Super Mario Galaxy, u r Mr Gay

http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?cId=3164124

hey
i've been playing this for the last couple of days (yes yes illegally, i will be buying it when it comes out honest)
its VERY much like mario 64. in space.
the graphics aren't as good as metroid 3 imho (probably down to art style preference though)
i'm only a few hours in but its far too easy :(

ha me want this now

me too. I think this may be my gift to myself for going back to grad school and finishing a semester, in December.

hmm my post above seems kinda negative.
i should have also mentioned that this game is fucking brilliant, every stage brings something new, the levels of invention etc etc. the difficulty is finally beginning to increase, hooray.
oh and there is a method of introducing replay value on stages that is cut and works great.

cut = cute

...what is the method?

um, i didn't want to give any spoilers away on this thread.
so if you want to look away now...
from a central hub you can go to one of several observatories & check out a 3d map of different galaxies that can be seen from that observatory, and within each of those galaxies there might be more than one star to collect (ie like the paintings in mario 64). every now and then a comet flies past a galaxy, and depending on the type of comet a new challenge is set eg. one comet could be a time challenge, another could be racing against a rather creepy parallel universe mario that seems to be made of deep space marshmallow. there are at least five of these comets, and so far they've appeared at random.

10/10 http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=86873

...15-20 hours to finish the game's initial story arc!!!

how the hell did the UR MR GAY thing start? they had to lock up the wiki!

and anyway Fire Emblem and LEGO Star Wars should provide plenty of reasons for me not to need this right away!

If you look at the cover art, you will notice that certain letters (urmrgay) have a shiny star on their bottoms (sort of a photoshop lens flare effect)...

http://www.digitalbattle.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/galaxyboxart.jpg

it all makes sense now

It was first noticed by someone on the neogaf forums.

i finished this game. it's pretty amazing. slow start, but damn it pays off.

was it too easy? any replay value?

Does anybody know yet if this will be in stores in N.A. on monday morning or on tuesday?

I'll let you know on Monday night when I go pick up Battalion Wars ii or whatever

haha lol seriously please do not patronize gamestop or ebgames unless it is absolutely necessary

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/84/362694225_03d53207c3.jpg

lol

super mario galaxy, u r mr break heart all the time november 16 wtf can I even wait to the end of this week never mind the end of next NO WAI </moan>

I'll let you know on Monday night when I go pick up Battalion Wars ii or whatever

-- El Tomboto, Thursday, November 8, 2007 5:30 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

^^^ this game is great.

tell me more

it's not really like advance wars, more like... did you ever play HOGS OF WAR? it's real-time, you can jump between whichever units you like and issue commands to the others. like you can be running down the coast as an infantryman and order your battleship to bombard some tanks up ahead, or just jump into the battleship and do it yourself kinda thing!!

it looks pretty fun. Dunno about getting that vs lego or fire emblem though, those two seem like guaranteed winners in all categories for me although apparently this FE is EXTRA difficult. also BWii has online-only multiplayer whereas LSW has the classic pop-in pop-out shit. Nothing like blowing up the death star drunk with a bro after bar close.

ya i hear that. i'd rent bwii and give it a whirl tho, something tells me it might be right up your alley.

tom,

if i already have lego sw for gamecube (to play on me wii), why should i buy the wii only version?

do you have the "complete saga" or just the ep4-6 or 1-3 games?

at any rate I should have the complete saga by the weekend so I'll let you know if it rates me giving up both the old versions I had on PS2

anybody actually get mario galaxy yet?

Welp, I picked it up tonight and have played a bit (maybe two hours), and I'm a bit surprised that I'm enjoying it a a fair bit less than I thought I would (so far). It is a really nice looking game - colorful, fun and well animated - and the design of the planets / galixies I've seen so far have been great. I am enjoying walking around the planets and some of the ways the game has played with gravity. But what I haven't been enjoying so much is, well, so far it's a pretty laid back game - almost too relaxing - more casual exploring than action - and after playing a fair amount of 2D Marios in the last few weeks - that relaxing, easy feeling, just seems a bit wrong. And honestly, I'm not too keen on some of the tacked on wiimote mechanics - like pointing at gems across the screen to collect them - that's just not fun - it's nothing - and you need to do it quite a bit (a couple hundred times on each level). Also shaking the remote to do a spin attack, instead of a button press, why? And shaking the remote to warp yourself to a new planet? It's also a little hard to jump on the enemies head in 3D, especially when you factor in the curve of the planets, so you can now shoot some of them with gems, which makes them dizzy and now you just walk into them and they explode into gems???

But like I said, I'm definitely not very far into the game - and I still am hopeful that things will get a but more - uh - fun

it's fun... but i wasn't blown away

the big thing about Slocki is he's only into Mario hentai. Every time a game comes out he thinks it's going to be the one where Mario "blows him away". But it never is. :(

Peach took Mario's mushroom deep inside her as he grew...

can we pause for a moment and think about whether or not this thread would actually be improved by posting some big homoerotic mario porn graphics?

I just want to avoid the kind of spiritual debacle that happened yesterday after somebody posted "strawberry shortcake"

(felt convinced I was going to get xposted with some Mario of Finland img)

u all crazy.

this game is great!

a lot of the timed challenges are pretty difficult, and i have replayed the early levels a bunch to get all the comet stars.

i cannot finish the 'blow up the space junk' star.

this game does start slow. but later on its amazing. stick with it.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/128405

"No offence but your a prick. When i clicked I HATED THIS CRAP it said YOUR GAY. YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE GAY"

this is the only game I've been psyched about for a while and you guys are bumming me out!!!

has it got any better? what is it you don't like, too free-roaming? bee costume folx!! I mean, C'MON!

don't worry, its fuckin great. just a bit too easy.

