Trivia / Super Mario Galaxy

• Creator Backlash: While his overall opinion on the game was still very positive, Shigeru Miyamoto disliked the addition of Rosalina's backstory in the game (even though he did approve it when director Yoshiaki Koizumi presented it to him), due to its darker tone and him feeling Mario should be lighthearted and more focused on the gameplay than the story (especially since other Nintendo franchises such as The Legend of Zelda already fulfill the story quota in his mind). This would lead to him forcing the team to scrap their story related plans in Super Mario Galaxy 2 in favor of a traditional Lighter and Softer Excuse Plot. Years later, Super Mario Odyssey would bring back the story elements in full force.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: In a 2022 interview, Charles Martinet listed Super Mario Galaxy as one of his favorite Mario games.
• Dummied Out:
  • The sheer amount of unused stuff found upon cracking the game open is enough to make one's head spin. Everything from unused boss designs to unfinished planets can be found in there.
  • An almost-finished planet, the Starman Fort, resembling an excavation site, still has its files inside the game, albeit with messed-up gravity, but nevertheless is much more complete than some of the planets that made it to the final version. It was even supposed to house a bunch of missions, and even the first boss battle according to concept art!
  • There is also the alternative hub planet shown at the E3 2006, and an urn-shaped planet with a question mark on it. Another planet has a dozen climbable poles with some spiked urchins on them.
  • Mario himself has some unused moves, such as punching and tennis moves. An unused 3D model for a kart exists also, along with Donkey Kong Jungle Beat models.
  • Lots of bizarre unused enemies, characters, and creatures, including remakes of the Bully and Big Bully from Super Mario 64 and strangely alien-looking larvae and flies.
• Follow the Leader: Since Galaxy first came out, there has been a large influx of gravity-based Flash games across the Internet and on consoles, including Sonic the Hedgehog's own spin on the concept with Sonic Lost World.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: While secondhand copies can be purchased at an affordable price, the game itself is no longer digitally available with the Wii U eShop closed and 3D All Stars no longer being available as of March 2021.
• Killer App: Super Mario Galaxy is one of these for the Wii (its sequel, Wii Sports, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Mario Kart Wii, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and Super Smash Bros. Brawl being the other major ones).
• No Export for You: Prior to Super Mario 3D All-Stars, a high definition Updated Re-release of the game was released in 2018 for the Nvidia Shield TV, but only in China. Interestingly, the 3D All-Stars version is based on the Nvidia Shield TV version and features the same improvements. Making its way overseas in that form.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Mahito Yokota initially came up with a more Latin soundtrack—up to 28 pieces had been composed—because he believed it fit in line with the music of previous games. Koji Kondo told him it wouldn't work. Yokota allegedly admitted that the initial direction he took with the music stemmed from his misconception that the Mario games, as "kids" games, ought to have cutesy tunes. After being told by Kondo that is not the case and that they are "cool" games with wide demographical appeal, he created a brand new orchestral soundtrack which emphasized the game's grand scale and the rest is story.
  • Rosalina had a drastically different◊ more fairy godmother esque design early on.
  • According to the Prima guide for the game, the team originally considered making Rosalina a relative of Peach's, however this direction was scrapped for unknown reasons. Her final design reflects this idea.
  • One of the earliest pieces of concept art made for the game was an unused fortress level◊ known internally as "Starman Fort", which the team fell in love with and remained as far in development to where it was actually programmed into the game until it was ultimately scrapped. Aspects of the level were used throughout the final game however and parts of the fortress do still exist in the game's files, both of which actually led to the level getting later reconstructed by a fan, giving us an rough idea of what the level could had been.

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