Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2 - Review

With the Super Mario Bros 40th Anniversary, I honestly had no real idea what Nintendo might do to celebrate, if they would at all. For the 35th Anniversary they had that one fun game that got delisted a few months later and we got the Game and Watch replica. Turns out they have a few more plans for the 40th and the first release in that plan are updated versions of Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2. Was this a winning combination?

For the most part yes, as both games were fantastic on Wii and while the Switch release of Super Mario Galaxy in the Super Mario 3D All-Stars was great, it was mostly just a straight port. This time around they have actually done some proper work to get them to run on the Switch, taking better advantage of things, but of course, the big change is the increase in resolution and quality for the games. One of the things that Galaxy has over its sequel is the story, there is actually a decent story to be told in the game, which is rare for a Mario game. Don’t get me wrong, a story about good triumphing over evil is always welcome, but for Mario, that is usually how deep they go. Galaxy has a new characters, lore and more, which makes the sequel feel less in comparison. The gist of both games is Bowser has kidnapped Princess Peach once again and Mario takes after them, but of course, instead of running all over the Mushroom Kingdom, the adventures blast you off to space.

Now a large focus of the two games was always going to be how well they played, given that both games were made for the Wii. If you never played the Wii, it used motion controls a lot, but it made full use of the pointer on the Wii remote, something that the Switch or Switch 2 does not have. Now we already got a good idea of how the first game was going to play, again due to Super Mario 3D All-Stars, but that game was fairly tame. The sequel on Wii introduced Yoshi and you controlled his tongue by pointing at the screen, here if you are playing docked, you use motion control to point where the tongue should go and it’s ok. It does work, the problem is if there are too many targets for Yoshi to grab, or you are moving quickly, getting the cursor to line up enough so that Yoshi can register that he can grab it, is hard. The levels where you can just take your time, those are perfectly fine and they do show that the mechanic works, but those speed focused levels are more pain than gain.

What makes this especially frustrating is that the game will sometimes put Mario into running around in a circle. I figured when this was happening, it was due to my pressing the stick when I grabbed something, but nope, it would happen without Yoshi and even when playing as Luigi. This is not the most annoying thing in the world, but when you are doing a challenge with a timer, losing time because Mario didn’t move how you wanted him to, that is frustrating. Outside of weird tongue control and random circle runs, the gameplay is honestly quite solid, the levels still feel as fun and vibrant as they did when they first released, some levels stand out still among the rest and when Mario is doing his thing properly, you will have a smile on your face.

Now, one of the major additions to this release is that the games have been given a bump in its appearance. You might be forgiven for looking at these new versions and thinking that everything looks the same, but that is more a testament to the art design than anything else. The Wii maxed out at a resolution of 480p, that is 640x480 and for the SD console that was fine, but today on Switch the resolution is 1920x1080 and Switch 2 is 3840x2160. Now for some games that are already pixelated, like Super Mario Bros, stretching that image out won’t do much to it, but for something like Galaxy and Galaxy 2, it won’t work the same. While a lot of care has been done to make the games look great and playing on Switch 2 in 4K, it does look great at times, it also has the downside of highlighting the flaws.

Now these are now flaws like seeing gaps in the world or elements missing, but rather highlighting all the shortcuts that the original developers used in making the games. The most common one is Mario himself, more so whenever you see him get a star or really any time the camera is focusing on his front. Every time that happened, all I could see were Mario’s legs going through themselves and his face, each time there is a light on it, the entire thing lights up like he is a performer in a Disney nighttime parade. By this I mean his face is lit up very brightly, far more than the rest of him and I get what they are attempting to do, but I just don’t think they succeeded. Honestly, the lighting is the most unbalanced aspect of the visuals, there are times in both games when its on point and looks amazing and then there are times when things light up in the wrong way.

One of the nicer aspects of the games is the audio, with two very great reasons. Number one is the soundtrack, both games contain incredible scores and I will never tire of hearing them. The second reason is that Charles is back as Mario, which just goes to show that these are ports and not remakes. Charles is Mario and hearing his voice work again makes my heart soar, mostly because the new guy they got is just not good, in my opinion. Being able to enjoy both that iconic score and classic Mario voice, it is a real delight.

Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2 for Nintendo Switch are some great adaptations of some fantastic games. There are some times when the game does things without your input and trying to use the motion to target objects with Yoshi can be a struggle, but you get more good than bad. The visuals look amazing, but the downside is that you can see the shortcuts that were used and the lighting in both games feels weird. If you have never played either of these games, then you owe it to yourself to do so today, they are incredible platformers and just fun games to enjoy. Are they perfect, no they are not, but they are still totally worth your time.

The Score

8.0

Review code provided by Nintendo

The Pros

Both games are amazing to play and the implementation of motion does work well enough for the pointer

The games still look amazing, more so when you play on Switch 2…

The Cons

… but the updated look does have some visual issues that are quite noticeable

I would have loved to have seen some of the Galaxy 2 updates carried back to Galaxy, like fast text