I'm about five or six hours into this game so far and the bee suit is like fifth or sixth on the jaw-drop-ometer so far. Number one is probably just a generalized DANG THIS HERE GAME SURE LOOKS PURTY, because damn, do it ever. I actually ended wasting a few bucks on the game guide just b/c it already feels like a game I'm going to be compelled to %100 complete, and (1) it feels like a game GameFAQs is going to have trouble explaining to me without pictures and (2) the guide does A GREAT JOB at showing off the game.

srsly I have bought something like eighty squillion video games in the last few weeks and NONE of them are getting played right now except this one

a bee suit that makes mario fly actually made your jaw drop?

FUCK YOU, IT'S A BEE SUIT

Any bee-size wings that make an overweight plumber FLY are eminently jaw-dropping.

The water in this game made my jaw drop!

The bee suit, not so much. Fell off the fucking honeycomb planet to my death twice, trying to curl, grab and fly my way around it to collect some coins.

I am loving this so far

it's gorgeous of course (tho much of it is hella ugly I think which nobody seems to be mentioned esp the cut scenes) but the in-game stuff is all spectacular, esp., as jeff says, the water

the physics and camera are mental (i.e. amazing)

it's kinda everything I ever wanted sm64 and smsunshine to be; and I'm sure people have said it before but just to stress it... there's a definite parallel between sm1:sm2:smworld and sm64:smsunshine:smgalaxy

this shit is the apogee!!

love the sound made when you grab the blue stars with the a-button

mmmm thereminy delicious

by ugly I just mean the colours are a bit gaudy and crap but in-game this is compensated for by the amazing animation work.

think I'm probably a little over three quarters of the way through the main quest now; the physics on this game are wacky and in some of the later levels some of the physics puzzles are pretty rich

it's far too easy of course but compared to smsunshine that's quite refreshing; I don't think I even made it halfway through the main quest on that thing, it was a demon

as someone said upthread so far there's been 6-7 jaw-dropping moments and the game itself is just all-round wholesome fun innit

I'm definitely getting more into it as I play more - I feel like I've adjusted to the controls and they don't really bug me, but so far when I die it still does seem to be most often the result of control struggles and not being able to accurately control the jumps in a moving 3d space. I'm starting to have fun though. Haven't got totally addicted as some - usually just playing a level or so at a time, playing in small bits, so the game will probably take me a while (I've just gotten my 8th star).

My one serious complaint is that the game doesn't seem to save right - last night when I stopped playing I had seven lives - and this morning when I started again somehow it was magically down to just four.

The game is pretty forgiving - when you get to a more hard area there's usually an extra life mushroom around somewhere (just have to make sure you can pick it up before you die) - and when you get to a boss - there seems to usually be one of those mushrooms that increases your life bar.

I think you just start off with 4 lives whenever you start up, irrespective of how many you had when you last saved

think I'm up to about 43/44 stars now

what is easier. getting 110 stars in Mario 64 or 110 stars in Mario Galaxy?
(I know it is 120 but some of the stars in Mario 64 are pretty hard so I didn't mention them) - might bias your answer.

super mario sunshine was quite easy btw.

on the last level now - 60 stars... "matter splatter" so far a definite highlight

I thought super mario sunshine was nails: more a comment on my ability, than on the game's difficulty - caveat: I never did beat fkn 'tubular' on super mario world

aren't there 120 stars in mario 64? I thought that was a pretty tough game too btw

i loved the buoy base galaxy the most so far

FUCK YOU, IT'S A BEE SUIT

I liked the first giant robot boss the best so far (I only have twelve or thirteen stars, tho). Very Shadow of the Colossus. The race on the fish thing was kind of tough - I wasn't to keen on that left and right turning on that curvy, wavey track, with all the bouncing to contend with too. It does feel good though to get past those slightly trickier levels. I liked the weird one (they're all pretty weird, I guess) when you're standing on top of the ball and you must carefully tilt your way through the level - are there more of those, or just the one?

I don't quite understand why the game doesn't let you save your extra lives when you quit out - it's kind of an odd choice - but it doesn't bug me too much since extra lives so far are incredibly plentiful - and I've yet to get down to zero.

6 hours of play yesterday and then planet dreams all last night

timed purple comets = arghhhhh

how is the music in this game? does it live up to mario 64 standards?

music is amazing so far: great dynamic touches (when physics go wonky, when you go under water); great ghosts of marios past... the williams-esque strings on the main hub might grate

yeah i read that the music from mario 3 world 1-2 is in there somewhere, among other references to mario 3. can't wait to play this.

yeah, there's loads of little rhymes with other mario games; from mario 1 through to sunshine

some of the costumes are amazing SPOILER THOUGH NOT REALLY esp the ice costume, where mario ice-skates if you do the spin attack... under utilised

definitely my game of the year and I've played most of the 360's big hitters

only annoying thing is sometimes the camera is barmy (which is to be expected when you're dealing with a 4d world) and the fire mario flower is timed (much like the invincibility star in the rest of the other marios)

Hey moderators, could we pls have a Mario poll? All the games on all the platforms from Donkey Kong up?

diy, holmes

b-b-but i dunno how

instead of clicking on "new question" at the top (or bottom) click on "more" then "new poll"

I've decided this is my Finished the Semester Gift to myself in mid-December.

Well, I looked at the Wiki list of games in which Mario appears and I don't want to be the one to edit it into something useable for a poll, even if I could figure out how to do it which I'm not sure about either.

i made one a while back. best mario

oh ah. thanks.

I love the big ? coins that unleash the streams of music; I try to collect them at intervals that make the music sound funny. The suits are great, the music is awesome (whatever the battle-oriented galaxy is with all the bullet dudes!!!! omg), the two player mode is interesting and fun (esp when combined with alcohol and turn-taking...I almost prefer being the star-collecting/enemy-stunning p2), etc.

Also sometimes it gives me genuine vertigo. I really really love this game.

I still can't quite do the triple jump correctly.

Also REALLY love the Prankster Comet stuff; the race against the cosmic copy of yourself especially.

