YMMV / Super Mario Galaxy

• Accidental Innuendo:
  • There are two planets you visit in Honeyhive Galaxy with phallic appearances. In the same galaxy, the Queen Bee has you to help her "scratch her itch" and notes that it feels good with a lot of pleasure.
  • The Tarantox planet features, in the words of the Game Grumps, a "butthole" that Mario is launched into.
  • After getting the fourth Grand Star, Rosalina invites Mario into her bedroom.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: What if Dino Piranha isn't trying to attack Mario and just wanted to play with him? It isn't until Mario hits it with its tail the first time that it becomes angry.
• Awesome Levels: Most galaxies qualify.
  • Good Egg Galaxy, the first full galaxy in the game, is an absolute blast thanks to its branching paths and dazzling visuals.
  • Honeyhive Galaxy and its inverse, Gold Leaf Galaxy, both make excellent use of the Bee Mushroom and introduce an interesting (and adorable) new society to the Mario universe.
  • Sweet-Sweet Galaxy, a tasty bit of classic Mario level design as you platform across pieces of cookie dough and jam out to the athletic theme from Super Mario Bros. 3.
  • Space Junk Galaxy is a quiet, melancholic expanse that fleshes out the Pull Stars and features a beautifully somber music track… before climaxing with a battle against a giant alien spider.
  • Battlerock Galaxy, on top of its epic music, is a showcase for Mario's status as a One-Man Army, as he breaks into one of Bowser's most fortified battle stations and meticulously blows up each section in glorious fashion.
  • Beach Bowl Galaxy features a more open layout reminiscent of Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine, while also presenting the Galaxy's improved swimming mechanics and a memorable set piece in the form of the Cyclone Stone, which was so great that it returned in the sequel.
  • Buoy Base Galaxy, a smaller level that sees Mario scaling another battle station and taking out troops, only to reach a planet at the top that opens up like a Pokéball.
  • Gusty Garden Galaxy is the game's most famous level, and for good reason. The majestic scenery, amazing music, and spectacular gimmicks like dandelions that you can ride on the wind or walking across a giant caterpillar onto apple platforms all combine to make a truly astounding experience.
  • Freezeflame Galaxy is no slouch either. Its creative combination of a snowy mountain and the volcanic underside creates a wonderful dichotomy, which is helped by the use of the Ice Flower for traversal.
  • Toy Time Galaxy, yet another unique setting made up almost entirely of children's toys where you get to take apart a giant Bowser figure piece by piece.
  • Melty Molten Galaxy, a fiery gauntlet that acts as an effective test of the player's skills, and includes a memorable set piece where Mario escapes a volcano as it explodes behind him.
  • And finally, Bowser's Galaxy Reactor, the ultimate combination of every single challenge that the game has thrown at you thus far as Mario makes his way to the final showdown with Bowser.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • Bowser shooting lightning bolts out of his hands in the opening cutscene. He was never seen using such powers before and never after.
  • Deep Dark Galaxy combines elements of Big Boo's Haunt and Gangplank Galleon, and its second mission, "Bubble Blastoff", is mostly in line with that. Then there's the final planet, a glass sphere with giant tennis balls rolling around the inside. The player must line up Ground Pounds to hit the tennis balls into a watermelon at the core of the planet. Each hit makes the watermelon grow until it shatters the glass and releases the Power Star. This is the only time anything like this happens in the game. Galaxy often draws on real-world logic to ease the player into its challenges, like shorting out robots with an electric fence, so this sequence's half-sensical use of real objects makes it feel all the more surreal.
• Breather Boss:
  • Topmaniac, who for some reason gets to guard four stars for being the easiest boss in the game.^note Though this isn't much different from Super Mario 64, which constantly reused bosses that were simple to defeat. He also counts as a Recurring Boss (well, to a greater extent than any other boss in the game — even Bowser, who's only fought 3 times^note you technically have to fight Bowser four times for 100% Completion, but this "fourth fight" is just the third Bowser level all over again, while Topmaniac has four unique missions), although he doesn't really get any more difficult to defeat.
  • Also, Baron Brr. Unlike most bosses, who usually have some way of preventing themselves from getting hit repeatedly, Baron Brr has no such way of doing so, as Mario remains on his peak. Consequently, it is extremely easy to land hits upon Baron Brr.
• Breather Level:
  • Beach Bowl Galaxy and Sea Slide Galaxy. Neither have a boss or many enemies, both have a generally relaxed atmosphere and both are based around exploring, side quests and mini games rather than platforming or fighting.
  • Collecting all of the purple coin stars can be a grueling task. But in the midst of some of the most challenging levels in the game comes "Plunder the Purple Coins" in the Deep Dark Galaxy: a fairly laid back level with only two (easily avoided) enemies, no pitfalls, and some surprisingly simple underwater bits.
