggest strengths, so I'll start by talking about a galaxy. One that's my absolute least favorite course in the entire franchise that is Super Mario, in fact. I look at it, and I question why on earth Nintendo saw fit to include this in the same game as the Battlerock.
And that's Toy Time Galaxy.
Toy Time Galaxy feels like a personal insult, the representation of the tragic compromise found in Super Mario Galaxy's vision. The part that stings more than any other is its music: an ironic echo of the Super Mario Bros. Ground Theme plays, stripped of all its stylistic context, its original latin, reggae and jazz fusion-inspired roots, recontextualized into something offensively juvenile as Mario jumps across a pixellated version of himself collecting Silver Stars, as though the developers are saying "Yeah! Isn't this the Mario you remember from the good old days?"
And, well, no. It's not. Super Mario Galaxy drenches itself in Mario iconography (particularly that from Super Mario Bros. 3) to keep itself grounded - digging up the airships last seen in Super Mario World complete with a fantastic orchestration of their Super Mario Bros. 3 music, resuscitating the same game's athletic theme, bringing Fire Mario into 3D for the first time, and even constructing parallels between it and Super Mario 64's Bowser courses by using the Koopa's Road music once again - all for the sake of doing something the series had rarely done quite so blatantly up to that point: appealing to nostalgia.
I'm okay with nostalgia, don't get me wrong. After all, I am a Kirby fan, and that series likes to bring up connections between and across each and every game almost as much as Pokémon does. But I find it so dryly amusing that this careless self-referential attitude makes for the most ironic imagery in the franchise, such as a moment in Good Egg Galaxy's Battle Fleet where some of the most raw depictions of an open battlefield that Super Mario would allow is juxtaposed by the bolted block platforms from Super Mario Bros. 3 thrown around haphazardly all around the field.
It's moments like that that make it clear that Super Mario Galaxy felt obligated to be a video game, and especially a Super Mario game. Cliched locations like Beach Bowl, Melty Molten and Ghostly Galaxies feel like Super Mario Galaxy checking off a list of things that it contractually needs; its star-based structure seems taken from Super Mario 64 and Sunshine without really understanding what they did for the games' design, and musical moments like Bunny Chasing and Ball Rolling just feel embarrassing to be in the same game as the rest of Super Mario Galaxy's soundtrack, which often borrows harmonies and musical language from the deeply sentimental French world of musical impressionism like no other Super Mario game had really done before or since.
Maybe I'd be okay with this if it at least was a good game, one just as solid as Sunshine and 64 in its design when stripped of its thematic elements. But I'm sorry, I just don't think it is.
It's finally time. Let's start with the controls. Where Super Mario Odyssey gave Mario an extremely streamlined moveset that's almost too smooth and optimized to trivialize the platforming it throws at the player, Super Mario Galaxy's controls are by contrast a bit too fixed, with momentum all but missing, the spin serving as a one-dimensional extension to Mario's jump and most moves having zero synergy with each other except for the wall jump and spin.
It's streamlined, but in an opposite direction; there's very little depth to Super Mario Galaxy's movement, and the level design ends up being built around it to a fault. I know this is from the sequel, but think about the Throwback Galaxy for a second, and how much less interesting of an experience it is now that Mario can no longer dive all around and play around with the momentum that the slopes give him compared to Super Mario 64.
If Super Mario Odyssey makes Mario feel like a fat guy with a hat, Super Mario Galaxy just has that fat guy, and... I'm sorry, I'm just not a fan of it.
The controls were probably streamlined for the sake of the spherical, gravity-based platforming, and I feel like that's a case of compromising your game to force it around an ill-fated gimmick. Although I don't think the Course Clear-style of level design was inherently bad, the planetoid aspect messes with my sense of depth and spatial awareness far more than any other Mario game does, and the camera angles that are even more limited than Super Mario 64 (how do people defend this, again?) absolutely do not help in that regard.
Certain stars can be done in courses out of order again, but at a deadly price: only three out of six stars in each major galaxy is a properly story mission akin to Super Mario Sunshine's eight episodes per course, and the rest involve a single hidden star each that are sometimes found through clever exploration, but far too often handled through a painfully conspicuously-placed Luma that demands your Star Bits, and two Comet-based stars that you can't really predict when you'll have access to.
This throws any capacity for detailed, long-form environmental storytelling that Super Mario Sunshine had right out of the window, and the missions are instead distinguished specifically by mechanical changes and sometimes just sending you to different planetoids altogether and removing the last bit of possibility Super Mario Galaxy had of showing how its worlds would change with time.
And honestly, much of the comet stars are flat-out padding. I concede that some of the missions, mainly the Cosmic Mario races, can be interesting, but redoing certain missions again but faster? Collecting a hundred Purple Coins all thrown about an unnecessarily large map? No damage runs of certain sections of levels without any checkpoints whatsoever? Count me out.
People complain that Sunshine is full of padding and red coins, but honestly - Galaxy is no better in this regard whatsoever, and I'm sick of putting up with this hypocrisy, the blindness people seem to have about this aspect of Galaxy just because... I don't even know, honestly.
I could go on. I think 100% completing Super Mario Galaxy is a tedious experience, especially doing it a second time with Luigi and fighting the final Bowser fight a total of four times; the Grande Finale Galaxy is another example of Super Mario Galaxy choosing function over form by ignoring the fact that there's no way it could canonically take place, since the Toad Brigade being promoted to Royal Guards would have no reason to happen in the New Galaxy welcomed at the end of Super Mario Galaxy; I hate Star Bits, having to make sure I have enough to give Lumas both within galaxies and in the Comet Observatory, especially using the Switch Lite's touch controls; Super Mario Galaxy has an extremely bizarre conflict on how much it wants to be function-over-form, and vice versa... but I've taken up so much of your time already, and I've taken up so much of my own time in writing and researching for this, (preparing for this review involved an entire re-read of The Little Prince for example, and I never actually ended up directly referencing any of it in this review... though there are some slight aesthetic and tonal parallels) and I don't wish to keep the both of us here much longer.
After all, we need to move on. Isn't that something this game was talking about?
I want to make it clear that I don't think Super Mario Galaxy is by any means a bad game. It's far more interesting than many other platformers I've seen and played; it's not even as confused in its gameplay progression as Super Mario Odyssey was.
Super Mario Galaxy has provided me with some of my favorite ideas in video games, and has influenced me significantly as a musician and as a creative in general. Its best musical moments are some of my favorites from the series, even if the Bunny Chasing theme will make me cringe any day of the week.
Super Mario Galaxy's thematic vision is easily the best in the Super Mario series, but it's undermined by the dichotomy it created for itself, and ends up with a very diluted focus that I wish had really gone so much farther than it had the freedom to go. This might be the only Super Mario game whose biggest problem I would consider is that it had to be a Mario game. I want it to go harder on the themes it introduced, series image be damned.
But this might also be the first game where Super Mario found itself unconfident, and glossed over it with a shiny, cinematic aesthetic while it figured out where the series was to go next, just like Super Mario Odyssey would find itself doing exactly ten years after it.
It's... it's just a little misdirected. It's stuck between subverting Super Mario, and defining Super Mario, and didn't quite know how to commit, in an almost mirror image of Super Mario Odyssey's fatal flaw. It doesn't land quite as well as any of the games that committed, for better or for worse (my list would include 64, Sunshine, Galaxy 2, 3D Land and 3D World), but I want to see Nintendo revisit these ideas. Odyssey tried in some ways and played it safe in others, but maybe we might be getting close. I'll maintain hope for the future.