If someone tells me that this will be awesome to play with my girl riding shotgun, I will buy this tomorrow.

Also sometimes it gives me genuine vertigo

what's weird for me is that the upside down running insanity comes naturally. i guess that's from being a broke kid bored in suburbia, me and my sister would sometimes play the og SMB with our heads on the floor, upside down on our couch to make it harder. you'd have to take a break every few stages due to blood rush.

haha thats a great story. me & my brother would play combat tanks on the atari vcs with our eyes closed, bouncing bullets was best.
that 8bit luigi stage is driving me mad btw.

oh yeah. we'd try (and sometimes succeed) to beat SMB level 1-1 with the TV off. we were strange kids.

I think all I ever did was adjust the tint control on my tv

I kind of miss that childish combination of ingenuity and low boredom tolerance that led to that stuff. now if something doesn't have "unlockable content" and shit we just assume it has no replay value and that's the end of that

Major Burrows is a knob. srsly it took me fucking 200 goes to defeat that thing.

fire mario's fun.

fuck that one burrowing dude

just try it w. the daredevil comet

i cannot finish the 'blow the junk' up level no matter how hard i try.

The blow junk up level is horrible, but I got it after way too many tries. The trick is to get the bombs to fall between as many junk piles as possible. Apparently you can daisy chain the bombs too but whatever, too much effort.

just try it w. the daredevil comet

-- remy bean, Thursday, 6 December 2007 19:44 (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Fuck that. I'm there now and trying to find ways around it.

the boy (8 yrs old) has had to beat the cosmic comet galaxies for me

love the ice skatiung a LOT

where is the third green star?

Such a good game.

I can't find the third green star either. Bloody thing.

Due to an intense lack of sleep last night (second running) I got to 65 stars. It just doesn't stop being amazing. At all. Ever.

I found the third green star.

80 STARS YU0. That's two-thirds. Whatever the last third is like, best game ever, fuck it.

120 starzzzz!!!! the difficulty really ramps up towards the end thankfully.
most fun i've had playing a game for years.

BOO SUIT

That is all.

I love the music in whatever they call the warzone galaxy (early on, in the kitchen I think?), and one of my ultimate joys in this game is hitting one of the big stars that fling you super far away and you get to see shit exploding behind you as you escape.

The boy suggested we put the tv on it's back on the floor on a lazy susan so we can spin it during those gravity-zone boards so down is always down.

Least favorite world so far is the one where it is almost all anti-matter or whatever and you have to wait for where you're going next to appear.

The boy suggested we put the tv on it's back on the floor on a lazy susan so we can spin it during those gravity-zone boards so down is always down.

I haven't played the game at all, but my standard procedure in any game involving a shift in controls like that is to spin the controller itself around. So if pressing up makes you go down, turn the controller upside-down so that pressing down makes you go down. Would that work?

You'd have to turn the controller upside down as well. Control is character-relative in this game, no matter where the gravity is.

also rolling ball galaxy = sonic + monkey ball

theres a 121st star!

OMG 121st star level unlock

http://static.flickr.com/169/407227596_c0963bac1f.jpg

'kinell, I want my Wii back. Have been gagging to play this for weeks :(

sanskrit, you're fucking with me, aren't you?

still haven't beaten the junk exploding level (first or second one)

got 91 stars

can't make any headway on the 100 purple coins on luigi run –

might actually beat all the levels but those three, and just download a save game state that has 'em completed, b/c i am sick of them and hate them.

I followed through on my promise upthread to buy this once the semester was over, and of course it's great. I'm about 70 stars in.

I finally figured out what the parts where the tornado spins you way up in the air and you come twirling down remind me of - JUMPING FLASH on PSX! That game was great.

Seconded.

So, I beat it last night.

You realize there is a 121st star to unlock, right? Unfortunately I don't think I'll have the time to get it until...next Christmas break.

Really, really fun. I am tempted to do the 2nd quest thing (after you get 120 stars) right away, but I think I should leave it for a while and then come back when I've forgotten half of the game.

Hardest stage: Toy Factory - Luigi's Purple Coins

The giant queen bee thing prompted my friend to ask 'does she have a cunt?'

Also in defence of the Honeyhive Galaxy I found myself yelling 'FUCK YOU IT'S A BEE SUIT'

For lack of a better thread to put this in:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PHcxYgIMTk

i've just started playing this, fantastic so far.

^^^ OTM.

I've run out of batteries though. :(

buy rechargables, dude.

i still haven't played this. my nephew played it like crazy, so now when i get to the part with bowser at the start, it says it can't read the disc. total bummer.

http://usbcell.com/

I have rechargables but have lost my charger. WTF? I don't know how.

I've just found it! Batteries charging....

Got my 30th star last night. Some of the bosses are damn frustrating.

I've just started another go around, this time as Luigi. Dreading the level near the very end where the floor pieces fall apart no matter where you go.

I saved Luigi from the Haunted Mansion level, but now he has gone off and got lost somewhere else. A pill shaped deal, that I remember doing ages ago, but for the life of me, can't remember where, so i haven't been able to save his ass a second time. That's the problem with playing the game so casually, I guess

You'll see a green (i think?) star on the stage he's in when you go to the galaxy rooms. The first one is the very first stage.

Ah - nice - I'll have another look around this evening, I hope

Up to 48 stars.

Swimming levels are v boring as always.

lol just got this the other day. is this surfing shit required? because I SUCK AT IT. wasn't even drunk.

game was good, had its own groove which is what makes for a good Mario game. thread's FUCK YOU, IT'S A BEE SUIT undeservedly failed to reach meme status tho.

About 28 stars away from finishing with Luigi. I like the way that everything is easier because he jumps further and faster EXCEPT the Cosmic Comet Luigi has also spotted this and long-jumps everywhere. Also he's too slippery, but then this is a Mario, so only half the game with proper land-and-stick is as much as I can expect.

The 8-bit Luigi level (with Luigi) is the only time I've actually hit a Game Over, poured 30 lives into that shit.

