Mario’s 40th Anniversary Proves Super Mario Galaxy Is the Best Mario Game

Nintendo fans have been more than a little patient in waiting for the company’s announcement regarding Mario’s 40th anniversary. We knew there would be something, most likely a re-release of an old title, and we were correct. Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2 will be upgraded for the Nintendo Switch 2 with 4K graphics and other bonus features like the option to forgo motion controls. 

Who knew that Nintendo would go one step further and make the entire day about Super Mario Galaxy? The sequel to The Super Mario Bros. Movie from 2023 officially has a title and release date: The Super Mario Galaxy Movie will release in theaters in April 2026. Mario’s tales in space will take up so much of the plumber’s time in the next six months that he should volunteer for Elon Musk’s mission to Mars (much better than sending real humans and the dangers that come with that, right?) 

Super Mario Galaxy holds a special place in my gaming heart, and I’m sure it does for many other mid-’90s kids. The first game came out when I was around 12 years old, and the sequel when I was starting high school. Just as my world was getting a whole lot bigger and scarier with puberty and growing up, Mario’s trips to the galaxies beyond ours were simultaneously comforting and daring. They transformed Mario’s adventures on a grand scale and made the universe feel so much heavier than before. Mario was more than just the dude saving the Mushroom Kingdom, now. The mustachioed hero belonged to the whole universe!

Nintendo’s decision to revisit these games and introduce them to new audiences through the movie demonstrates the company’s reverence and appreciation for its own work. Super Mario Galaxy is Mario at his absolute peak. An orchestrated soundtrack, visuals that pushed the Wii to its limits, and levels that departed from the traditional sandbox style of play make this sub-franchise arguably the best in Mario’s entire 40-year history, and Nintendo certainly seems to be agreeing with this sentiment with these anniversary celebrations. 

Super Mario Galaxy Corrected the Errors of Super Mario Sunshine

The time period that Super Mario Galaxy came out in was a somewhat tenuous one for Mario. The previous 3D platformer before Galaxy was Super Mario Sunshine, perhaps the most controversial title in Mario’s canon. Unlike The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Super Mario Sunshine hasn’t really become beloved in the decades since it came out. Wonky controls and frustrating difficulty were the tip of the iceberg for fans who thought the game was just doing too much. It’s an incredible game if you can overlook some of its flaws, but casual gamers aren’t really known for doing that. 

Super Mario Galaxy immediately corrected the controls by making Mario operate much more tightly and within reason. No longer did he need to be so precise, as power-ups like the Bee Suit and the ability to spin in the air made him more acrobatic than ever before. The motion controls for the Wii were used intuitively and not excessively (a complaint that was applied to many other big releases on the console). 

Despite being set in space, this is not an open-world adventure. Super Mario Galaxy ironically contained Mario within different, unique sections of each course. Each level forces the player to stay within a section and accomplish what needs to be done before being catapulted to the next planet. The density of each section makes the levels feel massive, even if the actual size to explore is smaller than in any other 3D Super Mario title. 

All of this is to say that Super Mario Galaxy perfected Mario’s formula by providing the sense of wonder that Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine did, while also incorporating old school elements and keeping the action concise like in a 2D platformer. All of the qualities came together, working in unison to mimic and completely inhabit Mario’s special place in gaming lore up to that point and in the years to come. 

The series is now retro enough (I can hardly believe that the late 2000s are considered old now, but alas) that Nintendo’s re-release of the games and the movie based on the universe will put these two special games in historical context. Mario has never been more vast, yet so incredibly well-confined. The reach of the Super Mario Bros. Movie franchise will only further validate Super Mario Galaxy as the cinematic and aesthetic masterpiece that doubles as Mario’s best game.