But now, it's truly time to move on.
Farewell, Super Mario Galaxy.
I should make it clear that I didn't always feel this way about this game. I'd never owned the game until the unfortunate 3D All-Stars collection, but it was always around me with an air of wonder to it: some of my first memories on the Internet include watching pre-release footage of this game and getting absolutely stunned that video games had the capacity to be so breathtaking; the few times I was able to play it at friends' houses was nothing short of magical, and as an early teenager who unfortunately refused to listen to anything but video game music, the Super Mario Galaxy soundtrack was a mainstay on my music library.
This isn't my first time playing this game. I emulated it back in 2015 alongside Super Mario Sunshine and enjoyed my experience enough, but the more I've thought about it ever since, especially with the release of Super Mario Odyssey, I've found my feelings on it shifting around in somewhat cynical ways.
But that's enough trying to force parallels out with my Super Mario Odyssey review. It's true that I feel that Odyssey and Galaxy are mirror images of each other, most of their strengths being the other's shortcomings and vice versa, but Super Mario Galaxy deserves a slightly different approach. It may be my least favorite 3D Mario game in the series; it may be close to being farthest removed from the formula that Super Mario 64, the video game of all time, one that's time and time again defined my entire relationship with video games, had established... but that could have been its strength.
So let's not start with the controls. Let's not start with the game progression or pacing. Instead, let's talk about the single galaxy in the game that I understand the least:
And that's Buoy Base Galaxy. It's a pretty unique galaxy, with a fully orchestrated theme unique to it, complete with an underwater variant that brings out a pipe organ, with a really intense atmosphere to it that's only rivalled by a few other galaxies in the game. It also only has two Power Stars to it, oddly enough.
Have you ever stopped to think about why it exists before? Have you ever thought about why this galaxy only houses two Stars?
I've come up with two different interpretations of this Galaxy, if you'd care to let me speculate. The first is that as an old, unused fortress, it makes sense that there's not a lot of missions left to do in this place. Its stories have already been taken place long ago, its battles already fought, and Mario is visiting a relic of the past, a constant reminder of the battles that continue to go on in the world, and the vigilance he ought to maintain in a time of current conflict, just as Buoy Base continues to be maintained in the slight chance that it may be important in battle again one day.
The other interpretation is that the developers intended it to be a full-sized galaxy with six full stars (which the Super Mario Wiki also believes), but backed out, maybe because its tone was a little too intense, to focus more on more conventionally themed galaxies like the Sea Slide, Dusty Dune and Gold Leaf Galaxies.
I assume my intent in bringing this up should be pretty apparent: Buoy Base is a perfect metaphor for the dichotomy I feel Super Mario Galaxy suffers from, its Two Big Ideas that are completely at odds with each other in the specific way Galaxy goes about executing them.
So let's get a bit more direct as we explore the First Big Idea. In its best moments, Super Mario Galaxy has some of the most interesting concepts, tones and themes ever explored in the Super Mario games.
If you really like thinking about this game, you may have watched a video titled The Quiet Sadness of Super Mario Galaxy: it's a fantastic, sentimental essay that gushes about one of (in my opinion) the best parts of Super Mario Galaxy, and watching it will undoubtedly help in understanding what I mean here, but I'll provide an interpretation of my own, using a quote from the long-time Super Mario composer, Koji Kondo:
"I try to evoke something in the silence, in the absence of sound. Rest notes are very important to me, and the connecting space between sounds." - 2001 interview from Game Maestro, translated by shmuplations
Let's think back to the opening of Super Mario Galaxy. The assault on Peach's Castle is easily the most exciting, cinematic intro to any Mario game ever, and the stakes have never been higher, with the castle uplifted far out of reach, and Mario flung out into the reaches of space - all hope seems lost.
It's at this moment Super Mario Galaxy takes a moment to breathe, to take a step back and zoom out from the Gateway into showing a vast space encircling it. Constellations and stars visible in the distance but very much currently out of Mario's reach represent a sort of Mu (無) that I think is best represented by a quote from One with Nothing:
"When nothing remains, everything is equally possible."
This sense of space between sounds, space between sensations is something that pops up every now and again in Super Mario Galaxy. Space Junk Galaxy, better known as Stardust Road in Japan, is a standout example of this, serving as a bit of a comma in the game's pacing and somehow making the idea of random objects strung together in space into something beautiful, almost introspective. Rosalina's Library can serve this purpose as well, but there's more thematic cohesion to it than just this aspect that I'd like to bring up later.
This sense of space is perhaps more important to Super Mario Galaxy than it might be for any other Mario game if only because of the intensity that's spaced apart by these moments of quietness. Super Mario Galaxy is quite maximalist in its louder moments, with an odd emphasis of war and battle; warships are common imagery within this game more than any other in the series, boss battles are found in almost every major galaxy and many minor galaxies, Bowser and Bowser Jr are fought six times compared to 64's three and Odyssey's two, and the Battlerock and Dreadnought Galaxies serve as mascots of this aspect of the game, representing the almost sci-fi militaristic aesthetic that the game adopts every now and then. The contrast makes for a very interesting tonal balance that I wish was explored in more depth, and more consistently.
I've ended up doing a lot more reading for the purpose of analyzing Super Mario Galaxy's themes than I'd expected to, going into this review. A specific Japanese idea that I've found that I feel Galaxy uniquely tackles unlike the other games in the series is mono no aware: (物の哀れ) treasuring the ephemeral, seeing beauty in the transience of everything, accepting change and letting go, but simultaneously holding those memories of the past close to your heart.
Rosalina exemplifies this idea through and through, in both her backstory, and in the ending. The storybook is one of a small (but growing) list of video game moments I've cried to, and I can't really do it justice except by saying it represents these ideas very well.
The ending literally sees the end of the universe as we had known it for the entire duration of the game, and lets it go, embracing elements of it in every new galaxy created from the ashes of the old one, accepting that this is the true purpose of stars and lumas, to constantly undergo growth, change, evolution and rebirth.
There's a lot of really fascinating ideas reflected in Super Mario Galaxy that I admire very much, themes that mean so much to me represented in such an approachable fashion. With all this said, you'd think I would adore Galaxy just as much as the other 3D Mario games, elevated just as high as Super Mario 64 and Sunshine, wouldn't you?
But transitioning into the Second Big Idea, Super Mario Galaxy came at a slightly tumultuous time in Nintendo and Mario history, after Super Mario Sunshine failed to live up to expectations, and the GameCube itself landed in third place behind the PlayStation 2 and even the Xbox. Nintendo needed the Wii's new Mario to be a solid, indisputable win, one that didn't suffer from the excess complexity that the late Satoru Iwata speculated was a contributor to Sunshine's failings. Super Mario Galaxy, a game that so far aimed to subvert Super Mario, now also needed to define it, be completely identifiable as what people envisioned a Super Mario game to be while also presenting something beyond what Super Mario had done. So what did they do?
They compromised.
I'd started talking about Super Mario Galaxy's themes by highlighting a couple of fantastic galaxies that emphasize the game's biggest strengths, so I'll start by talking about a galaxy. One that's my absolute least favorite course in the entire franchise that is Super Mario, in fact. I look at it, and I question why on earth Nintendo saw fit to include this in the same game as the Battlerock.