Also ROFL at "Thanks for saving me ... me"

I came back to this after being disappointed by the platforming in Little Big Planet. Still wonderful, often surprising, and utterly captivating. Still frustrated by purple coins and cosmic comets, but it is my own fat thumbs failing.

Yeah, that's a point that I seem to be the opposite of Jeff here, everything feels right with Mario, and when I lose it's because I've fucked up rather than the game has failed me.

Also the game works hard at being a showcase for the console, which is particularly obvious with the trials galaxies: Here's our new controls being used in other ways: the monkeyball, the blowing around bubbles (seriously I could go another ten levels of that shit) and the ray surfing (Hey Tom, I was terrible at this until I did the tutorial one again and realised you're supposed to be turning the remote anti/clockwise like a key in a door instead of just left/right). After all the mad craziness I felt let down that they just didn't have quite enough to go the distance, so the last two hubs contain "Another bee level" "Another blow up the battleship level" "Another diving level". I mean, obviously a hundred times better than "We have six worlds, this one's ice, this one's fire...".

I really didn't like the Spring Mario.

u r mr gay 2

Yeah!

More excited for new Super Mario Bros Wii. Save Galaxy 2 for WiiHD...

i might just have to get a used wii now

jeff, is this supposed wiihd thing going to be a hardware or software update?

anyway, this makes me wish I still had my wii. smg is one of the best, if not the best, mario game imo and this looks even better

as an inveterate mario man, i believe this is the time to make my move no?

With two upcoming Mario titles, why not? New Zelda coming, too, though my guess is that'll be Winter '10 or later.

This stuff plus Tatsunoko vs. Capcom are really tempting me to make the leap, too... but I might still end up skipping this generation entirely.

honestly i dont see a wiihd coming for a longass time given how much $$ they're making now

I agree. WiiHD is likely a pipedream... why would Nintendo bother? Part of the appeal to publishers is how much easier / less expensive it is to develop a game for wii where you don't have to come up with all those HD art assets. At this point I wouldn't be surprised if the next wii is sub-HD as well :(

no that would be INSANE.

smg is one of the best, if not the best, mario game imo and this looks even better

eff u_u no way

super mario world > smb 2 > super mario galaxy > super mario land 2: 6 golden coins > smb3 > super mario land > sm sunshine > nsmb > sm64 > super mario bros > super mario bros the lost levels

strt from my challopian tubes haw

^insanity

WiiHD is a possibility, maybe in a year+ time when sales are flagging. it needn't be a whole new console, more of a DSi halfstep. HD output, 4GB internal, inbuilt motionplus controllers - fanboys would rebuy that shit.
and galaxy >>>>> sm64.

ya but would old wiis be able to play wiihd games?

super mario galaxy i am mr gay 4 u <3

my dream is GTA style mario game where u can just roam - i hav many times requested from a friend who works at rockstar a pitch meeting w/the main dudes so i can sell them on my concept of "going more cute" - not sure why i havent been scheduled yet

because "your friend who works at rockstar" is a framed photo of niko bellic hanging above your bed?

haaha no srsly - he does sound - he says one of the founders has a huge beard and just wanders around the office in bare feet making cryptic visionary pronouncements and everyone is afraid of him

lol @ that

http://explanationblog.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/moses1.jpg

typical day at rockstar

Guys, I have an idea for Super ur Mr Gay 2: QUADRUPLE JUMP

And the sound for each successive jump goes:

ya, oo-hoo, yaa-hooooooooo, suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrgeeee

one word: "interacton"

or "gay"

fuck spelling correctly is for losers

xxxxposts
i meant the theoretical WiiHD and Wii would both play the same games, just like DSi can play normal DS games - there's no sign of any DSi exclusive cart games, and why would any publisher limit their audience that way?
oh yeh i know someone who has done sound for rockstar games too. weird huh.

they must need to create a lot of sounds

but maybe it is the same person is he from canada and called dave

no this person did music for their games, but as an outside contract thing.

o well maybe ill tell dave u know him anyway

There are DSi-exclusive cards coming, but nothing announced.
http://ds.ign.com/articles/966/966301p1.html

the partial anagram at the top of this thread really bugs me.

expo alias ur mr gay 2

not an anagram; the box had sparkly star letters spelling out U R M R G A Y on the box and netgoons had a field day with it.

as in sUpeR MaRio GalAxY

http://i42.tinypic.com/2iqf13.jpg

Is Your Man Gay?
How often do you have sex with your man?
More than once a day

If you have sex with your man less than once a day he's gay btw

if u have sex w/your man more than once a day and you are a man he is gay

btw

is your man mr gay?

rly regretting selling my wii right abt now

y is dat?

herpes

u r mr gay 2

Two years later, I've finally beaten this game! Pretty satisfying feeling. (would be more satisfying if I hadn't smashed my hand into my coffee table when waggling too vigorously on the final boss fight). I don't know why I got distracted from it and it took me so long to get back to it, but overall, I really enjoyed it, especially this last third or so I played the last week. Not sure if I enjoyed it so much to do the plus game content, which I've heard is much more frustrating? 59 more stars to unlock a new world it says - what's that?

*******SPOILERS******

If you get all the stars with Mario and then let the credits roll, you unlock Luigi. Luigi handles slightly differently (he's faster but with less traction, thus making him a little harder to control). If you then go through the game again, after the 120th star one more will emerge. So there are 121, but only on the second run through.

I have not unlocked Luigi.

********END SPOILERS********

Super Mario Galaxy 2 US release date = May 23rd 2010

YAY!

trailer now up http://www.gametrailers.com/video/nintendo-media-super-mario/62271

Three months from today. LOL Nintendo.

u r mr gay 2 finally coming out

OMG Wiiware version of Dotstream this spring FUCK YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Ok fine u bastards, finally getting around to playing this

Mr. Gay 2 comes out Sunday; though I won't be able to play it for a few weeks, I anticipate it will kick as much ass as the first one.

it indeed does. cough. apparently. cough.

