On Super Mario Galaxy
My love for cultural ephemera is pretty much limitless, so it's no surprise that some ephemeral item would be the thing that'd push me back to actually writing, but I honestly didn't expect it to be this. Super Mario Galaxy is, and I am not exaggerating when I say this, the game that the Wii was made to play and could possibly stand on its own as a manifesto of the creative possibilities in gaming. Fuck Shadow of the Colossus. Its tone and design were beautiful, but if we got into a fight about its gameplay I'd be forced to tell you that SMG decided to do SotC's gameplay for a boss fight before getting tired of it and moving on. But before I go too far, I'll try and throw in some background.
Super Mario Galaxy is made, essentially, of minigames. For some dumb Macguffin of a reason, Mario has to run around and collect stars (of course) and the Princess is kidnapped and Bowser is responsible and see if I give a fuck. The whole plot is so perfunctory and is so rapidly shoved aside that I think I actually heard that weird in-Wiimote speaker say "Fuck this, let's get to the game." Each level consists of a traipse through a "galaxy" with some whimsical name and theme. Each of these levels is a staccato experience where you hurtle through space rocketing between the planets in this galaxy, each of which is generally a set-piece of minimal depth and startling ingenuity.
Every time you hurtle through space, the rules change. First you're running around a planet so small that a long jump will send you hurtling halfway round it like some ersatz satellite, then you're chasing a rabbit through a hedge-maze on a cubic planet shot through with tunnels, then you're climbing a network of shifting cubes, throwing switches that change the direction of gravity and falling into the sky. Sometimes it's 2D, sometimes 3D. These are not even the ingenious levels, just the first ones to come to me.
This can happen over the course of two minutes. Super Mario Galaxy creates these brilliant little worlds with their own laws and own strategies and own clever mini-games and throws them away with an abandon that seems almost careless. The experience should feel schizophrenic, but it doesn't. And somehow the problem-solving brain-bending need-to-learn-the-rules-again change-ups never feels anything except intuitive.
The galaxies often seem like obvious cliches when I begin them. An Ice Galaxy! An Underwater Level! But even the grey ladies of gaming cliches manage to hold up new startlingly enjoyable twists. The swimming level gives you Koopa shells that pull you through the water and can be fired off like torpedoes. The ice level turns your "Spin" into "Spin and Start Skating About" and throws you on a toroid world to experiment with Mario's newfound gracefulness.
Visually, it's still a "Mario game" in some attenuated sense but the contortions it that term through; the heady intertextual fetish for referencing old games and their music; the point a mere minute or two into the game when, without any real warning, you are literally ripped from the soil of the Mushroom Kingdom and hurled into space; these things suggest something more at work than simple franchise extension. It feels dorky in the extreme to apply this much thought to a Mario game, but the simple fact is that there's no other way to read this except as a manifesto.
And what is the argument of that manifesto?
To be honest, it's not clear to me yet. If anything, it feels like a paean to the power of the minimalistic platformer. SMG is a masterpiece painted with a four-color palette. You can jump, crouch/stomp, spin, and run around. And somehow this yields an infinitely variant number of playstyles and possibilities. There are power-ups and occasional redefining of the effects of these moves (Spin becomes your generic way of activating almost anything around you or engaging in environmental interactions), but most of the game keeps to a strict ethos of zero skill progression. You never buy Mario the ability to double-jump with your accumulated red orbs.
The second major argument seems to be for physics, but not realistic physics, as the real frontier for game innovations. Platformers have always been a solitary conflict of Man vs. Gravity. SMG transforms that relationship. Gravity'll still kill you, but suddenly you can use it to your advantage to send the venerable plumber arcing over and around planets with balletic ease. Gravity is my closest friend, and it's only betrayed me once. And that betrayal was so novel that I don't even begrudge the game.
I was in the aforementioned "falling between cubes in space by altering gravity" section and ran into a variation: Rather than the linear "you fall down, up, sideways" gravity I'd been working with, some sections were now cylinders that had their own radial "you fall towards the center of this object" gravity. Climbing up to the top of one of these, I leapt, expecting to curve over and land on top of the column. To my surprise and chagrin, the linear gravity apparently kicked in above the column and I hurtled unceremoniously into the void. I laughed heartily. I've never had so much fun being killed suddenly by a game's system.
I'm rubbish at closing out articles, so let me just reiterate my central points: SMG is absurdly good. It is everything it wants to be and is probably the masterwork of the franchise, a shining showcase for all the ingenuity that is possible in the platformer and gaming generally. It is a religious experience. You should probably play it if you get the chance.
I feel compelled to include criticism, because this has been so gushy I'm a little disgusted with myself. First, the enemies (with the exception of bosses) feel like perfunctory additions. They are slow-moving, usually only middlingly lethal, and you're generally safe just running straight past them. I ignore them almost completely. Second, the game is often too easy, with a few sudden standout sections that permit you no errors at all thrown in to yield sudden frustration. Third, it throws so many neat ideas at you that I really frequently wish it would hold onto one for longer, a plea that has yet to be granted. It introduces cool variations on its variations, but very rarely draws them out to their fullest possible limitations. World of Goo had the same problem. Fourth, I know the 1up mushrooms and coins are necessary in a Mario game, lest people pitch fits, but they're either totally antiquated mechanically (1UP) or overlap with another in-game currency system in a way that is a little baroque and ugly (Coins and Star Bits). Fifth, no seriously the life system is outdated and should die an unmourned death.
