I hit the magic 60 star mark in Super Mario Galaxy tonight, so I think I could go straight to the final level(s) now, but I want to finish the main stars in the final galaxy cluster first, at least. There’s only a few more of them to go anyway, so I must still be missing a lot of hidden and comet stars, and probably won’t bother with them until after beating the main game.

Today I ran across the usual sand, ice, and fire worlds, as is pretty much expected in a Mario game nowadays, but at least there were a few new twists on them. The fire and ice were actually combined into the same galaxy, often switching between the two and even having spots where they’re on the same planetoid.

The sand galaxy also made a bit of a fool out of me. I reached one spot where an arrow told me to go one direction, but I noticed that I could go the opposite direction as well, despite quickly flowing sand, if I repeatedly jumped. It was slow going against the sand, but I discovered some star parts in that direction and thought I was going to find a hidden star for my troubles, except…I then wound up back at that same arrow. It was just a loop, and I’d been slowly going against the flow of the sand for no good reason. Ah well.