HOW IS IT AMERICA

it's very good. more of the same, but so many ideas, so much fun. Most of the boring stuff from SMG1 has been ripped out and replaced with new cool stuff that works. I've played it a lot this weekend, 91 stars in. Only criticism is that, so far, it's been a little on the easy side.

WANT

do you still have to collect those star bits by pointing at the screen?

I did say *most* of the boring stuff... although tbh I don't mind that so much.

Want x2

this is certainly on the short list
gonna be hard pressed to stop red dead anytime soon tho

Picked this up tonight and played for about an hour. There's something about hearing Mario go, "yeah" and "woo hoo," that is instantly more fun than most other games and puts a big, stupid smile on my face. Design and graphics so far impress (no surprise there). I especially enjoyed the first 2d section that introduces the game (I understand the game plays with 2d more?) and riding around on Yoshi - who feels especially powerful - so much better to be able to eat up those enemies than to bounce on their heads, toss star bits at them, do the spin attack, or run away. Very happy it's a three day weekend coming up - gonna play the hell out of this.

Is no-one else playing this, then?

Saw some surprising Japanese sales figures this morning - apparently this is now the fastest selling 3D mario game ever, at about 340k units in the first week...but New Super Mario Brothers smashed that, at 935k units in week one. Seems amazing to me that the 2D games are so much more popular. The first galaxy game ended up selling just over a million units total in Japan, compared with tne 3.86m that NSMB is now on.

Loved the first but haven't picked up the second. Looking forward to it but not in a hurry by any means.

xp Mrs Tomofthenest won't play galaxy / galaxy 2 because of the upside-down-ness. She says watching it makes her feel sick. Extrapolating from a sample size of one, I know, but I wonder whether its disorientating nature has put off other casual players?

also, massive nostalgia for 2d "classic" mario of course.

I much prefer galaxy to SMB, but I think that's mainly 'cos I never really played 2d mario as a kid, and subsequently suck at it. I bought SMB3 from the Wiistore but it just drives me mad. Some friends stayed over and just played it all night, which infuriated me even more.

Is Galaxy 2 out yet? Not seen it anywhere.

not out in EU for another week, Aussies have to wait til 1st July

I'll wait 'til July then, payday and my girlfriend's away most of the month. Hope the weather's shittier too.

also, massive nostalgia for 2d "classic" mario of course

At this point I'd imagine there are also tons of people nostalgic for 3d Mario too, since it came out 14 years ago - those kids are probably having kids now? I do prefer the 2d games (useless chamber, maybe try the original Super Mario Bros if you haven't - I think it holds up very well and is more straight-forward & easier than the 2d Mario games that followed & also it is perfection). But I'm enjoying Galaxy 2 too, just not very far into it yet, dig drilling through planets and making cloud platforms.

playing Galaxy 2 and Mario 64 DS back to back, i'd say the original Mario 64 is still the best 3D mario. the SMG games are too linear. SM64 is like the GTA of marios, you can go anywhere and do anything to get a star. plus, the imperfect jumping/walking control is hard but it's also really fun.

(64 DS polishes up some of the maps (e.g. the clock stage doesn't have a huge pit at the bottom) but also adds a bunch of new bullshit)

I agree with you. I haven't played Galaxy 2 but M64 does have more of a "sandbox" feel. I bet that does contribute a lot towards why it is my favorite 3D mario. Also it is the hardest 3D mario.

The next 3D mario oughta be a sandbox game. That would be awesome. The first town in the game could have tons of minigames for the kids.

Mario 64 blew me away when it first came out, but trying to go back to play it today (well, a year or two ago), I couldn't fucking stand the clunky controls :(

Shell surfing was the best

Also it is the hardest 3D mario

Harder than Sunshine? I missed Mario 64 when it came out, and it's difficult to go back to nowadays because of the controls and dated graphics.

Yeah, but I would try to get every single star (or shine) and I counted that as part of the difficulty

The last few of the 120 were tricky. done now, though, and back to having fun again!

Enjoying this so far. Early levels are very much a recap of SMG1, I'm waiting for the real wacky shit to start happening. Enjoyed the drill levels.

I played a bunch of SMG2 last night and it is fucking amazing.

I never played SMG1 though so I can't really compare the two.

I hate the levels where you have to get like all the coins in a certain amount of time.

feels samey to me, but it's fun. don't like the mario head spaceship though.

Yoshii's egg on his nose looks like a zit.

Hold on, are you both the same jeff?

No, I'm uppercase Jeff.

damn your similar usernames!!!!

SMG2 is fun! I agree that the linear "you're here to do this task right now" nature of it is a little bit of a drag but the game is a blast otherwise

Still playing the first SMG.

Did anyone else find the ray-surfing REALLY difficult?

I don't really remember ray-surfing as such, but I think that might be a result of wiping out the parts I disliked the most from my memory, so that might've been one of them. Having looked at a video of it, ray-surfing was def. one of those levels where I was glad to be out of it. Also the icy levels.

Was planning on spending a month of temporary bachelordem playing SMG2 but a) the weather's been lovely, and b) I'm broke, so it's been postponed. Which is good for me, as it means I still have a while of playing SMG2 to look forward to in my life.

I'm at the annoying part in SMG2 where you have to do timed things. I hate those, or racing something else.

man I don't mind a good race/timed thing but mario games are pretty uneven with those -- SMG races kinda blow. The penguin race from Mario 64 on the other hand was awesome

penguin race ruled so hard I wonder why they never did another one as cool

I'm at the annoying part in SMG2 where you have to do timed things. I hate those, or racing something else.

Chimp squish-squids challenges are totally infuriating but one of my favourite things from SMG2 so far. I just love swearing at my TV.