And that's Toy Time Galaxy.
Toy Time Galaxy feels like a personal insult, the representation of the tragic compromise found in Super Mario Galaxy's vision. The part that stings more than any other is its music: an ironic echo of the Super Mario Bros. Ground Theme plays, stripped of all its stylistic context, its original latin, reggae and jazz fusion-inspired roots, recontextualized into something offensively juvenile as Mario jumps across a pixellated version of himself collecting Silver Stars, as though the developers are saying "Yeah! Isn't this the Mario you remember from the good old days?"
And, well, no. It's not. Super Mario Galaxy drenches itself in Mario iconography (particularly that from Super Mario Bros. 3) to keep itself grounded - digging up the airships last seen in Super Mario World complete with a fantastic orchestration of their Super Mario Bros. 3 music, resuscitating the same game's athletic theme, bringing Fire Mario into 3D for the first time, and even constructing parallels between it and Super Mario 64's Bowser courses by using the Koopa's Road music once again - all for the sake of doing something the series had rarely done quite so blatantly up to that point: appealing to nostalgia.
I'm okay with nostalgia, don't get me wrong. After all, I am a Kirby fan, and that series likes to bring up connections between and across each and every game almost as much as Pokémon does. But I find it so dryly amusing that this careless self-referential attitude makes for the most ironic imagery in the franchise, such as a moment in Good Egg Galaxy's Battle Fleet where some of the most raw depictions of an open battlefield that Super Mario would allow is juxtaposed by the bolted block platforms from Super Mario Bros. 3 thrown around haphazardly all around the field.
It's moments like that that make it clear that Super Mario Galaxy felt obligated to be a video game, and especially a Super Mario game. Cliched locations like Beach Bowl, Melty Molten and Ghostly Galaxies feel like Super Mario Galaxy checking off a list of things that it contractually needs; its star-based structure seems taken from Super Mario 64 and Sunshine without really understanding what they did for the games' design, and musical moments like Bunny Chasing and Ball Rolling just feel embarrassing to be in the same game as the rest of Super Mario Galaxy's soundtrack, which often borrows harmonies and musical language from the deeply sentimental French world of musical impressionism like no other Super Mario game had really done before or since.
Maybe I'd be okay with this if it at least was a good game, one just as solid as Sunshine and 64 in its design when stripped of its thematic elements. But I'm sorry, I just don't think it is.
It's finally time. Let's start with the controls. Where Super Mario Odyssey gave Mario an extremely streamlined moveset that's almost too smooth and optimized to trivialize the platforming it throws at the player, Super Mario Galaxy's controls are by contrast a bit too fixed, with momentum all but missing, the spin serving as a one-dimensional extension to Mario's jump and most moves having zero synergy with each other except for the wall jump and spin.
It's streamlined, but in an opposite direction; there's very little depth to Super Mario Galaxy's movement, and the level design ends up being built around it to a fault. I know this is from the sequel, but think about the Throwback Galaxy for a second, and how much less interesting of an experience it is now that Mario can no longer dive all around and play around with the momentum that the slopes give him compared to Super Mario 64.
If Super Mario Odyssey makes Mario feel like a fat guy with a hat, Super Mario Galaxy just has that fat guy, and... I'm sorry, I'm just not a fan of it.
The controls were probably streamlined for the sake of the spherical, gravity-based platforming, and I feel like that's a case of compromising your game to force it around an ill-fated gimmick. Although I don't think the Course Clear-style of level design was inherently bad, the planetoid aspect messes with my sense of depth and spatial awareness far more than any other Mario game does, and the camera angles that are even more limited than Super Mario 64 (how do people defend this, again?) absolutely do not help in that regard.
Certain stars can be done in courses out of order again, but at a deadly price: only three out of six stars in each major galaxy is a properly story mission akin to Super Mario Sunshine's eight episodes per course, and the rest involve a single hidden star each that are sometimes found through clever exploration, but far too often handled through a painfully conspicuously-placed Luma that demands your Star Bits, and two Comet-based stars that you can't really predict when you'll have access to.
This throws any capacity for detailed, long-form environmental storytelling that Super Mario Sunshine had right out of the window, and the missions are instead distinguished specifically by mechanical changes and sometimes just sending you to different planetoids altogether and removing the last bit of possibility Super Mario Galaxy had of showing how its worlds would change with time.
And honestly, much of the comet stars are flat-out padding. I concede that some of the missions, mainly the Cosmic Mario races, can be interesting, but redoing certain missions again but faster? Collecting a hundred Purple Coins all thrown about an unnecessarily large map? No damage runs of certain sections of levels without any checkpoints whatsoever? Count me out.
People complain that Sunshine is full of padding and red coins, but honestly - Galaxy is no better in this regard whatsoever, and I'm sick of putting up with this hypocrisy, the blindness people seem to have about this aspect of Galaxy just because... I don't even know, honestly.
I could go on. I think 100% completing Super Mario Galaxy is a tedious experience, especially doing it a second time with Luigi and fighting the final Bowser fight a total of four times; the Grande Finale Galaxy is another example of Super Mario Galaxy choosing function over form by ignoring the fact that there's no way it could canonically take place, since the Toad Brigade being promoted to Royal Guards would have no reason to happen in the New Galaxy welcomed at the end of Super Mario Galaxy; I hate Star Bits, having to make sure I have enough to give Lumas both within galaxies and in the Comet Observatory, especially using the Switch Lite's touch controls; Super Mario Galaxy has an extremely bizarre conflict on how much it wants to be function-over-form, and vice versa... but I've taken up so much of your time already, and I've taken up so much of my own time in writing and researching for this, (preparing for this review involved an entire re-read of The Little Prince for example, and I never actually ended up directly referencing any of it in this review... though there are some slight aesthetic and tonal parallels) and I don't wish to keep the both of us here much longer.
After all, we need to move on. Isn't that something this game was talking about?
I want to make it clear that I don't think Super Mario Galaxy is by any means a bad game. It's far more interesting than many other platformers I've seen and played; it's not even as confused in its gameplay progression as Super Mario Odyssey was.
Super Mario Galaxy has provided me with some of my favorite ideas in video games, and has influenced me significantly as a musician and as a creative in general. Its best musical moments are some of my favorites from the series, even if the Bunny Chasing theme will make me cringe any day of the week.
Super Mario Galaxy's thematic vision is easily the best in the Super Mario series, but it's undermined by the dichotomy it created for itself, and ends up with a very diluted focus that I wish had really gone so much farther than it had the freedom to go. This might be the only Super Mario game whose biggest problem I would consider is that it had to be a Mario game. I want it to go harder on the themes it introduced, series image be damned.
But this might also be the first game where Super Mario found itself unconfident, and glossed over it with a shiny, cinematic aesthetic while it figured out where the series was to go next, just like Super Mario Odyssey would find itself doing exactly ten years after it.
It's... it's just a little misdirected. It's stuck between subverting Super Mario, and defining Super Mario, and didn't quite know how to commit, in an almost mirror image of Super Mario Odyssey's fatal flaw. It doesn't land quite as well as any of the games that committed, for better or for worse (my list would include 64, Sunshine, Galaxy 2, 3D Land and 3D World), but I want to see Nintendo revisit these ideas. Odyssey tried in some ways and played it safe in others, but maybe we might be getting close. I'll maintain hope for the future.