  • In the middle of the difficult Dreadnought Galaxy (which contains two of the most frustrating missions in the game) is "Topmaniac's Speed Run", the final speedy comet mission in the game. You're given a generous six and a half minutes to complete it, when the level itself can easily be beaten in well under half that amount. Topmaniac himself is also the easiest boss in the game, and unlike Battlerock, you don't have to worry about doing a no damage run this time.
  • And, of course, the very very last level, which is your reward for going through hell and back twice. You can only die if you try.
• Broken Base: Even among the developers, the addition of Rosalina's storybook as a whole. Some (including the game's director Yoshiaki Koizumi) found it to be a deeply compelling (for Mario standards) and emotional backstory that serves to make Rosalina all the more interesting that didn't distract from the gameplay and made the game even more special, while others (including Shigeru Miyamoto himself) felt it was an unnecessary addition whose dramatic tone is unfitting for a Super Mario game and is too much of a Mood Whiplash with the game's otherwise lighthearted and fun tone (regardless of if it's optional or not). Given the nature of this debate, it tends to frequently boil over into the wider debate on how much should story play a role in the Mario series, if it should at all. Future games have flip-floped about this, with Super Mario Galaxy 2 completely ditching the story elements and Super Mario Odyssey bringing them back in full force.
• Camera Screw: Most of the time, you can't control the camera's position; several challenges in this game would be a lot easier if you could actually see what you're doing (though the game is a lot better than Super Mario 64 in this regard). You can enter first-person view in many places, though.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Flinging Koopa shells at chests, crystals, and enemies feels great. Nintendo seemed to get that, as they created three bosses to defeat by throwing shells.
  • Bouldergeist can be pretty difficult, but it is very satisfying to swing Bomb Boos around by their tongues and hit him multiple times in a row.
• Character Rerailment: After suffering some substantial Villain Decay in the RPGs and Super Mario Sunshine, Bowser returns to being an impressive, yet highly effective and intimidating antagonist who poses a legitimate threat to both Mario and the universe as a whole. The main series games from Galaxy 2 onwards would marry the goofier aspects of Bowser from those aforementioned games with his more menacing appearance here to further balance out his character.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Before many bosses, there is a shopkeeper Luma where you can buy either a Life Mushroom, which sets your maximum health to 6, or a 1-Up. Nobody ever buys the 1-Up. Life Mushrooms massively increase your survivability in a boss fight, causing you to not lose a life to need a 1-Up in the first place, while 1-Ups are ubiquitous in the game and aren't even saved in the save file. Even if you want to avoid the Life Mushroom as a Self-Imposed Challenge, you're better off just keeping your Star Bits.
• Creepy Awesome:
  • Bouldergeist is scary, but an insanely cool concept. His intro cutscene is one of the most impressive in the game.
  • Kingfin is also fairly creepy, due to being a giant missle-shooting skeletal shark. But that's also exactly why he's such an appealing boss.
• Epileptic Trees: Rosalina has been an endless fountain of speculation over the years regarding her nature and her origins. About the former, a very common theory is that she's the creator of the Mario universe, and its literal God(dess). About the latter, her uncanny, albeit so far unexplained resemblance to Peach makes everyone assume they're both related one way or another. From people who believe she's her lost sister or her future daughter^note It helps that Rosalina was planned to be related to Peach early on (though it was scrapped by the final game), as well as Mario's... or Luigi's.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: The universe is in shambles, a black hole is annihilating everything, and Master Luma makes a noble sacrifice to save everyone. Thus, the cycle of life begins anew, and a new galaxy is formed in place of Mario's old galaxy... Is that necessarily happy given that the countless adventures Mario has had before this game suffered at the hand of the Cosmic Reset Button?
• Evil Is Cool: After his goofy outing in Super Mario Sunshine, Bowser's coolness comes roaring back with a vengeance here, where he's a successful Galactic Conqueror whose boss fights are set to epic orchestrated music that wouldn't sound out of place in a Star Wars movie.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Mastering the game's very loose physics can make the game much easier, and especially-proficient players might be able to use this to engage in Sequence Breaking (such as skipping the entire second half of Bubble Breeze Galaxy by making it atop the rocks between the starting area and the star, or skipping most of Mecha-Bowser by wall-jumping between his left arm and side rather than climbing up his limbs one-by-one.)
  • Player 2 in this game seems inefficient compared to the sequel until you realize the cursor not only allows you to freeze obstacles back and forth near instantaneously unlike the Luma but some projectiles such as fireballs are outright destroyed touching it. Bosses like Bowser and Kamella become complete jokes with it and you can freeze things such as the rotating and vanishing platforms of Luigi's Purple Coins in extremely quick succession.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Ice Bats, in fact. They can only be harmed with the tricky-to-aim Fire Flower, and one touch will freeze you for a while. Thankfully, they only show up in one mission.