Super Mario Galaxy is made, essentially, of minigames. For some dumb Macguffin of a reason, Mario has to run around and collect stars (of course) and the Princess is kidnapped and Bowser is responsible and see if I give a fuck. The whole plot is so perfunctory and is so rapidly shoved aside that I think I actually heard that weird in-Wiimote speaker say "Fuck this, let's get to the game." Each level consists of a traipse through a "galaxy" with some whimsical name and theme. Each of these levels is a staccato experience where you hurtle through space rocketing between the planets in this galaxy, each of which is generally a set-piece of minimal depth and startling ingenuity.
Every time you hurtle through space, the rules change. First you're running around a planet so small that a long jump will send you hurtling halfway round it like some ersatz satellite, then you're chasing a rabbit through a hedge-maze on a cubic planet shot through with tunnels, then you're climbing a network of shifting cubes, throwing switches that change the direction of gravity and falling into the sky. Sometimes it's 2D, sometimes 3D. These are not even the ingenious levels, just the first ones to come to me.
This can happen over the course of two minutes. Super Mario Galaxy creates these brilliant little worlds with their own laws and own strategies and own clever mini-games and throws them away with an abandon that seems almost careless. The experience should feel schizophrenic, but it doesn't. And somehow the problem-solving brain-bending need-to-learn-the-rules-again change-ups never feels anything except intuitive.
The galaxies often seem like obvious cliches when I begin them. An Ice Galaxy! An Underwater Level! But even the grey ladies of gaming cliches manage to hold up new startlingly enjoyable twists. The swimming level gives you Koopa shells that pull you through the water and can be fired off like torpedoes. The ice level turns your "Spin" into "Spin and Start Skating About" and throws you on a toroid world to experiment with Mario's newfound gracefulness.
Visually, it's still a "Mario game" in some attenuated sense but the contortions it that term through; the heady intertextual fetish for referencing old games and their music; the point a mere minute or two into the game when, without any real warning, you are literally ripped from the soil of the Mushroom Kingdom and hurled into space; these things suggest something more at work than simple franchise extension. It feels dorky in the extreme to apply this much thought to a Mario game, but the simple fact is that there's no other way to read this except as a manifesto.
And what is the argument of that manifesto?
To be honest, it's not clear to me yet. If anything, it feels like a paean to the power of the minimalistic platformer. SMG is a masterpiece painted with a four-color palette. You can jump, crouch/stomp, spin, and run around. And somehow this yields an infinitely variant number of playstyles and possibilities. There are power-ups and occasional redefining of the effects of these moves (Spin becomes your generic way of activating almost anything around you or engaging in environmental interactions), but most of the game keeps to a strict ethos of zero skill progression. You never buy Mario the ability to double-jump with your accumulated red orbs.
The second major argument seems to be for physics, but not realistic physics, as the real frontier for game innovations. Platformers have always been a solitary conflict of Man vs. Gravity. SMG transforms that relationship. Gravity'll still kill you, but suddenly you can use it to your advantage to send the venerable plumber arcing over and around planets with balletic ease. Gravity is my closest friend, and it's only betrayed me once. And that betrayal was so novel that I don't even begrudge the game.
I was in the aforementioned "falling between cubes in space by altering gravity" section and ran into a variation: Rather than the linear "you fall down, up, sideways" gravity I'd been working with, some sections were now cylinders that had their own radial "you fall towards the center of this object" gravity. Climbing up to the top of one of these, I leapt, expecting to curve over and land on top of the column. To my surprise and chagrin, the linear gravity apparently kicked in above the column and I hurtled unceremoniously into the void. I laughed heartily. I've never had so much fun being killed suddenly by a game's system.
I'm rubbish at closing out articles, so let me just reiterate my central points: SMG is absurdly good. It is everything it wants to be and is probably the masterwork of the franchise, a shining showcase for all the ingenuity that is possible in the platformer and gaming generally. It is a religious experience. You should probably play it if you get the chance.
I feel compelled to include criticism, because this has been so gushy I'm a little disgusted with myself. First, the enemies (with the exception of bosses) feel like perfunctory additions. They are slow-moving, usually only middlingly lethal, and you're generally safe just running straight past them. I ignore them almost completely. Second, the game is often too easy, with a few sudden standout sections that permit you no errors at all thrown in to yield sudden frustration. Third, it throws so many neat ideas at you that I really frequently wish it would hold onto one for longer, a plea that has yet to be granted. It introduces cool variations on its variations, but very rarely draws them out to their fullest possible limitations. World of Goo had the same problem. Fourth, I know the 1up mushrooms and coins are necessary in a Mario game, lest people pitch fits, but they're either totally antiquated mechanically (1UP) or overlap with another in-game currency system in a way that is a little baroque and ugly (Coins and Star Bits). Fifth, no seriously the life system is outdated and should die an unmourned death.