But now, it's truly time to move on.
Farewell, Super Mario Galaxy.
1995
Have you ever played a game where you wished there were less content?
Mario's Picross is that. I enjoyed my time a lot, and Picross still gets me hooked, but I'm starting to feel like it's less of genuine enjoyment and more of an obsession of seeing boxes filled and checked.
I also don't actually enjoy the time limit system, and I felt like some of the puzzles near the end were a bit too dependent on either educated guessing or using the hint system which I didn't use.
Of course, this was a full price game intended to be completed over a longer period of time, I'm sure, and grinding through it over roughly a week probably didn't help...
Mario's Picross is that. I enjoyed my time a lot, and Picross still gets me hooked, but I'm starting to feel like it's less of genuine enjoyment and more of an obsession of seeing boxes filled and checked.
I also don't actually enjoy the time limit system, and I felt like some of the puzzles near the end were a bit too dependent on either educated guessing or using the hint system which I didn't use.
Of course, this was a full price game intended to be completed over a longer period of time, I'm sure, and grinding through it over roughly a week probably didn't help...
This review contains spoilers
Wow. Where do I even begin with this game?
I'll just put a disclaimer: my experience with video games generally center around platformers, arcade and casual games - stuff that don't really focus on narrative too much for the sake of letting the player's experience be their own story to some extent.
Final Fantasy X was something of a culture shock, in both how different it was from the Final Fantasy games I'd played before it (I, IV, Chrono Trigger) and how different it was from video games as I'm comfortable with the medium as a whole.
This is perhaps the first game I've ever played that actually felt like a genuine story of characters that's not compromised one way or another to its gameplay... generally for the better.
Seeing the main cast grow and mature past both their former selves, as well as their once-assumed destinies was intense, as was comparing them to the rest of Spira, against its antagonists and the themes of corruption, ignorance, false hope and tradition that arise from that.
Seymour in particular was interesting from that cast of antagonists in how close he was to being sympathizable, how close he was to recognizing the things that Yuna did... yet without the support she had, without love for others, he was blinded by ambition, wrongly assuming the only way to love was to kill.
I love to hate him. The contrast between him and Yuna acts as a reminder to myself in some ways.
Breaking from destiny, choosing one's own path... The Sphere Grid does a good job in translating that thematic idea into gameplay, and I really like it and how much strategy you can put into it and the weapon customization in the endgame, but I do think I'd like to see that implemented in a game less narratively driven, a bit more roguelike, one with... decidedly less cutscenes. I very much enjoyed learning the bosses' strategies and eventually outsmarting them through exploiting all kinds of mechanics, but certain pre-boss cutscenes lose far too much of their power when you watch them for the third time after getting defeated against the boss right near the end.
Still, I think I think the game works very well in the sum of its parts. By the time I was done, I'd grown to love the Al Bhed and what they stood for, I was happy with where my party had gone, both as fighters and as people, and I hope Spira will move on to be a better place in X-2 now that Yevon and its religion have been proven to be a sham; that they will learn to be less judgmental of one another and truly strive for peace.
Final Fantasy X was amazing, and it was a one-of-a-kind experience in my relationship with video games so far. I wish I could embrace everything about it, even down to its more frustrating parts in game design, but it's hard for me to say it's one of the best games I've played alongside my all-time favorites, if only because this isn't the kind of experience I'm used to from video games, and some of that inexperience has let me down in my own personal time with the game.
One day I'll have another sixty hours to invest in this game with better hindsight. I think I'd be ready to absolutely love it then.
I'll just put a disclaimer: my experience with video games generally center around platformers, arcade and casual games - stuff that don't really focus on narrative too much for the sake of letting the player's experience be their own story to some extent.
Final Fantasy X was something of a culture shock, in both how different it was from the Final Fantasy games I'd played before it (I, IV, Chrono Trigger) and how different it was from video games as I'm comfortable with the medium as a whole.
This is perhaps the first game I've ever played that actually felt like a genuine story of characters that's not compromised one way or another to its gameplay... generally for the better.
Seeing the main cast grow and mature past both their former selves, as well as their once-assumed destinies was intense, as was comparing them to the rest of Spira, against its antagonists and the themes of corruption, ignorance, false hope and tradition that arise from that.
Seymour in particular was interesting from that cast of antagonists in how close he was to being sympathizable, how close he was to recognizing the things that Yuna did... yet without the support she had, without love for others, he was blinded by ambition, wrongly assuming the only way to love was to kill.
I love to hate him. The contrast between him and Yuna acts as a reminder to myself in some ways.
Breaking from destiny, choosing one's own path... The Sphere Grid does a good job in translating that thematic idea into gameplay, and I really like it and how much strategy you can put into it and the weapon customization in the endgame, but I do think I'd like to see that implemented in a game less narratively driven, a bit more roguelike, one with... decidedly less cutscenes. I very much enjoyed learning the bosses' strategies and eventually outsmarting them through exploiting all kinds of mechanics, but certain pre-boss cutscenes lose far too much of their power when you watch them for the third time after getting defeated against the boss right near the end.
Still, I think I think the game works very well in the sum of its parts. By the time I was done, I'd grown to love the Al Bhed and what they stood for, I was happy with where my party had gone, both as fighters and as people, and I hope Spira will move on to be a better place in X-2 now that Yevon and its religion have been proven to be a sham; that they will learn to be less judgmental of one another and truly strive for peace.
Final Fantasy X was amazing, and it was a one-of-a-kind experience in my relationship with video games so far. I wish I could embrace everything about it, even down to its more frustrating parts in game design, but it's hard for me to say it's one of the best games I've played alongside my all-time favorites, if only because this isn't the kind of experience I'm used to from video games, and some of that inexperience has let me down in my own personal time with the game.
One day I'll have another sixty hours to invest in this game with better hindsight. I think I'd be ready to absolutely love it then.
1993
I should probably start by saying that I'm not a very big fan of classic Mega Man. I appreciate their philosophies in game design and level design, but they could never captivate me the way that their spiritual descendants have: Shovel Knight for example does everything that I enjoyed about Mega Man better, while getting rid of everything that I disliked about it.
Mega Man X on the other hand vindicates the classic games' design, never veering too far away, while making just a few tweaks that make the experience so unimaginably better.
I guessed the weakness order the entire time, for example - I think I only managed to get about three Mavericks with their weaknesses in the end, but between the far better telegraphed attacks and X's improved mobility, I never had a serious problem just using the default gun against any of them.
The weakness order makes a fair amount of sense when you consider the how the weapons work mechanically too, which I don't think was a real consideration for most of the classic Mega Man games I've played.
Speaking of mobility: the dash and wall jump add so much dimension to X's movement and positioning game that Mega Man wishes he had. The fact that X keeps momentum when jumping out of a dash makes it so much more of a proactive movement tool than the slide's only real purpose in reacting and dodging things.
The wall jump lets X's levels have far more verticality as well, which makes the exploration found in the game so much more natural, and makes it more likely that you can salvage yourself out of a pit, either from knockback or a clumsy dash jump.
These properties probably help in letting Mega Man X's levels feel so much more believable, that the environments genuinely could belong in a cartoony futuristic robot world. Think about the often-praised highway stage, for example, and consider that its slopes couldn't have been done in the NES Mega Man games, nor how it never has a single screen transition like in those until the Vile encounter.