  • Octoguys are a major pain as well. They're pink chubby Octoombas whose attack strategy is to run away while shooting at you. They're fast and a pain to catch, even when they take a break to catch their breath, and their spit rocks are at a perfect arc to hit you if you try jumping towards them.
• Goddamned Boss: At least three examples: Kamella, Bouldergeist, and Kingfin.
  • Kamella is rarely vulnerable, and usually teleports around her arena while shooting fireballs at you. You can only hurt her with the Koopa Shells she occasionally shoots at you, and if you miss your shot then you have to wait a while until she summons a new one. Since this is surprisingly easy to do despite her large size, you can expect any fight with her to drag on for a while.
  • You already have to swing Bomb Boos into Bouldergeist's body twice to expose his squishy true form, but after he's hit once, he'll summon a pair of large rock hands that can absorb any blows meant for his body. They can also respawn if you don't break down his body fast enough, making the process of exposing his core a long and tedious affair.
  • Kingfin is fought entirely underwater, and like with Kamella, you have to launch Koopa Shells at him to hurt him. Water controls are finnicky enough as it is, and it can be tough to hit him since he's a mobile target. Not a hard fight by any stretch, but it can certainly be an annoying one.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • Certain glitches in the game are rather helpful, like getting healed if you're knocked into a coin after losing your last hit point, or being able to climb slippery slopes by jumping onto them and spinning or using a backwards jump-and-spin method.
  • On Megaleg's Moon, you can do a triple jump off of the first glass cage you see, and spin at the peak of the jump. Doing so gives you just enough height to escape the starting planet's gravity, pulling you to Megaleg's planet without hitting the panel on the ground that activates the cutscene and boss. This lets you explore an unactivated Megaleg, and the glitch is deactivated harmlessly by going to where you land normally and triggering the cutscene.
• Harsher in Hindsight: In a way, young Rosalina's offhand comment about growing into an old lady becomes somber when one remembers that she becomes The Ageless, and never gets to grow old with her original family.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The Toad Brigade leader in Grand Finale Galaxy says: “Koopas... Boos... Giant, overgrown moles... Whatever! Bring it on!” About seven years later came Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, A Day in the Limelight for Captain Toad, where he is able to take on Boos with his bright headlamp, and can also catch Pluck Moles to earn prizes. He can also take on enemies like Chargin' Chucks, Hammer Bros, and Magikoopas, which are technically Koopas.
  • The black holes in this game are far from astronomically accurate, but once a black hole was photographed in 2019, it turned out the game's looked rather similar.
  • The Star Bits being a tasty sweet snack for the Lumas that fall to the surface of planets like meteors now seems hilariously prophetic after NASA discovered that there really are meteorites that contain sugars essential to life in 2019.
  • In Ghostly Galaxy, in the "A Very Spooky Sprint" mission, the end of the racecourse is flanked by two of the skull obstacles seen throughout the course, one of which happens to have a single blue Star Bit in one of its eyes, giving it a striking resemblance to a certain other video game skeleton.
  • The Spiny Cheep-Cheep that pops out of chests in Drip Drop Galaxy (a single one also appears in Galaxy 2 in Cosmic Cove Galaxy) looks almost identical to Overqwil, down to the exact coloration of the spines.
  • A whip pan of Rosalina's profile followed by a zoomout in The Stinger as she begins to fly the Comet Observatory away is identical to a similar shot of Elsa at the end of the song "Let it Go" from Frozen (2013) when she reveals her fully-completed Ice Palace.
  • Wish (2023) features an anthropomorphic star resembling the Lumas... which makes Rosalina the Blue Fairy.
• Ho Yay: While this only happens to a maximum of five Boos throughout the whole game, it appears that the typical Boo is programmed to automatically fall in love with Mario in his Boo form. The only notable exception (not counting Bomb Boos) is the Spooky Speedster, who is explicitly stated to be male according to the wiki page. This does not happen in the sequel.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: While the game has garnered widespread praise from fans and critics alike and is considered to be one of the greatest games ever made, many of those same people feel that the game's biggest flaw is that it's on the easier side due to only 60 stars being required to beat it. In fact, since the option to fly to the final level is available as soon as the Bedroom is cleared (though the level can't be entered without the 60 stars), it's possible to skip the entire last third of the game. While beating the game is fairly easy, going for 100% completion is fairly challenging however, thanks to various difficult levels.
• It Was His Sled:
  • The fact that getting all 120 stars allowed one to play as Luigi became common knowledge shortly before the game even came out. Helped by Luigi being widely rumored as a secret playable character in a 3D Mario game ever since his omission in Super Mario 64, with Galaxy finally bringing those rumors to fruition.
  • Similar to the case with Bowser Jr. in Super Mario Sunshine, players nowadays will already know about Rosalina being introduced in this game before even playing it due to her having become a prominent character in the series, thus losing the magnificence of her introduction back when the game came out.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Again, Rosalina. She's been paired off with the likes of Mario, Luigi, Waluigi, Peach, and Bowser. And her being a fighter in the fourth Super Smash Bros. starts up some Crossover Ships.