I'm eatin' my words about SMG2 races - the purple coin treetrunk race was a fucking blast

Seems like there's more of the timed stuff that you pretty much have to do, in SMG2?
I'm on the final level and have literally used about 70 lives doing the bit that starts a couple of save points in, where you need to eat the chilli and go through a wall of lava. It is literally impossible and I'm about to give up on the whole damn thing. Tragically this is EXACTLY what I did on SMG1 :( I have a low tolerance for repeating the same thing 70 times over.

Are you waiting for it to close once and then going when it starts to open again?

Oh god. I gave up on Sarah Michelle Gellar 2 after star 55 because of all the lazy timed/racing shit. It's 2010, I don't want to be pissfarting around with that crap. Shame, because up until star 40-odd I was infatuated with this game.

Miyamoto maybe needs to just admit he's past it and get on with Wii Tambourine Frenzy or whatever his new secret project is.

My experience was similar. I got enough stars for the final castle so I should just go ahead and beat it. Hate not getting 100% though.

Miyamoto wasn't involved in the making of this game. Great game, though easy to beat, no level bothered me. Some bad levels but less than expected with the amount of variation shown.

i hated the flying waggle stages. the chili bit in the final stage is easy though, i never died on it.

must have played that purple coin sliding down the inside of a log stage about 80 times before i beat it, so frustrating. great game tho.

I can get through the actual wall of lava bit ok (well, about one in 4 times), it's the bit after that with those innocuous-looking but killer slidy pink brick things and hippos made of lava eating you. I *know* how to do it but can't do it all on one go. Gr.

Just had another go at this. Thoroughly inventive but very, very boring when you're expected to execute the same perfectly-timed series of pinpoint jumps etc. 100+ times in succession. That's not fun.

I'd forgotten how easy the boss levels are. Suits me, I hate boss levels.

all super mario games have insanely silly easy boss levels

i was pretty rubbish at at the sky ship koopa bosses in 3 :(

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/20/101220fa_fact_paumgarten?currentPage=all this is good

I'm playing Super Mario Galaxy 2 right now. HOT DAMN is it fun. And really quite difficult, though maybe that's just me not really being used to playing 3D Mario games.

The ghost houses are incredible. The one in Galaxy 3 where there's a carpet being eaten away is just so cool.

is Galaxy 2 worth springing for? how is it different than Galaxy 1?

I don't know, I only played 1 a little bit. Seems pretty similar. I've heard 2 is bigger and a bit more difficult.

I liked how intuitive things were - a lot of the levels were big and had vague objectives, but only a few times did I ever think "what am I supposed to do here?" 64 had a lot of moments like that, but they seemed intentional. Didn't like all the weird gravity tricks; trying to stomp things on a tiny circular planet was tough. I heard SMG2 was more linear and normal.

i havent played either but everyone i know who has says 2 is just a big improvement on 1 in level design

2 is more streamlined and much more challenging, well worth getting

I am loving this, the different gravity puzzles, the Rube Goldberg machines. Sometimes it's like exploring the inside of an M.C. Esher drawing. If you get Yoshi you can play it like a 3rd person shooter. And I'll take all the Mario minigames you got if they are as fun as the tree slide. My only beef is that the spring suit is the hardest thing to control in the world and i hope they never bring it back.

I'm playing through Dolphin, so it's all in 1900x1600 HD and it looks REALLY nice!

i can't get the galaxy games to run at full framerate on dolphin, they're like the most gfx-intensive games nintendo's ever made

It takes some hacking away. I don't know how i did it, cos earlier this evening it was running at 800x600 super slow. Now, it's kind of insane how smooth it is at 1920x1200. Graphics settings:

GENERAL
Direct3D9
1920x1200
Force 16:9

ENHANCEMENTS
Internal Resolution: Auto (Window Size)
AA: None
Anisotropic: 16x
Scaled EFB: check
everything else off

HACKS
check Skip EFB, Ignore Format Changes, and OpenMP Texture Decoder
I'm using OpenMP Texture Decoder under Hacks in the Graphics menu

I think ice skating has been my favorite thing to do so far!

are you using keyboard/mouse or some type of controller?

Keyboard/mouse. It actually controls pretty well, though some stuff like the tilting of the Wiimote needs to be remapped to keys and is obviously far less enjoyable than it would be w a real system. Actually I'm having such a good time i'll probably end up getting a real Wii controller.

do you think it'd be playable on a gamepad using left stick for movement and right stick for the wiimote? or are there parts where you need mouse-precision on the pointer?

Getting the stars is such a huge part of the game you really kind of have to use the mouse for it.

OK sliding down the sand thing in front of that pyramid was effing FUN.

It is a good game

But once I got onto the bonus second half a game after the "final boss", there were too many tricky coins in earlier levels and I couldn't unlock everything :(

Balancing on the moon in one of the later ghost galaxies. AMAZING!

The scene is bending up and down like a pop-up book.

Ghost Mario is rad. Can these games get any trippier?

I'd say Super Mario Advance is the trippiest Mario

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAeumZj_m_s

* SPOILERS *

Ok the Bowser Space Battle was awesome. Flying through a space tunnel wormhole or whatever the hell that was and bashing him with asteroids. And the ending cutscene was awesome too, a big shiny fantasy anime with a ridiculous plot and super awesome live CGI. All the cutscenes and pre-animated scenes in this game are amazing, as is the soundtrack. Just flying to a level looks and sounds so cinematic and awesome. Bloomed out supernovas, sentient stars speaking in polygons, and this working-class silent film action stunt man defying the laws of physics. SO GREAT.

The only way this could be better is if every galaxy was connected seamlessly and you could fly between them without a menu at all. An open-world Mario game.

I also love how all the spoken dialog is always only one word or just a vocal inflection standing in for text.

* SPOILERS *

An open-world Mario game.

I'm not sure that would be better - in theory yes, and maybe for the first hours of playtime, but I loved how I could just go back to SMG2 and point at the level I wanted to play, unlike the first one. That's such a big part of Mario that I don't know how an open world entry would ever push the right buttons.

