Yes, it’s SMG time again. I finished off the cluster of galaxies I was in and it did indeed open up a ‘secret’ cluster, though it’s not much of a secret when you get it by just playing through the game normally… I also got to go back to the area you first start in, and completed the coin collection challenge there and gained the ability to fly in some areas. The only place I’ve noticed so far where it will let me is in the main galaxy selection hub, and so far all I’ve really found is a few extra 1up mushrooms.

Of the galaxies I did, of particular note was the Matter Splatter Galaxy, which is a weird one in that the terrain only exists as long as it’s either under a spotlight or has recently been touched by these bouncing lights. If a wall moves into the shadow, you’ll just fall off the map if you then try to go wall-jump off of it. At one point you take the spring powerup and the spotlight slowly moves up the screen, and you have to try to keep up with it. Easier said than done when you factor in the spring’s awkwardness and spring-blocking obstacles… It must have taken me a dozen attempts to finally pass just that one section.

At one point, I noticed that I had 31 lives (they’re certainly not scarce in SMG), and although I hadn’t planned on it yet, I figured I’d take a stab at the final Bowser fight while I had all those lives just in case I needed them. But I didn’t; it wasn’t really all that difficult in the end, with the only frustration coming from how far back it sometimes puts you when you die, making you redo certain easy parts repeatedly. Overall though, there were probably separate galaxy stars that were tougher than the final one.

I’ve still got 41 more stars to collect, and beating the game lets me do the purple comet challenges now. In the purple challenges you just have to collect 100 purple coins, but that’s harder than it sounds when a lot of the stages have some tricky platforming in them and you have to redo the whole thing if you die, not just continue on from the last checkpoint…

I’m not sure if I’ll get all of them, though. I need to collect them all to unlock the ability to play as Luigi, but then I have to recollect all 120 stars all over again as Luigi (who’s harder to control) if I want to unlock a special galaxy, but I don’t know if I have that much patience or time. Maybe I’ll just chip away at it bit by bit in brief, spare moments…

I’m up to 68 stars in Super Mario Galaxy now, and am mostly finished the cluster of galaxies I’m in right now. I think there’s one more cluster though, even though it doesn’t appear on the main map, since I can see another hut where you enter galaxies off in the distance and there’s what looks like an inactive transfer point to it.

Of particular note today was the Toy galaxy, where Mario gains a spring powerup that turns him into something like a slinky, with the ability to bounce really high. It’s a bit difficult to control though, since you never stop bouncing around, but that’s probably supposed to be part of the challenge…

It was particularly frustrating in this one section where there’s a cylinder with multiple levels of brick platforms inside. Getting to the top takes a bit of precision, but if you hit the bottom of a platform when you bounce (which is really easy in the tight space), you break the bricks, making it harder to stay on that platform. The longer you work at it, the harder it gets, as you get less and less landing space to work with. It must have taken me a good 15-20 minutes just to get to the top, and to make things worse, it turned out to be a completely optional area and the reward was just some extra star bits. :P

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.

I’m up to 45 stars now in Super Mario Galaxy, and it continues to be fresh and exciting with every new galaxy. I think I only need 60 stars to beat the game, but I’ll probably continue collecting as many as possible, so who knows how many I’ll have at the end.

I finally got to try out two other powerups tonight: the ice flower, and the Boo mushroom. The ice flower lets you run on top of water by freezing it, and it took me a couple minutes before I realized you could wall-jump up waterfalls that are close together with it. The Boo mushroom turns you into a ghost, but all it’s been used for so far is to let you go through some bars. 99% of the time you’re still just plain old Mario, without any powerups.

I also ran across a comet that I wasn’t able to finish for the first time — it only lets you have one health point in a fairly long boss fight against Bouldergeist. It’s supposedly one of the harder comets, but I think it’ll be doable — I only lost one health point when I fought him normally, and came close in the couple attempts I made at the comet. It’ll just take some persistence.

Most of my gaming time today was spent in Super Mario Galaxy, where I’m now up to 31 stars. I’m an obsessive collector, trying to get all the stars from each galaxy before moving on even while plenty of other new galaxies have been unlocked, so it’s taking me a bit longer than normal.

The most notable part of SMG is in just how much sheer variety there is between the different galaxies, and even when you’re redoing the same galaxy for another star, you’re taking a different path that usually requires a different approach. It keeps things fresh, and you’re never bored because you’re doing the same thing over and over again.

There are also comets, which have you redo a previous level but with a new twist on it (e.g., a time limit, lower maximum health, you have to race a clone…), and ‘? block’ galaxies which are much heavier on precision platforming skills. I’ve been able to beat all of them so far, but reportedly some of the late-game comets are pretty challenging.

Boss fights are also interesting in that they all need their own different tactics, but figuring them out is always intuitive. So far I’ve never had the problem like in other games where you can only weaken the boss by performing some weird series of steps that’s completely non-obvious.

The only problem so far is that the camera works just fine in most stages, except water stages. In one galaxy, you have to lure a torpedo over to hit a weight in a cage, except that after you’ve gotten close enough to get the torpedo to fire, you have to turn around and head for that cage, but the camera is slow to turn with you, so you’re swimming blindly under time pressure. I’ve never really liked the water stages in Mario games to begin with, though…

Since there was still time to kill, the other big chunk of the evening was spent in Super Mario Galaxy, and although I’m not very far into it yet, it’s definitely a winner.

It continues the 3D platforming as seen in Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine, but with some important differences. Instead of the typical flat hills or vertical towers you normally expect, most of the action takes place on small planetoids, with the camera following Mario from above, with the occasional trip inside the planetoid where Mario runs around inside like it’s some kind of giant hamster ball. Gravity can vary wildly as you find yourself running up walls and jumping around edges to ‘fall’ on the other side, and it’s a bit disorienting at first, but you quickly get used to it.

There are multiple galaxies you can visit, each made up of a bunch of different planetoids, and each planetoid has a minor task you have to accomplish on it before you can rocket off to the next one in the series. Most of them are your traditional spherical planet, with different types of rocky/grassy/metallic/etc terrain, but there are also things like pirate ships and cylinders containing platforming sections that you can land on.

There’s not much control over which planetoids you visit, though. Unlike Mario 64, SMG is a lot more linear. Instead of having a bunch of different paintings you can choose from, galaxies are unlocked in a series by reaching star counts (so far, at least), and the stars in each galaxy can only be collected in a specific order, whereas in Mario 64 you could accidentally find or deliberately decide to go for a different star than you first selected.

The controls are pretty effective, with the nunchuk controlling movement and ducking, and the remote controlling jumping and attacks. You can defeat enemies both by jumping on them, as usual, or by shaking the remote and causing Mario to spin around and stun enemies. You can also use the remote to control a cursor that you use to collect ‘star bits’, which you can then also shoot back at the screen to stun enemies. There will probably be more advanced gymnastics required later on, and it’s been pretty easy so far, but I’m still fairly close to the start.

My Wii has been somewhat neglected lately, but SMG is the game that’s finally made me glad I picked one up.