• Magnificent Bastard: In this game, Bowser plans a scheme to conquer the universe. After acquiring the Grand Stars, Bowser then leads an airship assault on the Mushroom Kingdom to kidnap Peach. Having his troops scour the universe to conquer it, Bowser also fights Mario throughout the game—with Mario's victories proving useless since Bowser's final scheme was still active. Creating a Galaxy Reactor using a Grand Star, Bowser intends on creating a new universe for him to rule alongside Peach. Returning in the sequel, Bowser steals Grand Stars from Lubba and his Luma crew and uses them on himself to grant him immense power—later kidnapping Peach and restarting his scheme of universal hegemony, and attempting to devour the Comet Observatory to keep Rosalina from interfering. Orchestrating a scheme of a much grander scale compared to his usual ones with a dosage of Villain Respect to Mario, Bowser showcases how his brilliance can be a threat towards the whole universe.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "U R MR GAY" ^ExplanationBased on a sheer coincidence someone discovered on the cover of the game. The stars highlighted the letters on the game's logo, spelling out said sentence.
  • "U R MI ALY" ^ExplanationA coincidence found in the logo of Super Mario Galaxy 2. The stars highlighted the letters to form this sentence.
  • "YA I M R U" ^ExplanationA coincidence found on the logo for Super Mario Galaxy 2, Again, the stars highlighted the letters to from this sentence, but now, it must be read from right to left and from bottom to top. Put this and "U R MR GAY" together...
  • "So... Chunks, huh?" ^ExplanationIn one level, a penguin waddles up to Mario while saying this, referring to the game's collectable star bits. Someone posted a gif of it to Tumblr without context, and it blew up from there.
  • "You can now play as Luigi" ^ExplanationThe message that appears when you manage to 100% the game, indicating you can play as Luigi. Many people made the joke that you'll be able to play as Luigi when you die in real life, or similar jokes along those lines.
  • "You can no longer play as Luigi" ^ExplanationA variation of the above meme, often in response to something people do not approve of, thus having their playable Luigi privileges revoked.
  • When Bowser's vulnerable to attack, the player will hear chanting. Naturally, many players mishear this as "SOAP SOAP, THUMP THUMP, POPCORN, OH POPCORN! Pop pop pop pop pop!"
• Narm: The drowning sound Luigi makes whenever he falls into quicksand or toxic waste sounds more funny as opposed to Mario's drowning noises, being an exaggerated "BLUGLUGHGEHBEHBLEBH-!" kind of sound.
• Nausea Fuel: With the gravity and camera angles (you often appear sideways or upside-down), it can get a bit disorienting. If you get motion sickness easily, play in Deep Dark Galaxy at your own risk.
• Older Than They Think:
  • The 3D Gravity Screw platforming that this game is well known for actually didn't originate here. Other games, such as Psychonauts, had utilized similar game mechanics years before Galaxy was released.
  • The idea of pointing the Wii Remote to collect items was in Crash of the Titans, which released a couple months prior.
  • Most people assume the Ice Flower debuted here or New Super Mario Bros. Wii. However, it actually appeared in Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time two years earlier as a Bros. Item, even with the same color scheme.
• Polished Port: Just like Super Mario Sunshine, the version included in Super Mario 3D All-Stars bumps the resolution to 1080p^note 720p in handheld mode. It also allows players to simply press X/Y to spin (though shaking the controller for that still works), and makes the pointer controls use the gyroscope in the controller^note Touch screen in handheld mode, and allows portable play. Several textures, the UI elements, and the FMVs have also been upscaled. The 3D All-Stars port of Galaxy is in fact considered the best-handled part of the collection and one of the best Mario ports to date, a stark contrast to the Super Mario 64 port being criticized for being too similar to the original N64 release and the Sunshine port being criticized for being too awkwardly changed from the original GameCube release in spite of its improvements.
• Sacred Cow: Super Mario Galaxy ended up being what Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario 64 were to prior generations of gamers in terms of being a gateway title for gaming as a whole, as well as just a damn good game in its own right that boasts one of the greatest soundtracks of any Nintendo title. Taking a crack at the game doesn't end well for most people who do so.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: This game is easier and more accessible than Super Mario Sunshine, the console game preceding this.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Swimming underwater is a major pain in the ass and has been described as the worst part of the game. The worst aspect of it is if you overswim your target by just a little bit or end up in a corner, it's next to impossible to turn back around without going way out of your way. Either you hold back by muscle memory, which tilts Mario up, from which it's difficult to change directions; or you do turn him around, but the camera fails to recenter behind him, leading to even more confusing controls. Jumping out of the water is also extremely finicky. While the game tries to provide workarounds, the main way is mapped to holding the jump button while at the surface, which is incredibly easy to miss even when you're looking for a way to get out.