In doing so, X's levels end up feeling more like places where Mega Man's feel more like constructed singleton challenges, and I much prefer the former.
I was unconvinced that finding upgrades within levels was going to be a good idea, but I think this game really does handle it well. I loved how the helmet upgrade that lets you break blocks above you also prevents you from taking damage from rocks that fall above you in certain sections - it's that kind of environmental and inventory consideration that I really love, as is the fact that you can use a fully charged ice shot to make a moving platform, and that certain parts of the game reward you for doing so.
The weapons also have a lot of practical use within the stages instead of being boss weakness fodder - which is something I really appreciate.
Finally, the subtank system is just straight-up an improvement over the classic games, where I often end up hoarding E-Tanks until the final boss because they feel too valuable. Being able to charge the tanks makes them a more viable strategic tool, and I loved how much they helped me in my run.
It's not perfect, though. If absolutely nothing else, the final boss is absolutely miserable, and without using the hadouken in the first two phases and using all my subtanks on the third, I genuinely could not have won.
Considering that I don't think the hadouken is really interesting aside from being a cute easter egg, I think the difficulty spike was uncalled for, especially considering that they take so little damage from their weaknesses.
There's a lot to love about this game, and I really enjoyed my time with the game (streaming it to my friends made for a lot of fun moments, too).
Maybe it's hard to say I love it? But I like it very, very much, though, and I think it's definitely up there as one of the best 2D platformers ever made, even if it's got a lot of competition there, like Shovel Knight and the Marios.
Mega Man X on the other hand vindicates the classic games' design, never veering too far away, while making just a few tweaks that make the experience so unimaginably better.
I guessed the weakness order the entire time, for example - I think I only managed to get about three Mavericks with their weaknesses in the end, but between the far better telegraphed attacks and X's improved mobility, I never had a serious problem just using the default gun against any of them.
The weakness order makes a fair amount of sense when you consider the how the weapons work mechanically too, which I don't think was a real consideration for most of the classic Mega Man games I've played.
Speaking of mobility: the dash and wall jump add so much dimension to X's movement and positioning game that Mega Man wishes he had. The fact that X keeps momentum when jumping out of a dash makes it so much more of a proactive movement tool than the slide's only real purpose in reacting and dodging things.
The wall jump lets X's levels have far more verticality as well, which makes the exploration found in the game so much more natural, and makes it more likely that you can salvage yourself out of a pit, either from knockback or a clumsy dash jump.
These properties probably help in letting Mega Man X's levels feel so much more believable, that the environments genuinely could belong in a cartoony futuristic robot world. Think about the often-praised highway stage, for example, and consider that its slopes couldn't have been done in the NES Mega Man games, nor how it never has a single screen transition like in those until the Vile encounter.
In doing so, X's levels end up feeling more like places where Mega Man's feel more like constructed singleton challenges, and I much prefer the former.
I was unconvinced that finding upgrades within levels was going to be a good idea, but I think this game really does handle it well. I loved how the helmet upgrade that lets you break blocks above you also prevents you from taking damage from rocks that fall above you in certain sections - it's that kind of environmental and inventory consideration that I really love, as is the fact that you can use a fully charged ice shot to make a moving platform, and that certain parts of the game reward you for doing so.
The weapons also have a lot of practical use within the stages instead of being boss weakness fodder - which is something I really appreciate.
Finally, the subtank system is just straight-up an improvement over the classic games, where I often end up hoarding E-Tanks until the final boss because they feel too valuable. Being able to charge the tanks makes them a more viable strategic tool, and I loved how much they helped me in my run.
It's not perfect, though. If absolutely nothing else, the final boss is absolutely miserable, and without using the hadouken in the first two phases and using all my subtanks on the third, I genuinely could not have won.
Considering that I don't think the hadouken is really interesting aside from being a cute easter egg, I think the difficulty spike was uncalled for, especially considering that they take so little damage from their weaknesses.
There's a lot to love about this game, and I really enjoyed my time with the game (streaming it to my friends made for a lot of fun moments, too).
Maybe it's hard to say I love it? But I like it very, very much, though, and I think it's definitely up there as one of the best 2D platformers ever made, even if it's got a lot of competition there, like Shovel Knight and the Marios.
You know - with the Mod Loader that lets you add the Lantern Engine and the Dreamcast conversion mods, this game... honestly isn't too bad.
The Sonic part, anyway. I don't know if I'm going to play through the rest again, especially since I don't think I ever really want to 100% this game. (I don't care for the Chao Garden at all)
Considering that this was a 1998 game, released on the same year as Ocarina of Time, before Super Mario Sunshine and Final Fantasy X - put into context, I can appreciate it for what it accomplishes.
For one thing, the only two 3D platformers at this point that had experimented with movement nearly as ambitious were Super Mario 64 and Spyro the Dragon. Sonic Adventure definitely isn't perfect in this aspect and relies on quite a bit of scripting to survive, but I don't think that bothers me as much as it used to anymore - though I think that's more me knowing how to play around Sonic Adventure's jank more than anything.
I see in this a similar idea of what I see in Super Mario Sunshine, actually. Both games were some of the last confident attempts at evolving the series' original direction (I think 64 logically continues on SMB3 and SMW's lineage, but that's for another time), and do a lot of ambitious things with their presentation and evolving the world they're set in, but are less than technically perfect and make more than a few missteps in the process.
The difference is that I love Sunshine to pieces in spite of its shortcomings, while even when I'm only ranking the Sonic part of this game, I could only really give it a 3.5 at best.
For one thing, while I can acknowledge how impressive the controls must have been in 1998, I don't think they're actually good from a modern perspective - whereas Sunshine's controls are a bit unconventional for Mario standards, but have aged gracefully nonetheless.
I don't really care about this game's world and story, for another thing - where Super Mario Sunshine kept me exploring Isle Delfino for hours just for the sake of it, I can't not skip the cutscenes and their awful pacing (supposedly so because the original Dreamcast release had to load each line individually), and the actual hub world design is absolutely uninteresting.
I'm going to sound like a hypocrite, considering that I still think Peach's Castle and its courtyard make for a really good hub world.
But thinking back to the Mario hub worlds that I think are undeniably well-put together, I have two examples: Delfino Plaza and New Donk City.
What I like about both of them is how they play with the core idea of Mario's moveset in meaningful ways - since Sunshine and Odyssey's incarnations of Mario are specifically some of his most vertically capable, they focus on having buildings of different heights that you have to engage in organic platforming with lots of things you can do with each of them.
I feel like as a similarly urban setting, Station Square fails to stick the landing: there are basically zero slopes that give players a sense of how Sonic's momentum is affected by the angle of the terrain.
I think it would have been interesting to build the hubs more like skateparks where players can safely experiment with Sonic's momentum and taking advantage of it - but maybe it's easier to say that in hindsight.
Sonic Adventure's non-action elements feel utterly superficial, in other words. The one thing I think Sonic Adventure 2 improved upon it was eliminating hub worlds... but I've been comparing Sonic Adventure to what it isn't for far too long in this review.
What Sonic Adventure is to me is... a decent, ambitious platformer for its time that I wish had been made with the insights of today. It's a one-of-a-kind, something that likely never will be done again, especially considering how averse Sonic Team seem to be in revisiting this kind of gameplay.