This team is infallible, though, and Super Mario 3D Land for the 3DS packed some of the same visual flare and architectural wonder of Galaxy but a radically altered gameplay, and it worked incredibly well. Well enough to compete with those console games. They're working on a new 3D one now.

maybe it changes as you get older. when I was a kid I thought the open-world system in Mario 64 was awesome. with Galaxy I have less time for video games and it's hard to come back after two months and try to remember where you have to go (it's not exactly hard to figure out, but still, you just want to get to the level)

the mario 64 castle is my favorite overgrown menu ever: all the secret rooms and slides and locked doors and winding staircases and the courtyard and the basement and the moat and the stairs that never end and the cannon that shoots you onto the rooftop at the end of the game to meet yoshi. and everything so eerily silent and empty. i haven't played SMG2 but the overstuffed chirping secretless spaceship in SMG was Total Bullshit by comparison.

agreed

Oh fuck no, it is such a pain in the ass going anywhere in the castle. Mind you I'm of the view that SMG > SM64 anyway.

I'm not sure that the spaceship is secretless so much as some of the secrets it has are requires to finish (the three green stars that shoot you to new worlds, Luigi and his secret stars) - there's still a bunch of 1-ups hidden in odd places tho.

i do still feel the Mario 64 castle was pretty much the gold standard of this kind of thing

yeah there's "1-ups in odd places" and then there's "there is a trapdoor underneath the moat which you can discover after you get into the room in the basement with the controls that allow you to drain the moat and thus access the hidden level where you get a powerup that in turn allows you to get to a bunch of stuff you couldn't reach before in levels you've already been to"

i liked galaxy a lot (and from the above it sounds like SMG2 is prob a little better) as a 3D-ization of the pre-64 linear model of mario (the levels aren't as on-a-track as SMB3 or SMW and there is the occasional freeform part but there's way less "here is an environment" stuff than SM64; it's mostly about providing really nicely-flowing series of mechanical events) but the openness of 64 is kind of a holy grail for me. i mean it helped that i was 9 right.

i played 64 once at a friend's house and then i had DREAMS about it until i got it myself.

64 does a lot of really cool things that they haven't done again. mario's range of motion in that game is incredible and really tight to control, they came close to replicating this in sunshine but not quite and then galaxy with the new controller just regresses into clunky simplicity. the other is the open-endedness of the levels and the focus on exploration and getting the stars mostly in whatever order you could find them, with the star select screen acting more as 'hints' than 'missions'

galaxy with the new controller just regresses into clunky simplicity.

can you expand? I can think of his backflips being more linear, but the entire world's range of motion is so hugely expanded that this slight tradeoff in Mario's limberness seems inconsequential

Yeah i've never played 64 much, maybe i should try it. I agree that SMG2 is pretty linear. Difficult listening hour described it perfectly. There's all these cool stunts to do, but for the most part you are stuck in once area until you unlock the next, and you never really unlock more than one at a time. That said they are AMAZING levels that are ground-breaking and really quite brilliantly playing with the conventions of the genre in a hundred unique ways. I think my favorite was the ghost world where you are marching down a narrow hallway in space and the carpet beneath you is repeatedly scrolling between two event horizons in a loop. I was sort of sad there weren't more levels done like that!

That's a mark of great level design, to make you want more!

The green stars at the end were a neat idea, but there really didn't have to be three of them, or maybe they could have let you collect all three at once instead of closing the level out, going back to the spaceship, reading a bunch of prompts, going back to the galaxy, selecting the next green star, and waiting for the cinematics in order to start the galaxy all over again from the beginning. I probably wasted alot of time just clicking 'A'.

single worst thing about all nintendo games, right there

'Hi, Mario!'
A
'Boy, it's cold out here!'
A
'Sure could use some warmth right about now!'
A
'How 'bout you go fetch me some stars?'
A
'Oooh!'
A
'Hey!'
A
'Guess what?'
A
'Bet you'll never guess!'
A A A
'Princess Peach is inside of that castle!'
A
'And…'
A
'You…'
A
'Mario…'
A A A A A
'You can go save the princess!'
A
'Now go save the princess!'
A
'Ill be waiting right here!'
A
'Traaaaaaans-FORM!!'
A
'Pow!'
A
'You're still here?'
AAAAAAAAAAAAA

'Did you get all that?'
NO WAIT FUCK I MEANT YES OK FUCK THIS
*turns off wii*

it's the shitty quasi-american high school slang that nobody ever speaks anywhere ever that actively turns me off nintendo games these days

like you'll be in a ye olde tavern in hyrule and some canvas-clad dingbat will say 'wait up, I'll go check for you'

Just remembered those secret levels in Sunshine, the ones that didn't even pretend to be set in realistic environments or anything, but were just pure platforming. They were great, and influenced a lot of 3D Land.

Anyway my sister has donated a bunch of her old Wii games so SMG arrived in our house yesterday, am pretty excited about finally getting around to playing it (although I'm still in the middle of both New SMB 2 and New SMB U at the moment so might try to get those (which are both more fun than I expected tbf) finished off first).

that was IMO the best part of Sunshine. I agree that something never felt quite right about that game. It felt a little odd and glitchy to me. Certain missions were nearly unplayable!

the whole thing about Mario's range of motion in Mario 64 is really the main selling point to me. I believe Nintendo always used to talk about making games where you'd forget you have a controller in your hands and this one certainly did that. if you ever watch any of the speedrun videos it's really quite amazing how much is really possible in that game. intentional or not, nearly every area in 64 had a "linear" and "nonlinear" way to get there. like, you could always get from point A to point B very quickly if you landed the perfect moves. seriously if you haven't go watch some speedrun videos, you'll be amazed at what's possible; like 95% of what they do is shortcuts. Galaxy takes sooooo much longer to beat because the levels are so linear.

