For my first post on this video game blog, I figured that I'd talk about the greatest video game character of all time. I forced myself to hold off on Super Mario Galaxy until Christmas due to the fact that I had a strong desire to study for and pass Organic Chemistry. Anyway, on that fateful Christmas day, like a shadow of my former child-self, eager to tear through endless gifts filled with Ghostbuster Proton Packs, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures, I opened up the gift that contained Super Mario Galaxy. I was so exited, after weeks of reading awesome reviews and watching clips on Youtube, I finally had the game in my hand. After Christmas morning was over I headed into my room, fired up my Wii, and began playing the game. Right off the bat, I couldn't help but notice the colorful environments and the wonderfully-orchestrated music that were both very new and yet paid very good homage to old-school Super Mario games. I'm not going to do a whole review of the game, partly because I'm lazy, partly because I don't have the knowledge of certain aspects of games in general (software, sound, etc.), and partly because there are millions of reviews out there already. However, I will say that I beat the game rather easily (I got 104 stars before I went to confront Bowser in the Fate of the Universe). This surprised me very much since I hadn't really played a video game in years. Was I really that good? Is it like riding a bike? Am I like The Wizard? The answer, in short, is no, not by a long shot. So what was the reason I had such an easy time beating the game? Simply, it is because the game itself was easy. My gamer friends tell me that vid games in general are becoming easier because the companies want to broaden their fanbase and I suppose that Nintendo's flagship character shouldn't be an exception to this new rule. There were two major aspects that made this game easy in particular. One was the fact that all of the levels were linear, meaning that the game led you to where you had to go with, at most, moderate exploration involved. I often referred to the format of the game as a side-scroller in a 3-D environment. The second aspect was the fact that you only needed to find half the stars in the game (60) in order to face Bowser in the last level. Now if you are like me and have to completely beat a Dome and its Snacky Happiness Secret Galaxy outside of it before moving on, it is clear that a normal person could beat the game within 3 days, and a hardcore gamer could beat it within hours.

Now I never owned a Gamecube and as a result never played Super Mario Sunshine. Based on what I know about the game, have read about it, and have heard about it from my friends, it was very disappointing in general and was not a worthy sequel to the genius that was Super Mario 64. Having played through both SM64 and Galaxy I will say that Galaxy is definatly a worthy sequel based on the variety of Marioesque environments and stages alone, but cannot compete with SM64's larger environments and more exploration-based objectives in order to gain stars. I loved the fact that you could get stars out of order just by stumbling upon them. It was extremely rare to do that in Galaxy. But I digress, Super Mario Galaxy was at worst, pretty to look at, and at best, amazing to play. That game, along with New Super Mario Bros. (which I also got for Christmas after finally getting a Nintendo DS) were both very pleasing because of the combination of new aspects as well as old-school Mario characteristics. Welcome back, Mario. You're #1 once again.

Thanks for reading,
Mike.