[COLUMN] I’m In Awe of Super Mario Galaxy 2’s Shotgun Approach to Creativity | by Marty Sliva

It’s a stupidly busy time for games right now. I’ve rolled credits on Silent Hill f and Silksong, both of them now safely in my rear-view mirror for the time being. I’m making great progress in Hades 2, now comfortably able to clear the “southern” route on any given run, while working my way towards trying to crack the final boss of the “northern” route. I just hit Chapter 3 of Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, and the added voice acting is solidifying why this game has among the strongest stories in the franchise’s history. And though I’m only a few hours into Ghost of Yotei, that opening stretch has provided the exact kind of pleasing open-world exploration loop that I’ve been craving at this exact moment.

But even with all of those on my plate, I still find myself reaching for my Switch 2, loading up 2010’s Super Mario Galaxy 2, and constantly marveling over its shotgun approach to sheer creativity in every single level.

Considering how many times I’ve played them, most 3D Mario games feel like comfort food to me at this point. Whether it’s snagging stars through Peach’s castle in 64, soaking in the vibes of Isle Delfino in Sunshine, restoring Rosalina’s ship in Galaxy, living my best cat life in 3D World, becoming a kaiju in Bowser’s Fury, or engaging in the ethics of mind control in Odyssey, I know all of them like the back of my hand.

However, Super Mario Galaxy 2 is an outlier. Not because I haven’t played it or didn’t love it – I did, and I absolutely did. A few years back, I put together a list of my favorite games from every single year I’ve been alive, and I had Galaxy 2 topping 2010, just ahead of the original Red Dead Redemption. And though I consider 2010 to be one of the weakest gaming years of the century so far, being at the top still means something.

But that’s the thing – I devoured Galaxy 2 back on the Wii in 2010, but then unlike all of those other aforementioned 3D Mario adventures, I never revisited it afterwards. The experience of playing it crystalized in my memory, and as I talked about a little while back with Hollow Knight, I had forgotten just how good it really was.

And that quality shouldn’t come as a huge surprise. As the only “true” sequel in 3D Mario history, Galaxy 2 was able to deliver a sense of direct iteration and refinement in a way that differs from the traditional Nintendo approach of creating a new game that feels like a completely new experience every console generation. By using the historically sturdy bones of the original Galaxy and the familiar hardware of the Wii, the sequel is able to immediately hit the ground running. The basic verbs and grammar of the game were already codified in its predecessor, and because of that, it’s able to stretch its wings and deliver an uncut stream of creativity that never lets up. 

At first, I was a bit torn on this game’s presentation of its overworld and level selection. The original Galaxy created such a palpable vibe via the Comet Observatory, Rosalina’s ship that acts as your hub throughout the adventure. Even as you brought power back to the various rooms, unlocking more levels to explore, there was still a sense of melancholy throughout the whole thing that really stuck with me. That was aided by the need to physically travel to the different rooms to then soar off to their respective galaxies.

Galaxy 2 scrapped that in favor of a much more streamlined approach to level selection. Once you run up to the steering wheel of your ship, you’re able to choose to revisit any level in any world that you’ve unlocked, with almost zero friction. Though it loses a bit of the tactility and sense of place that existed in the Comet Observatory, it makes up for it by giving you the ability to rapidly ping pong between stages and challenges, making late-game star cleanup a much more enjoyable experience.

Plus, you still have your hub world here, albeit in a much more compact form. Instead of Rosalina’s sprawling vessel, you have Starship Mario, which is terrifyingly in the shape of Mario’s head. I love completing certain challenges, and discovering that whatever new kind of critter I’ve recently encountered ended up coming back and joining the growing population of misfits and weirdos aboard my vessel. And side note, someone in my Twitch chat pointed out that between this and Samus’ ship, Nintendo likes it when a character drives a spacecraft in the shape of their own head. I know that’s only two examples, but that’s two more than I would’ve expected.

When it comes to the actual levels themselves, the speed at which new ideas, mechanics, and twists are introduced is almost staggering. Managing your flight meter as Bee Mario, creating your own platforms as Cloud Mario, and destroying anything in your path as Rock Mario all make their given challenges feel unique from what came before, or what comes after. This is only amplified by the addition of Yoshi, who has their own share of abilities that create even more fun scenarios. 

The developers used these unique powers to create bite-sized stages that are able to lean in towards their creative center. Whether that’s Yoshi eating a hot pepper and running up vertical walls, platforming challenges with blocks that disappear and reappear to the beat of song, or racing through canyons on the wings of your new bird pals, Galaxy 2 is almost reckless in how it presents a new idea for a single objective, before almost immediately moving on to something else. It might not be the most economical form of creativity, but I can’t say that I don’t appreciate it immensely.

Also, by being a direct sequel to Galaxy, it feels like the design ethos picks up directly where that last one left off, particularly when it comes to difficulty. Folks who really want to test these 3D platforming waters are going to find that the pool is almost entirely made up of the deep end, which I love. This is especially true coming off the heels of Donkey Kong Bananza, which didn’t really start to flex its difficulty muscles until the post game, and even then, never to this degree.

I know it’s easy to bemoan companies like Nintendo rereleasing games from their back catalogue instead of focusing on new experiences. And I know that there’s a discussion to be had on pricing an update to a 15-year-old game at $40, especially when multiple Game of the Year contenders are launching at half of that price. But for me, Super Mario Galaxy 2 is the exact kind of game that deserves to have a new light shown on it for modern audiences. Because unless you still have your Wii or Wii U hooked up, its lack of a presence on modern hardware meant that folks – myself included – forgot just how damn good it was.

It’s odd that the 2025 games Galaxy 2 reminds me of most are Hades 2 and Silksong. All three are built upon the incredibly sturdy bones of their predecessors. All three place trust in their players to create a new baseline of challenge that feels like they’re in conversation with what came before. And all three let you get your soak on in a hot tub back at your home base.

I lied, only two of the games let you do that. But I’ll let you worry about which two that is.