lollllllllllllllll autumn almanac

range of motion stuff otm; also, one of the things i loved about 64 (altho this is true of mario in general, almost without exception i think? maybe i am misremembering SMG) is that you never learn "new moves". like it's largely+justly forgotten now (not as a brand, but as a game) but when banjo-kazooie came out it was treated as a big platformer masterpiece, and every other level it stopped to have some anthropomorphic badger or something teach you a new button combination. in mario 64 you could do like six things, you could do them all from the beginning, and their applications expanded near-infinitely. the wall jump in particular, which took my 9-yr-old thumbs the longest to master, i remember just throwing the levels open.

ahhh yes - there is some of this in Mario with the caps and the new water pumps or whatever but that's totally OTM. one of the reasons why I quit playing video games so much was because of stuff like Metroid Prime where everything would be "grab the blue gun to unlock the blue door, get the booster pack to get over this cliff, etc. etc. etc.", and by the end of the game every single button did something unique but you'd never use any of them for anything but the areas you couldnt get to otherwise. even the original Mario games were kinda like this, I remember as a kid how cool it was to find out that most levels had areas above you could fly to, and it starts on the very first level.

also, maybe it's because the levels on Galaxy don't really unfold or "build up" the way the 64 ones did but I also remember Mario 64 giving me a weird sense of vertigo on the tougher levels (Tick Tock Clock and Rainbow Road), like getting to the top and jumping off was something that really made me physically uncomfortable, but it was neat for a video game to trigger that sensation

thats a really good point about mario games not following the adventure game progression that metroid and zelda do where it's constantly get item, use item to reach new area. which is why the mission structure in sunshine/galaxy feels wrong to me, it's like the path of least resistance in forcing structure upon a game that doesn't have the adventure game progression

god tick tock clock.

kinda wanna do sm64 levels poll.

oh by the way the speedruns on Tick Tock Clock are INSANE

hazy maze cave is my favorite level i think

re sm64 overworld and level design: that game's jumping-castle joy was (as per miyamoto's later testimony iirc) shoved across to the zelda games by nintendo/ead, which sucks because there's so much that's uniquely wonderful about that castle. doing the same sort of exploration/gay abandon in a hyrule-based village or whatever is not even close to being the same sort of thing because (a) it's all grass and wooden carts and acorn children and so forth (b) you can't pivot or leap or somersault. it's not like a playground, it's like poking around someone's backyard.

where i'm going with this is that nintendo/ead missed a trick by moving sm64's whole sense of childlike wonder wholesale to the zelda games. the smg games are of course brilliant, and they're absolutely on point wrt super mario in general being a wholly skill-based platformer, but you really do just go through the motions now. arguably the best aspect of sm64 was that a pile of stars were just around all the time, and (with a handful of exceptions) you didn't have to collect them sequentially (as mentioned upthread).

i remember loads of people being properly angry when sm64 was new, because it took them ages to find *any* of the stars in some levels. they were all 'waaah i don't want to think or explore in this game'. nintendo responded directly to those people, who are no longer lost or bored, which is nice, but the rest of us don't get funky castles to be lost in anymore, and we don't have the pleasure of just dropping into a playground, running in literally any direction and having brilliant and rewarding experiences. you get dumped at the edge of something (usually a tiny glob of land just floating in space), and you can only go where the game allows you to go.

old man yells at cloud mario is where i'm going with this

" which is why the mission structure in sunshine/galaxy feels wrong to me, it's like the path of least resistance in forcing structure upon a game that doesn't have the adventure game progression"

Wait - how does Galaxy or Sunshine have this adventure game progression? It's just unlocking worlds through beating levels like the old Mario games. Also you can still finish a lot of stars in Sunshine in your own sequence, it's not that different from 64 structure wise.

I always speak against open world-ish Mario games whenever speculation about the direction of the series comes up. I still suspect EAD will go for something like it, at least on the surface to suggest a more epic scale to fit the new HD console.

I didn't like NSMB2, maybe the first Mario ever I was bored of before beating the final Bowser. Can't really remember a single level. Haven't tried NSMB U yet, hear it's better. Juxtaposed with 3DLand it's the biggest reminded yet that EAD and the 3D Marios operate on a different level entirely now.

I don't get why they don't do themed NSMBs. Imagine NSMB Galaxy - fully 2D but with the setting of the Galaxy games, levels inspired by the crazy 2D they pulled off there, gravity, up and down, madness in 2D. DO IT.

Yeah Galaxy was pretty close to SMB3 I felt, maybe a little more non-linear. Usually you would beat a level and have like 2 other ones to chose from. Still, the level of skill and just how fine-tuned all the galaxies are is just pitch-perfect. With a more open world i think it may be impossible to pull those off. How to do a non-linear gravity-switching up/down 2D castle?

I read a bunch before playing SMG2 and was somewhat afraid of people talking everywhere i went and having to stop and read a text box or watch a cinematic, but really if you just don't walk up to the NPC friendly's you don't have to deal with any of that. Yeah it's ridiculous to have a rabbit tell you "Press A to jump!" after you've been playing the game for 4 hours but then don't walk over to the rabbit and hit the talk button.

I don't get why they don't do themed NSMBs. Imagine NSMB Galaxy - fully 2D but with the setting of the Galaxy games, levels inspired by the crazy 2D they pulled off there, gravity, up and down, madness in 2D. DO IT.

― abcfsk, Saturday, 2 February 2013 13:11 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ead r&d probably has 8,000 test builds of super mario games that never made it to release

otm

yeah I remember a Nintendo Power that talked about Super Mario 64 2 and getting all excited about it, only to have it never come out

remember super mario 128?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/99/SuperMario128.jpg/270px-SuperMario128.jpg http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_HuVp506Cl2w/Sjrm2LLI3yI/AAAAAAAAC4A/ioi4TfTtuts/s400/SM128_Image6.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgtFXXzE8bk

http://i50.tinypic.com/1jss5k.jpg

apparently the tech that went into mario128 ended up in pikmin

oh yes of coursr