  • The Spring Mushroom power-up. You can't stand still while you're wearing it, the movement is very wobbly, and it requires precise timing in order to do a high jump (and unsurprisingly, the areas in which you find the spring require many such jumps). It doesn't help that it doesn't debut until Toy Time Galaxy (very late in the game), which means you have to use it on some of the harder levels without having a chance to practice using it in easier levels first. It even appears to be this in-universe, as the promotional picture◊ of this power-up shows Mario looking horrified as if to say "STOP THIS CRAZY THING!!!" Fortunately, it only appears in four missions (two missions in Toy Time, the only mission in Matter Splatter, and Beach Bowl's purple coin mission) and it's possible to complete the Toy Time missions without using the Spring Mushroom at all.
  • Ray Surfing in the Loopdeeloop and Loopdeeswoop Galaxies, mostly due to the difficulty of maneuvering the manta ray due to the extremely sensitive motion controls.
  • Rolling the Star Ball in the the Rolling Greens Galaxy, the last part of Mission 2 for Melty Molten Galaxy, and Rolling Gizmo Galaxy. Even a slight tip in the wrong direction of the Wii Remote has a chance of resulting in complete and utter failure, and jumping can be very dangerous due to the very different pattern.
  • Using the Sling Pods in the Space Junk and Sling Pod Galaxies. Even the slightest deviation during aiming can make Mario miss the next Sling Pod and fall into doom unless a Pull Star is close.
  • The bubble blowing levels: like the Star Ball and the Sling Pods, it requires remote-perfect precision.
  • While throwing fireballs as Fire Mario, you cannot change direction, which means you have to wait for the animation to stop before you can adjust your aim. This can cause some torches to be missed because you were stuck in the firing mode and didn't have enough time to turn around before the power-up wore off.
  • Prankster Comets are annoying enough as they are, but the game makes the missions forced — if a comet is in orbit over a galaxy, that mission is the only one you can play. This means you'll either have to get it to move (by completing a regular mission or paying the Prankster Comet Luma) or beat the Comet mission to access the rest of the missions again. If you really don't want to deal with the level when it's there, you've got to waste a bit of time getting it away. The sequel remedies this by making other missions playable while a Prankster Comet is in orbit.
  • After completing a Prankster Comet mission, all Comets will disappear from the map until a regular mission is cleared or the Prankster Comet Luma is paid to move them and bring them back, meaning that one cannot tackle Comet missions consecutively without interruption. If you save up your Comets or get every other Star before unlocking the Purple Comet, you're going to have to waste a lot of time replaying missions or talking to the Hungry Luma just to get the Comets back. Much like the above Comet example, the sequel remedies this by allowing Prankster Comets to appear right after completing another Comet mission and not having any Comets disappear, so they remain until they are cleared without preventing other missions from being played.
  • During Speedy Comets and timed Purple Comets, the timer doesn't disappear after the Star appears. This can really be a problem with Ghostly Galaxy's Purple Comet, as part of what makes the level so challenging is making sure you actually have enough time to get to the Star after collecting 100 coins. It's more than likely running out of time trying to get to the Star will be your biggest cause of failure, making the level much more frustrating than it should be. The sequel fixes this by stopping the timer once the Star appears.
• Self-Imposed Challenge:
  • Getting all 150 purple coins in "Luigi's Purple Coins" in Toy Time Galaxy, or "Purple Coins on the Puzzle Cube" in Gusty Garden Galaxy, or all 149 in "Purple Coins Bone Pen" in Ghostly Galaxy (only 100 are required for the star). Yes, all three are actually possible! Not enough for you? Here's a bunch more!
  • The developers also made it so that getting Life Mushroooms before boss fights is completely optional.
  • It is in fact possible to do a no-coin run of the game.
  • Besides the first four Grand Star fights and the final boss, the only required bosses are within the Terrace (and even then the player can skip either King Kaliente or Bugaboom). It is entirely possible to beat the game without fighting any other boss. However, the "challenge" part comes in when one realizes that doing a minimum-boss run locks the player out of 43 of the 104 stars that can be collected before beating Bowser. In particular, the Garden dome is completely inaccessible due to being locked behind a Grand Star mission (the only optional Grand Star in the game). Because only 61 stars are available, the player has very little room to skip missions—multiple hidden missions, all of the first five Hungry Luma galaxies (with the exception of the Fountain's, which is locked behind Tarantox), all of the Luigi stars (plus the one that unlocks him), and all of the Green Stars are required^note at least two of the Trial Galaxies are required to be beaten for this challenge.
  • Beating the game without transformations. This particular challenge contains one very tough moment, as the player must complete Honeyhive Galaxy’s first mission "Bee Mario/Luigi Takes Flight" without using the Bee Mushroom. In order to accomplish this, the player has to climb all the way up to the tree on the highest level of the starting planet, perform a wall jump off of the tree to get on it, do the slope-climbing exploit to move to the left of the tree, slide down the tree at just the right angle to wall jump off of another tree, and use the slope-climbing exploit to get onto the platform where the Captain Toad is.