As with the rest of the series... it's the start of an embarrassing legacy.
The Sonic part, anyway. I don't know if I'm going to play through the rest again, especially since I don't think I ever really want to 100% this game. (I don't care for the Chao Garden at all)
Considering that this was a 1998 game, released on the same year as Ocarina of Time, before Super Mario Sunshine and Final Fantasy X - put into context, I can appreciate it for what it accomplishes.
For one thing, the only two 3D platformers at this point that had experimented with movement nearly as ambitious were Super Mario 64 and Spyro the Dragon. Sonic Adventure definitely isn't perfect in this aspect and relies on quite a bit of scripting to survive, but I don't think that bothers me as much as it used to anymore - though I think that's more me knowing how to play around Sonic Adventure's jank more than anything.
I see in this a similar idea of what I see in Super Mario Sunshine, actually. Both games were some of the last confident attempts at evolving the series' original direction (I think 64 logically continues on SMB3 and SMW's lineage, but that's for another time), and do a lot of ambitious things with their presentation and evolving the world they're set in, but are less than technically perfect and make more than a few missteps in the process.
The difference is that I love Sunshine to pieces in spite of its shortcomings, while even when I'm only ranking the Sonic part of this game, I could only really give it a 3.5 at best.
For one thing, while I can acknowledge how impressive the controls must have been in 1998, I don't think they're actually good from a modern perspective - whereas Sunshine's controls are a bit unconventional for Mario standards, but have aged gracefully nonetheless.
I don't really care about this game's world and story, for another thing - where Super Mario Sunshine kept me exploring Isle Delfino for hours just for the sake of it, I can't not skip the cutscenes and their awful pacing (supposedly so because the original Dreamcast release had to load each line individually), and the actual hub world design is absolutely uninteresting.
I'm going to sound like a hypocrite, considering that I still think Peach's Castle and its courtyard make for a really good hub world.
But thinking back to the Mario hub worlds that I think are undeniably well-put together, I have two examples: Delfino Plaza and New Donk City.
What I like about both of them is how they play with the core idea of Mario's moveset in meaningful ways - since Sunshine and Odyssey's incarnations of Mario are specifically some of his most vertically capable, they focus on having buildings of different heights that you have to engage in organic platforming with lots of things you can do with each of them.
I feel like as a similarly urban setting, Station Square fails to stick the landing: there are basically zero slopes that give players a sense of how Sonic's momentum is affected by the angle of the terrain.
I think it would have been interesting to build the hubs more like skateparks where players can safely experiment with Sonic's momentum and taking advantage of it - but maybe it's easier to say that in hindsight.
Sonic Adventure's non-action elements feel utterly superficial, in other words. The one thing I think Sonic Adventure 2 improved upon it was eliminating hub worlds... but I've been comparing Sonic Adventure to what it isn't for far too long in this review.
What Sonic Adventure is to me is... a decent, ambitious platformer for its time that I wish had been made with the insights of today. It's a one-of-a-kind, something that likely never will be done again, especially considering how averse Sonic Team seem to be in revisiting this kind of gameplay.
As with the rest of the series... it's the start of an embarrassing legacy.
2002
Uniquely among the Mario games released prior to Galaxy 2, I have no nostalgia for Super Mario Sunshine.
I wasn't around for its reveal and initial release, and I had no way of playing it as a kid - my first playthrough of Sunshine was in 2015, emulated on a computer that could barely run the game at near-full speed with the audio disabled.
But I really enjoyed my time with the game - far more than I did with the Galaxy games - and I've come back to replay it a handful times since, including this playthrough on the rather unfortunate 3D All-Stars collection.
Sunshine is often treated as the black sheep of the series, a janky, unpolished mess compared to the rest of the games - and especially Galaxy right after it, which vastly surpassed it in its aesthetic and supposed scope.
When I say that it's this game that's actually one of my favorite games in the series, I acknowledge this reputation Sunshine has gathered over the years.
In other words, I don't mean to deny the aspects of Sunshine that are noticeably less well thought-out than the rest of the franchise. Let's go on an obligatory quick roll call: the lilypad stage is near impossible to complete normally, adding insult to injury in how long it takes to get there; the watermelon festival is clumsily designed; the Corona Mountain boat is hard to control; the missions are overall too dependent on Shadow Mario chases and red coins... We've all heard these a million times if we've ever discussed Sunshine on the Internet. Let's move on.
It does beg a few questions, though. Why do people complain so much about the lilypad, the pachinko, the watermelon, and all that while conveniently leaving out the fact that most of Super Mario Sunshine's supposed worst shines are completely optional?
The secret shines found around Delfino Plaza, the two bonus shines per course, the 100-coin shines, and each of the twenty-four shine sprites obtained from trading them in at the boathouse - accounting for 70 of Sunshine's 120 shines - are almost completely inconsequential to the game (at most, they let you unlock courses earlier), and a player could easily complete the game with 50 shines collected from the Airstrip, the first seven missions of each course and Corona Mountain.
It seems all too obvious to suggest to anyone who doesn't enjoy those aspects of Super Mario Sunshine: just leave them be!
100% completion seems like the default in 3D platformers ever since games like Super Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie emphasized the collection aspect of the genre, but in a world that's increasingly moving towards acceptance that we will never finish every game, even those we start, I don't see the harm in letting those extra shine sprites go, even if someone could argue that some of them are badly made or designed.
I'm not that someone. For context, I've enjoyed my time 100%ing this game far more than I did with Galaxy, and if I were to go back to a 100% playthrough of either it or Odyssey, I would pick Sunshine in a heartbeat.
I will first briefly give credit to the pachinko and say it gets far more hate than it deserves, and that some of Galaxy and Odyssey's more gimmicky missions are not only more obnoxious, but more drawn-out and exhausting—
With my reputation ruined with that one sentence, allow me to explain.
Super Mario Sunshine's biggest strength that no other Mario game accomplishes except for brief instances of Odyssey is its environmental platforming - how it manages to make each location feel like a genuinely believable place within Isle Delfino.
Ricco Harbor and Pinna Park are some of my favorite levels in the entirety of the Mario series in how they manage to naturally bring out Mario's platforming while making everything look like it exists for a purpose beyond being there for Mario to jump on.
While bigger than most Mario maps except some of Odyssey's larger Kingdoms, the courses generally do a good job in dividing themselves into smaller sections within a cohesive map (albeit Pinna Park might go about doing this in a somewhat ham-fisted way), where individual missions can focus on one or two of them each.
One issue I had with Super Mario Odyssey's level design was how too many of them felt like floating landmasses over a bottomless pit: twelve out of fifteen of its main kingdoms followed this design to some capacity, with only the Wooded, Lost and Luncheon Kingdoms really providing an interesting twist on this idea. Sunshine almost completely avoids this issue, with Pianta Village being the single place being designed this way. In exchange, Sunshine often uses its verticality as consequences for failing platforming challenges, with conveniences like tightropes and the Rocket Nozzle being placed to ensure players never lose too much progress for falling down - it also often ensures that players won't suffer from too much fall damage by placing water around the map, which ties into the aesthetic of the game quite brilliantly.
