Super Mario Galaxy turns 15 today on November 12, 2022. Below, we’ll see how that unique setting gave it a special sense of wonder that set it apart from other Mario games.
Mario Galaxy offers a melancholy vision of the stars, a far cry from the Saturday morning surrealism of other games in the series. Of course, the prequels and sequels aren’t without their own charm. Think sunny sunshine or whirlwind Odyssey. But the Galaxy offers an existential, fun melancholy. Beyond kingdoms and history, it blows the scale of Mario’s level into (meta)physical. The Galactic Center is the cosmic interconnection of life and death and the potential for distributed unconscious rebirth.
Sure, other Mario games have flickering darkness, but Talk to the enemy Shy Guy on the train Or Yoshi stranded in the abyss. But Mario Galaxy offers something more basic. That grief is not a play of tones, a joke, an accidental effect of clashing mechanisms. The galaxy is literally set in a dark, vast universe inhabitable only by a certain pinpoint of light. Over time, these spots of light disappear and other spots of light take their place. So it’s a universe much like ours, albeit filtered with whimsical cartoon logic.
For example, explosions also create stars in this world, by giving candy to lumas (magical creatures that become stars, planets and galaxies). This is a means of gating progress, strictly mechanically speaking. Mario picks up “star fragments” on his travels. If you have enough, you can feed Lumas and open up new worlds. It’s a classic video game prank that gives some of the smaller interactions and pieces of the game a higher aim.
But the process has more thematic punch than the star marker under the door. When Luma transforms into the galaxy, they are no longer cute little star men. They become dirt, sand, water, space, and even other life forms. It’s a kind of death. As a child, I was hesitant to give Louma candy. Because he ends up without Ruma. Yet that death produces another kind of life. All of the worlds of the Galaxy were, by implication, once these Star Children. Stars die, matter expands, and the universe keeps moving forward.
The game conveys many of these themes through Rosalina, the Heavenly Mother who guides the nascent stars and teaches them to eventually become galaxies. She also guides Mario, taking him under her wing when he lands on his spaceship. However, we learn the most about Rosalina when she’s reading her picture books aloud in her library. The storybook tells how Rosalina came to care for Ruma. She used to be a girl from a distant world, but Ruma, who was looking for her mother, found her, and the two of them flew to the stars.
Eventually, Rosalina becomes the mother of many Rumas who helped her on her journey. It’s a kind of divinity, but she wasn’t ascended or born, she was chosen. Being a god here isn’t exactly about power or creation. it’s a role. The fact that Ruma searched for his mother probably means that someone else once was in the same position, but they either died or were unable to do the job. Finding her purpose, Rosalina travels with Ruma “while looking for a place to be reborn”. She stands between life and death, overseeing the changes that make the stars possible.
This is certainly heavy and metaphysical, but the scale of the universe in Mario Galaxy is often small. Rosalina missed her mother, so she embarked on a storybook journey. At the climax of the storybook, she recognizes the death of her mother and her life made possible by her connection to her.It’s a simple love that spans the universe and affects each individual’s life in turn.The role is cosmic, but its practicality is simply parenthood.The various hubs that divide the set Galaxy levels are mostly mediocre places: Bedroom, Fountain, Kitchen, Garden. Mario is, first and foremost, a visitor on this ship that is home.
The Galaxy weaves its mediocrity with its galactic scale. “Worshiping the Stars Makes Sense” Carl Sagan said in Cosmos, “Because we are their children.” Sunlight nourishes plants, which nourishes all animal life, so we are truly being raised by the stars. Mario Galaxy is a game about such poetry. It turns the stars into children of itself and reshapes the universe into the cycle of human life and death.
It may seem a little silly to talk about a Mario game this way, but I think stupidity is key to the game’s response. After all, much in life is ridiculous and frivolous. We too have an egotistical queen bee, a frightened rabbit that is hard to catch, and lost children in need of candy and a hug. We live, die, poop and eat in patches of blue, in the vastness of space. Our lives are precious, but they are very small. On the grand scale of things, large things like planets and ecosystems may seem insignificant. I have. We live and die, we are born and we are reborn. Just as the deaths of countless stars created the matter that makes us, our deaths are important to the life that comes before us. A number of miracles that cannot be imitated elsewhere. It’s a lonely universe. But it is illuminated by our flicker and our connection.
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