  • Beating the game while collecting as little star bits as possible. Since nearly everything in the game drops star bits, careful platforming and movement of the pointer is required to avoid picking them up. Unfortunately, it's impossible to beat the game with zero star bits, as you are required to pick them up to complete a tutorial at the beginning of the game, and Good Egg Galaxy's second mission (where you need to collect 100 star bits to feed a hungry luma) is required, as no other level is available at that point.
  • Believe it or not, getting killed by every possible black hole. Some black holes are much harder to get to than one would initially expect, such as the one in Battlerock Galaxy, one of them in Bowser's Dark Matter Plant, and several of them in Ghostly Galaxy's third mission and in Gold Leaf Galaxy. Others are flat out impossible to die to without hacking^note the one under the airships in Good Egg Galaxy, both of them in the gravity scramble section of Gusty Garden Galaxy, one of them in the ice and lava platforms of Freezeflame Galaxy, the one at the end of the frozen dessert area in Toy Time Galaxy, the ones in various missions of Dreadnaught Galaxy, and the black holes under the lava ball rolling area in Melty Molten Galaxy.
• Signature Scene:
  • Good Egg Galaxy is the one level most often used to represent this game. It helps that it's been shown in a lot of the game's promotional material.
  • Gusty Garden Galaxy, thanks to its music (see Signature Song below) and memorable visuals. It's essentially the heart of the Galaxy games distilled into one level.
  • The entire finale, from the epic Final Boss against Bowser, to the heartwarming reunion between Mario and Peach, and the equally heartbreaking sight of the Lumas sacrificing themselves to save the universe and create a new galaxy.
• Signature Song: Gusty Garden Galaxy is the most iconic track in the game, being used constantly throughout the Mario series afterwards, including as a remix in Super Mario 3D World for Champion's Road and as the end credits theme for The Super Mario Bros. Movie.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • The Space Junk Galaxy theme sounds an awful lot like the Magicant theme from EarthBound Beginnings. and Midna's Lament from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.
  • Battlerock Galaxy theme sounds very similar to the Space Armada theme from Star Fox.
  • The 4-note melody that makes up most of Drip Drop Galaxy's music sounds very similar to a melody that plays during the early minutes of Spirited Away as Chihiro's family explores the abandoned theme park.
  • "Bowser's Galaxy Reactor" sounds very similar to the SNES version of "Rainbow Road", mainly due to the chord progressions.
• That One Boss:
  • Beating Bouldergeist the first time is frustratingly drawn out but ultimately not too difficult. Beating him again with one hit point for the Daredevil Comet Star achieves controller-breaking levels of frustration.
  • The Daredevil Comet version of Kamella's 2nd battle is even harder. It's pretty easy to get the first two hits on her, but following her up to the crow's nest without getting hit and then dodging the fireballs and Magikoopas to score two more hits on her requires epic levels of patience and persistence. Her new teleport ability makes it very dangerous when she goes onto the arena, and in the latter half, where she spends most of her time outside the crow's nest, she may teleport directly into the middle, which is almost a guarantee for contact damage if you're distracted by everything else. You can spin attack the Magikoopas to get them out of the way for a bit, but considering that Kamella keeps hurling fireballs at you while you try to do this, it's easier said than done. Also, be careful climbing the pole to the crow's nest, as it's entirely possible for an errant fireball to hit (and thus, kill) you before you even reach the second stage of the fight.
  • Fiery Dino Piranha can be incredibly frustrating. Having to time hitting his tail when it's not on fire wouldn't be so bad if you weren't having to chase him/run away from him at the same time. Thankfully, the game doesn't make you do a Daredevil run of this one.
  • The Undergrunt Gunner rematch in Toy Time Galaxy requires you to use the Spring Shroom just to jump up to damage him, which combined with him shooting balls of electricity and the arena being over a bottomless pit can make the fight agonizing, especially if you haven't mastered the Spring Shroom by now. Alternatively, you can backflip and spin onto the cockpit, saving yourself a lot of trouble by not using the "powerup".
  • Major Burrows is weirdly tricky to knock out of the ground, and can keep setting the phase back to square one if you don't memorize his moves or chase him down fast enough. The latter part is not helped by how he looks like he moves more slowly than he actually does, and how the Star Spin grinds Mario to a halt, which can bring the boss out of range at the last moment. And then he starts faking you out before he becomes vulnerable. Mercifully, you deal the first point of damage while he's preoccupied chasing a Star Bunny, but the fakeout offsets this by practically adding an extra hit. And then there's a Daredevil Comet to contend with. The Blue Spiny Shell that the boss wears as a helmet can be quite telling.