Speaking of aesthetic - I wouldn't give Sunshine's environmental design as much praise if it weren't for their overarching nature: there's a lot of detail put in to make it feel like (almost) everything exists within the same landmass, like how you can see Ricco Harbor from Bianco Hills. There hasn't been this much cohesion in a Mario game since Super Mario World, (another game that debatably suffered for it compared to Super Mario Bros. 3's diversity in locales) and it really goes a long way to sell the idea that Isle Delfino is a living, breathing place compared to the abstract, bizzare themes later found in Super Mario Galaxy that attempt to separate its environments as far apart as it can.
It's because it feels like a living place that I feel incentivized to explore the courses and comb every part of the island for coins, both blue and yellow - less because I'm expecting a reward like in the other Mario games, and more because it lets me live out an inherent feeling of exploration that I couldn't really have when I'd go on holidays as a kid and have my hand held the entire time, the feeling that Mario games seem to have a complicated relationship with.
It's because it feels like a living place that I can forgive the wacky Delfino people from having weird customs like the watermelon festival, blooper races; that I don't mind the fact that Mario's being scammed into helping the Sirena Beach hotel, that everything really is a little bit jank, but maybe it's fine...
Because that's how things are meant to be in Isle Delfino.
So in Rome, I'll do what the Romans do,
and enjoy it all.
I wasn't around for its reveal and initial release, and I had no way of playing it as a kid - my first playthrough of Sunshine was in 2015, emulated on a computer that could barely run the game at near-full speed with the audio disabled.
But I really enjoyed my time with the game - far more than I did with the Galaxy games - and I've come back to replay it a handful times since, including this playthrough on the rather unfortunate 3D All-Stars collection.
Sunshine is often treated as the black sheep of the series, a janky, unpolished mess compared to the rest of the games - and especially Galaxy right after it, which vastly surpassed it in its aesthetic and supposed scope.
When I say that it's this game that's actually one of my favorite games in the series, I acknowledge this reputation Sunshine has gathered over the years.
In other words, I don't mean to deny the aspects of Sunshine that are noticeably less well thought-out than the rest of the franchise. Let's go on an obligatory quick roll call: the lilypad stage is near impossible to complete normally, adding insult to injury in how long it takes to get there; the watermelon festival is clumsily designed; the Corona Mountain boat is hard to control; the missions are overall too dependent on Shadow Mario chases and red coins... We've all heard these a million times if we've ever discussed Sunshine on the Internet. Let's move on.
It does beg a few questions, though. Why do people complain so much about the lilypad, the pachinko, the watermelon, and all that while conveniently leaving out the fact that most of Super Mario Sunshine's supposed worst shines are completely optional?
The secret shines found around Delfino Plaza, the two bonus shines per course, the 100-coin shines, and each of the twenty-four shine sprites obtained from trading them in at the boathouse - accounting for 70 of Sunshine's 120 shines - are almost completely inconsequential to the game (at most, they let you unlock courses earlier), and a player could easily complete the game with 50 shines collected from the Airstrip, the first seven missions of each course and Corona Mountain.
It seems all too obvious to suggest to anyone who doesn't enjoy those aspects of Super Mario Sunshine: just leave them be!
100% completion seems like the default in 3D platformers ever since games like Super Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie emphasized the collection aspect of the genre, but in a world that's increasingly moving towards acceptance that we will never finish every game, even those we start, I don't see the harm in letting those extra shine sprites go, even if someone could argue that some of them are badly made or designed.
I'm not that someone. For context, I've enjoyed my time 100%ing this game far more than I did with Galaxy, and if I were to go back to a 100% playthrough of either it or Odyssey, I would pick Sunshine in a heartbeat.
I will first briefly give credit to the pachinko and say it gets far more hate than it deserves, and that some of Galaxy and Odyssey's more gimmicky missions are not only more obnoxious, but more drawn-out and exhausting—
With my reputation ruined with that one sentence, allow me to explain.
Super Mario Sunshine's biggest strength that no other Mario game accomplishes except for brief instances of Odyssey is its environmental platforming - how it manages to make each location feel like a genuinely believable place within Isle Delfino.
Ricco Harbor and Pinna Park are some of my favorite levels in the entirety of the Mario series in how they manage to naturally bring out Mario's platforming while making everything look like it exists for a purpose beyond being there for Mario to jump on.
While bigger than most Mario maps except some of Odyssey's larger Kingdoms, the courses generally do a good job in dividing themselves into smaller sections within a cohesive map (albeit Pinna Park might go about doing this in a somewhat ham-fisted way), where individual missions can focus on one or two of them each.
One issue I had with Super Mario Odyssey's level design was how too many of them felt like floating landmasses over a bottomless pit: twelve out of fifteen of its main kingdoms followed this design to some capacity, with only the Wooded, Lost and Luncheon Kingdoms really providing an interesting twist on this idea. Sunshine almost completely avoids this issue, with Pianta Village being the single place being designed this way. In exchange, Sunshine often uses its verticality as consequences for failing platforming challenges, with conveniences like tightropes and the Rocket Nozzle being placed to ensure players never lose too much progress for falling down - it also often ensures that players won't suffer from too much fall damage by placing water around the map, which ties into the aesthetic of the game quite brilliantly.
Speaking of aesthetic - I wouldn't give Sunshine's environmental design as much praise if it weren't for their overarching nature: there's a lot of detail put in to make it feel like (almost) everything exists within the same landmass, like how you can see Ricco Harbor from Bianco Hills. There hasn't been this much cohesion in a Mario game since Super Mario World, (another game that debatably suffered for it compared to Super Mario Bros. 3's diversity in locales) and it really goes a long way to sell the idea that Isle Delfino is a living, breathing place compared to the abstract, bizzare themes later found in Super Mario Galaxy that attempt to separate its environments as far apart as it can.
It's because it feels like a living place that I feel incentivized to explore the courses and comb every part of the island for coins, both blue and yellow - less because I'm expecting a reward like in the other Mario games, and more because it lets me live out an inherent feeling of exploration that I couldn't really have when I'd go on holidays as a kid and have my hand held the entire time, the feeling that Mario games seem to have a complicated relationship with.
It's because it feels like a living place that I can forgive the wacky Delfino people from having weird customs like the watermelon festival, blooper races; that I don't mind the fact that Mario's being scammed into helping the Sirena Beach hotel, that everything really is a little bit jank, but maybe it's fine...
Because that's how things are meant to be in Isle Delfino.
So in Rome, I'll do what the Romans do,
and enjoy it all.
1993
I've completed Episode 3 on Hey, Not Too Rough. Overall, I was impressed with how the game eventually conveys to me how it works, and how combat and dealing with enemies eventually became manageable, especially when I made liberal use of saving. I watched as my playtime per episode started gradually decreasing, my first episode taking me a few hours and everything going much more smoothly after that.
I think the levels are far too labyrinthine to get fun out of them in a single first playthrough, though. Doom seems best enjoyed at a high(er) difficulty, knowing where everything is and how to effectively maul through everything, and that's not honestly something I'm particularly interested in doing, especially when there's another two games in the series that I want to look at.
Maybe I'm too spoiled by what I've seen from the newer Doom games? Eternal in particular seems to have really fun, interesting looking movement and its game design is balanced around defeating enemies, sometimes in specific ways. When I look at that and I look at this game, I see something that was the start of a really good idea, but not much beyond that.
I've enjoyed my time through overall, though. It's made for a lot of fun Discord calls of me screaming from getting blindsided from a Cacodemon and other things like that.
...and i'm not even going to try beat episode 4.
