Super Mario Galaxy 2 came out in 2010. Galaxy 1 was already my favorite Mario game, so I was all in. Got around 80 stars and dropped it somewhere along the way—not because it was bad, just because life moved on. It left a bad taste though, the kind where a game sits in the back of your head as unfinished business for sixteen years.
I’ve played through Galaxy 1 a few times since then on 3D All-Stars on the Switch Lite. Started Galaxy 2 on the Lite too, got about 30 stars in, and somehow put it down again. Earlier this year I popped the save over to the Switch 2 and decided I was actually going to finish it this time.
It’s 2026. I have less free time than I did in 2010 and somehow more patience for a game like this. Playing in short handheld spurts works really well for a difficult platformer—you put it down before the frustration gets ahead of you, come back fresh, and make a little more progress. I don’t think I could have done this planted in front of a TV.
The last two stars are a different category of brutal. Grandmaster Galaxy is a pure endurance test where one hit sends you back to the beginning, and it doesn’t care how close you were. It took a while.
10/10. Might be the best 3D platformer ever made, and it only took me 16 years to actually find out.