• That One Level:
  • Purple Prankster Comet missions tend to be this.
    • Purple Coins in the Desert, due to the instant-death quicksand and the hard-to-control tornado-powered gliding required to reach many of the purple coins (often above the quicksand). Some very precise timing is needed as well with the tornadoes to even get high enough to reach those coins. And if that wasn't enough, some of the tornadoes can hurt you, which can knock Mario into the quicksand and force you to restart the level from the beginning.
    • Luigi's Purple Coins is infamous among the purple coin levels. The good? There are 150 purple coins, and you don't have to collect them all. The bad? The level consists entirely of platforms that either start slowly rotating or disappearing when you step on them, and the rest consists of instant-kill sludge. The more of the level you walk on, the less safe ground you're left with, especially considering the fact you have to return to the starting point once you're done, so you have to remember to leave some walkable ground for the return journey. Oh, and you only have three minutes to complete the whole thing.
    • Purple Coins by the Seaside is this purely because of its sheer length. The majority of the level is spent flying over gaps as Bee Mario, and the coins (as well as the bee mushroom powerups) are spread far apart throughout the entire level. And since there's only 100 coins, missing even a single one means having to comb through the entire level looking for that last lousy coin. While other purple coin levels such as Freezeflame have the same issue, this one is easily the longest and most tedious one of them all.
    • Purple Coins in the Bone Pen, mostly because you're only given a mere minute to complete this mission. There are 149 purple coins^note one of the coins is on the backside of the starting planet, but it's almost never worth trying to go for due to the time it takes to get it in a small area with pull stars, mines, and meaty bones, and the player will need to use the pull stars to get at least 100 of them. The pull stars can be tough to control, especially when combined with the strict time limit, the meaty bones will throw you off course if you touch them, and the mines can quickly spell your demise if you hit too many of them. And worst of all, once you collect the 100th coin, the timer doesn't stop counting down, which can result in a very frustrating death right as you were about to get the star.
  • Any of the Cosmic Luigi races. Cosmic Mario's easy enough to beat, since he basically just follows the beaten path, but Cosmic Luigi spams speedrunning tactics like rapid long-jumping and taking extremely obscure shortcuts. Needless to say, if you can beat Cosmic Luigi, consider yourself a master of whatever level you're playing.
  • The Trial Galaxies, which are unlocked by getting all three green stars. There's a reason why they're called the trial galaxies, as each of them forces you to use a Scrappy Mechanic to get through the levels.
    • Bubble Blast Galaxy, not just because of the difficulty of guiding the bubble through the electric maze, but the second half has you being pursued by Bullet Bills.
    • Loopdeeswoop Galaxy, which has you piloting the Manta from Loopdeeloop Galaxy, due to the sensitive controls and the way the course is designed. A lot of lives will be lost on this level not because of running out of time, but because you keep falling off the course.
    • Rolling Gizmo Galaxy. You have to navigate the Star Ball through a very narrow obstacle course filled with enemies that will mess up your momentum, rotating platforms, and rails which intentionally speed you up so that you have to slow yourself down before you end up plummeting off the course.
  • The Daredevil Comet mission on Melty Molten Galaxy. Unlike the other Daredevil Missions, this one requires you to play the entire stage, instead of just a boss. A stage mission that's already frustrating. This was likely made into a run because it is next to impossible to not get hit battling the Fiery Dino Piranha.
  • The trash clearing missions have very short time limits in which you can pick up the bombs and throw them to destroy the trash, with the bombs being hard to aim and having long fuses which narrows your timeframe even more, causing even slight mistakes to result in failure. Granted, coin markers appear which indicate where you should be aiming at, but this might not be obvious at first and even when you do figure it out, actually getting the bombs to land on or near them is difficult without practice.
  • The difficulty curve of Sweet Sweet Galaxy really got some players with those moving holes.
  • Sling Pod Galaxy requires ridiculously precise aiming, as a shot even a millimeter off target means instant death. Averted in Super Mario 3D All-Stars, as the gyro aiming allows for greater precision.
    • On the other hand, "A Very Spooky Sprint" in Ghostly Galaxy has taken its place as an infamous early-game mission. There is an upper limit on the gyro cursor's speed, whereas controlling the cursor with the Wii Remote would allow you to move it as fast as you want. The racing Boo's speed was designed with the latter in mind, so the mission was unintentionally made more difficult with the different control scheme.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • After Kamek blasts Mario into space in the opening, we never see him again, with Kamella taking the boss role (and not much of a story role past that) and all other Magikoopas being the basic enemies.
  • The Luma who travels with Mario and grants him the new spin ability never gets any dialogue after joining Mario, acting more as an object rather than a genuine companion. Contrast this to F.L.U.D.D. from the previous game who granted the gimmick and talked to Mario throughout the adventure. Had the Luma been given more personality and established a genuine bond with Mario (or Luigi), it would've made his sacrifice at the end all the more emotional.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • The spaceship that Bowser uses to rip Peach's Castle out of the ground using lasers would've made for an epic boss. Too bad it only appears in cutscenes and never during gameplay.