I think the levels are far too labyrinthine to get fun out of them in a single first playthrough, though. Doom seems best enjoyed at a high(er) difficulty, knowing where everything is and how to effectively maul through everything, and that's not honestly something I'm particularly interested in doing, especially when there's another two games in the series that I want to look at.
Maybe I'm too spoiled by what I've seen from the newer Doom games? Eternal in particular seems to have really fun, interesting looking movement and its game design is balanced around defeating enemies, sometimes in specific ways. When I look at that and I look at this game, I see something that was the start of a really good idea, but not much beyond that.
I've enjoyed my time through overall, though. It's made for a lot of fun Discord calls of me screaming from getting blindsided from a Cacodemon and other things like that.
...and i'm not even going to try beat episode 4.
The score primarily reflects World-e and the e-Reader levels.
The main game is just fine; the screen crunch generally actually doesn't affect the game much, since SMB3 was never a particularly vertical game to begin with except for a few levels.
Some quality of life changes might benefit players, like being able to return to previous worlds after beating the game, and how getting a Fire Flower as small Mario instantly makes him Fire Mario. It's largely take-it-or-leave-it features, though, so if you prefer the NES or SNES versions, there's no real reason to play this.
Especially because World-e sucks. If you're playing this version, you're probably playing for the e-Reader levels:
Don't.
There's absolutely zero point to doing so. There's no reward for getting all the e-Coins nor the Advance Coins, nor completing all the levels as both Mario and Luigi. It's probably because the e-Reader was discontinued before all the planned SMA4 cards could be released, even in Japan - there undoubtedly were plans to release more levels, which might have had included rewards for 100% completion?
But that wouldn't matter if the levels were fun, which... they're more miss than hit.
A key problem with World-e in general is that Luigi behaves completely differently to how he does in the main game; he's a lot floatier, more slippery and slightly slower, like an exaggerated version of how he should feel.
This surprisingly does not work well with the level design as a whole; there are levels where Luigi's movement feels just unaccounted for, like It's a Shoe-In, Caped Escape, No Time to Dawdle and Castle Dash. Controlling Luigi in general does not feel good or precise enough, and I can't recommend playing as him at all.
Another big issue is something inherited from the base Super Mario Bros. 3, actually: there are no checkpoints in any level whatsoever.
This gets extremely tricky and tedious, since World-e levels are generally far longer and sometimes more difficult than the base game levels, especially if you're going for the Advance Coins. Dying with 4/5, even all 5 Advance Coins collected in a stage and having to retry it to get them all again without dying again is agonizing, especially in auto-scrolling levels; I eventually resorted to save states, which I hope the Wii U version includes as well.
It's just such a weird decision when World-e imports various other features from the other Super Mario Advance games. Would adding the checkpoints from Super Mario World really have been too much?
The level design feels... inconsistent, almost like Mario Maker levels of quality. There's some really interesting ideas explored sometimes... then there's some that are too easily undermined, or some that's simply not balanced for completion with zero checkpoints. Maybe it's worth a look if you're looking for different takes on Mario level mechanics, but... expect inconsistent quality.
I wish this could have been done with Super Mario Advance 2 instead, honestly. Mario's movement is much more precise in SMW in general, and introducing SMB3's plethora of power-ups in that game might have been more interesting than just throwing in the Cape Feather into this game. Checkpoints would be a much welcome addition, and since you collect Dragon Coins in the main levels anyway, it wouldn't have been as much of a change of pace to collect Advance Coins in these levels, compared to the contrast in pacing between the SMB3 and World-e portions of Super Mario Advance 4.
Oh, and less autoscrolling airships. That would have been nice.
Sadly, Nintendo does not like making good business decisions.
The main game is just fine; the screen crunch generally actually doesn't affect the game much, since SMB3 was never a particularly vertical game to begin with except for a few levels.
Some quality of life changes might benefit players, like being able to return to previous worlds after beating the game, and how getting a Fire Flower as small Mario instantly makes him Fire Mario. It's largely take-it-or-leave-it features, though, so if you prefer the NES or SNES versions, there's no real reason to play this.
Especially because World-e sucks. If you're playing this version, you're probably playing for the e-Reader levels:
Don't.
There's absolutely zero point to doing so. There's no reward for getting all the e-Coins nor the Advance Coins, nor completing all the levels as both Mario and Luigi. It's probably because the e-Reader was discontinued before all the planned SMA4 cards could be released, even in Japan - there undoubtedly were plans to release more levels, which might have had included rewards for 100% completion?
But that wouldn't matter if the levels were fun, which... they're more miss than hit.
A key problem with World-e in general is that Luigi behaves completely differently to how he does in the main game; he's a lot floatier, more slippery and slightly slower, like an exaggerated version of how he should feel.
This surprisingly does not work well with the level design as a whole; there are levels where Luigi's movement feels just unaccounted for, like It's a Shoe-In, Caped Escape, No Time to Dawdle and Castle Dash. Controlling Luigi in general does not feel good or precise enough, and I can't recommend playing as him at all.
Another big issue is something inherited from the base Super Mario Bros. 3, actually: there are no checkpoints in any level whatsoever.
This gets extremely tricky and tedious, since World-e levels are generally far longer and sometimes more difficult than the base game levels, especially if you're going for the Advance Coins. Dying with 4/5, even all 5 Advance Coins collected in a stage and having to retry it to get them all again without dying again is agonizing, especially in auto-scrolling levels; I eventually resorted to save states, which I hope the Wii U version includes as well.
It's just such a weird decision when World-e imports various other features from the other Super Mario Advance games. Would adding the checkpoints from Super Mario World really have been too much?
The level design feels... inconsistent, almost like Mario Maker levels of quality. There's some really interesting ideas explored sometimes... then there's some that are too easily undermined, or some that's simply not balanced for completion with zero checkpoints. Maybe it's worth a look if you're looking for different takes on Mario level mechanics, but... expect inconsistent quality.
I wish this could have been done with Super Mario Advance 2 instead, honestly. Mario's movement is much more precise in SMW in general, and introducing SMB3's plethora of power-ups in that game might have been more interesting than just throwing in the Cape Feather into this game. Checkpoints would be a much welcome addition, and since you collect Dragon Coins in the main levels anyway, it wouldn't have been as much of a change of pace to collect Advance Coins in these levels, compared to the contrast in pacing between the SMB3 and World-e portions of Super Mario Advance 4.
Oh, and less autoscrolling airships. That would have been nice.
Sadly, Nintendo does not like making good business decisions.
2014
Super Smash Funko Pops
2008
It's a bit like junk food, but all Bomberman games are.
The music's good, there's some depth in customizing your bomber and optimizing him for each level, but it honestly doesn't matter nearly as much as you'd imagine.
It's still the most aesthetic one out of the non-Chikuma Bomberman games, as long as you're willing to excuse how slowly the game starts out.
I love the battle mode in this one, too. It's a shame only Japan and Europe got this game, but at least the battle mode's in every Bomberman game on the DS!
The music's good, there's some depth in customizing your bomber and optimizing him for each level, but it honestly doesn't matter nearly as much as you'd imagine.
It's still the most aesthetic one out of the non-Chikuma Bomberman games, as long as you're willing to excuse how slowly the game starts out.
I love the battle mode in this one, too. It's a shame only Japan and Europe got this game, but at least the battle mode's in every Bomberman game on the DS!