User:Pentium5dot1/Storage facility/Super Mario Galaxy
“A game in outer space? That's one of the most exciting ideas I've ever heard of!”
Super Mario Galaxy is a three dimensional adventure game for the Wii featuring Nintendo's popular character, Mario. Aside from the obvious and tired plotline of saving princess Peach, the game is highly innovative in its gameplay, which mostly occurs in outer space. Mario's favorite "Powerup", Mushrooms, return again in this game as a way for him to access 3 different forms, all based on failed designs for his character considered by Nintendo in the past.
Plot[edit | edit source]
Bowser, Mario's insidious rival for peach's affections, has stolen peach and taken her on what he hopes to be a romantic space cruise during one of Mario's routine visits to castle peach. Mario is sent flying into the void of space and crashes into a tiny planet, wiping out the native smurf population. Out of the blue, several stars appear and offer to guide Mario to their mother who happens not to be a star. Soon after he meets her she whisks him away to her observatory, which is completely powerless due to gas prices being much too high. The star-mother, whose name is Rosalina, has decided to convert to solar energy, but because she does not want to use her children for power, she asks Mario to scour the universe for Stars, promising that she will assist him in saving peach if he is able to re-power the observatory.
Gameplay[edit | edit source]
The gameplay of Super Mario Galaxy is highly innovative as it takes place in space, a frontier that is rarely explored by video games. In each of the levels, Mario must work his way through several planets, rocketing from one to the next by way of spinning pilot stars (which, for realism, frequently cause Mario to become dizzy/nauseous) in order to reach a boss or a special location where a large star is being held by forces unknown. Through the levels the star-children will help Mario, often in exchange for star bits, which are small items cleverly hidden in items often smaller than the bits themselves that the stars find delicious and which can also be fired at enemies for massive damage.
One of the most apparent and new features of the game is the ability for Mario to change forms using mushrooms found around the levels. These mushrooms will transform Mario into one of three unique and slightly helpful forms: Bee Mario, who can sting enemies at the cost of one life, Boo Mario, who is simply bee mario with the Es changed to Os, and Spring Mario, who is able to leap across small gaps and over small obstacles.
To increase the player's chances to experience the many new features in the game, the player must complete each level many times over, and is even offered many bonus versions of the levels, which look the same but feel more rewarding. When the player has completed every single level the required number of times to obtain all the stars the observatory needs to keep it powered, they can return there and finally be ferried to Bowser's space lair to repeat their past experiences one more time before the credits roll.
There are very few side quests/adventures in the game, as the repetitive and confusing levels are meant to occupy all of the player's time. Luigi, Mario's older brother and heroic idol, returns to guide him in collecting special green stars, which only the mighty Luigi is actually capable of touching. Other side quests include stars from the observatory who become violently sick and explode to create dangerous new galaxies which Mario is encouraged to traverse in order to collect more stars, and helping Rosalina to choose which dress to wear in the observatory each day.
Multiplayer[edit | edit source]
Super Mario Galaxy is able to support up to 2 people playing simultaneously. If another player joins a 1 player game, they will be able to challenge the first player by eliminating Mario's resources and hindering his movement. Through this unique method of cooperation, the game becomes much more exciting as Mario swerves and twists around uncontrollably as both players fight for control, and becomes more challenging as he scours the cracks and dark corners of the level for extra star bits to replace the ones fired into the walls of the level by the second player.