  • For a galaxy called Freezeflame Galaxy, only one out of six missions actually takes advantage of both climates being in one location. Even worse is that the rest of the missions tend to lean more on the Freeze side of the galaxy’s name, with it getting a main star, both comets, and a hidden star. Meanwhile the Flame side only gets a single dedicated main star.
  • It would've been nice to see Mario and Luigi swap roles in the "Super Luigi Galaxy" segment, especially as the player gets to experience a bit more of the former's personality this time as an NPC. Instead, "Super Luigi Galaxy" decides to keep the NPC Luigi, coming off as lazy (on the developer's end) and a poor use of unexplained retconning.
  • In order for a 100%, you'll have to travel Bowser's Galaxy Reactor for a second time after obtaining 120 Power Stars either as Mario or Luigi. One might assume higher difficulty, a bit of a twist, or something different, but instead — it's basically the exact same level, only difference is the added cutscene post-credits.
• Tough Act to Follow: Many people see Galaxy and Galaxy 2 as the gold standard of Mario games and especially the 3D titles, to the point that the first game stood as the best-reviewed video game of all time on the now-late GameRankings.^note It even managed to outrank the apparently undefeatable The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time! Since then, only Super Mario Odyssey has managed to reach similar levels of acclaim.
• Ugly Cute: Dino Piranha. It's a weird half-Piranha Plant, half-dinosaur creature, but it just looks so huggable.
• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • Flying Mario. It's only used in one solitary mission back at the Gateway Galaxy, and for easy access around the Comet Observatory. It's only unlockable after beating the Engine Room, by which point the player likely has the 60 stars needed to access Bowser's Galaxy Reactor (which itself was located after unlocking the Engine Room), so it's largely pointless. Worse is that a spin attack from Flying Mario can actually pull nearby purple coins toward you. If that's not reason enough why they should have included the powerup in other missions, just imagine using it in a boss battle. They don't even return in the Mission-Pack Sequel Super Mario Galaxy 2.
  • The Mario Bros. have the ability to dive into bodies of water if a Backwards Somersault is done off of certain platforms, which sends them deeper than simply jumping into it. Since the move isn't mentioned in the manual, it's only performable in very specific places (such as the cliff above the lake in Deep Dark), and backflipping into water is never required while Ground Pounding into it is usually faster, it's entirely possible to go through the whole game without knowing this move even exists.
  • There are only two instances of the Fast Foe Comet, both of which involve Tox Boxes and moving obstacles (with the only other enemies being Thwomps in Beach Bowl's mission). It would have been interesting to see buffed up enemies of other types in other galaxies.
  • There are only two characters that send you mail: Peach, who constantly sends over 1-ups your way (as a means of compensating for lives being reset upon shutting the game off), and Luigi, who tells you about stars he's found and how he needs rescuing...for a grand total of three times. The sequel would implement mailed messages far more thoroughly.
  • Then there's the NPC Luigi himself, whose missions involve him getting stuck when finding a star in familiar territory. He does this a grand total of three times before being burned out, all of which are in early stages. Needless to say it would have been interesting to see him do some searching in a plethora of later galaxies, which the sequel thankfully implements by making him a late-game unlockable alternate character who can swap out with Mario.
  • Boo Mario. It's only used in one mission in Ghostly Galaxy (at the very end of said mission to boot), then in two other missions in Hungry Luma galaxies (one of which also offers the Bee Mushroom to get through). It's used even less in the sequel, where it's only featured in one mission in the entire game.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Because you have to advance through the game, the player has to forcibly hatch Dino Piranha from its egg and kill it for the Power Star. Despite it being a giant monster, some players feel bad for committing murder to a new-born baby that they themselves hatched, and it's only made worse when it basically screams in pain before being finished off. It being Ugly Cute probably helps.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Despite running on ostensibly aged hardware, the game still manages to pack quite a punch in the visuals department, thanks to a fantastic art style and well-done backgrounds. The visuals rival that of even the best-looking PlayStation 3 titles, and all the game needed was a resolution bump to 1080p in 3D All-Stars.
• The Woobie: Rosalina in the storybook. As a young girl, she related to an orphaned Luma who was missing its mother, due to her own Missing Mom, and decided to go on a journey with it to find their mothers among the stars. She spends years in space, never finds the Luma's mother, and eventually realizes that her mother has been Dead All Along with her father and brother likely following suit while she was gone. All this happens in her preteen years. She eventually gains a new family by adopting every Luma she could find, but even adult Rosalina gives off a vibe of loneliness.
• Woolseyism: The French version of Rosalina's storybook mentions her father in the end — apparently, she used to sit on his lap and stroke his moustache. This is the only version of the game to do so, however.

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