Opinion: It Took Me Nearly 20 Years To Fall Into Mario Galaxy's Orbit

The Launch Stars in Super Mario Galaxy are pure cinema, from that spinning wind-up with the quick arpeggio to that compressed pause before a cannon-blast hurl into an arc unknown.

And that camera work! As you trace an unseen thread through space, leaving a gleaming contrail of light and delight before the zoom-out to best catch that perfect 10 landing. Keep your bullet times and your smash cuts: this is the music of movement, and it hasn’t got old.

It turns out Super Mario Galaxy is great and it took me nearly 20 years to realise because I kept thinking it was crap.

I couldn’t love it, despite multiple attempts. Even my bio here says it (but politely to stay safe on a website called Nintendo Life). I won't go into my now-practised forensic analysis of its slightly stiff moveset, but because of it and my expectations of a 3D Mario’s gamefeel, I always felt there was something amiss at the heart of the game, something flat in the hands, off-beat, the joke always slightly too late in the interface between me and this clearly gorgeous kingdom of planets. But then — finally — it clicked.

What a great feeling! That click, the sudden pivot where the planets (metaphorical now) align just so and you feel the 'Oh, I see now' of appreciation for a game.

You can't be persuaded to like a thing with logic, but sometimes you might be borderline enough that a recalibration of expectation, or approach, or timing can help you enjoy more things.

But there’s also the way that it sparks off like an action potential, past some invisible threshold, and now everything once annoying or naff makes sense and you get it. And I think it actually started with Penny's Big Breakaway.

I'm wary of writing another stealth Penny’s article, but bear with me because it’s unavoidably relevant. It was my most anticipated game of 2024 partly because of its pedigree (Sonic Mania team, and specifically that Sonic 2 Android port so good it feels Mega Drive right), but also because of the yo-yo.

Like Viewtiful Joe and the first time I saw a trailer for Shadow of the Colossus, I didn't just like the look of it, I recognised something that had been latent all along. Of course! A yo-yo as wheels and as a grapple-line, with all the satisfactions of momentum management, of rolling and gravity and swing and fling! It also helps that I often carry an actual yo-yo in my bag as something tactile, playful and pure.

But I hated the game. I found it zany and try-hard and it had a very irritating sort of boink boink goofy clown music for the QTE bits at the end of every level. The mechanics felt stilted and slow, and so I felt disappointed and sad. So I did what one does and read some online opinions to gauge the conversation, make sure it’s not just you.

Now I can’t remember exactly which review changed everything (it might have been this or this or the very encouraging opening paragraph of this), but I think it was the descriptions of good movement and the promise of skate-game combos (I love skating games) that did it.

Approached differently, trying to maintain a long combo through a level, the difference was profound. It forced me to find new pockets of opportunity in the levels and awesome potential in the mechanics, like tug-pulling through the air and then converting a plummeting freefall into rocketing forward flight with a mid-air yo-yo axel. It shifted the focus onto flow and continuity, the game’s best side.

But also I’d got to Bubblin, the surreal bathhouse waterpark with skyscraper scale and incredible music. Between the movement and the vibes, the shift was revelatory, absolute. I quite like the QTE bits now. I always have the game downloaded.

I'm sure this has happened before, but it was just so transformative, I mused that maybe I could consciously try this? Try switching up my approach to get back on a game I’d seen revered but bounced off and deleted multiple times, the now-legendary Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze (and yes, I had got to the beloved Grassland Groove).

Reader: It worked. Once again there was an element of gameplay which meant I’d not been engaging with it on its own terms: I hadn’t realised holding 'roll' didn’t make you run as it did in prior Country games, which had added uncertain distrust to controls I’d misunderstood. But also, I think I slowed down very slightly, not just in gameplay but some internal metronomic pace of expectation, an unspoken demand for unbroken fluidity that wasn't being met by the heavier, more considered platforming.

And like with Penny’s Bubblin’, it was also a level and a theme. The Fugu fish boss (about where I’d left it) was hard enough for me to pay attention, anyway. Then the level machinery, mood, and music of the Juicy Jungle world afterwards began to cast a spell. It’s capped off by a polar bear duel scored by genuinely one of the most epic boss themes and now I was fully converted. I’ve since 100%-ed the game, and the things that irked me initially now seem moot and irrelevant. I could probably write a gushing ode just to the roll-jump. Once again, the difference is wild.

(There’s still rather a lot of that panpipe flute thing going on, though).

Could I have enjoyed it this much before? Genuinely unsure, though there are other examples. A Highland Song I lost myself in enough to make my own paper map of its highlands, and I think the Eurogamer review noting that the point was as much being in the mountains as getting through them in time might have helped. Final Fantasy XII was just a great game at the wrong time for me to properly receive it first time round, but years later I had the room in my life to accommodate and adore it. Sometimes I wonder if watching Videogamedunkey shenanigans has fostered a more playful, less reverent approach to some games.

You can't be persuaded to like a thing with logic, but sometimes you might be borderline enough that a recalibration of expectation, or approach, or timing can help you enjoy more things. Wow, two cakes!

So anyway, I pitched the idea for retrying Galaxy, but in truth was not optimistic. It was my final boss of Not For Me But Good For You Guys (also, What Is Wrong With You Guys?); just so clearly, primally, instinctively not what I like about Mario, forever primed by 64 and the over-maligned Sunshine, where the game was as much Mario’s core moveset as the conversation between Mario and the Level.

Also, I’d been stuck on that daredevil run against Bouldergeist, which was very long and boring to retry.

But it worked. Maybe I approached it a bit more like a 2D Mario of bread-and-butter (gravity) jumping instead of nimble acrobatics. Or maybe I’d become more open to its different flavour of fun, enjoying being a part of each level’s calibrated machinery of drama and delight. Maybe I’m just older.

Either way, I’ve had a (launch star) blast. I’m no longer weirdly irritated by the post-level tallies, and the matte fabric-grain of the textures now makes gorgeous, obvious sense. I’ve stopped pressing 'Y' quite as much and instead do that enemy-kick mid-run to maintain the flow. I’ve punted coconuts between planets in Dusty Dune Galaxy and smiled with glee at the pure kinaesthetic poetry of it. The Toy Time galaxy was just my kind of joy time.

And nearly 20 years after first borrowing a mate’s Wii to try it, I finally finished the game and loved it and have been eyeing up Galaxy 2. I’m glad to be on this side of the click.

What games took a while to click for you? And what made those games click?