Super Mario 3D All-Stars Review

Super Mario Galaxy

Onto the pièce de résistance; the best game on the Wii and the one that benefited the most from being revamped for modern hardware. Why? Because until this new release, Mario Galaxy forced you to use unnecessary motion controls as a way to sell the Wii itself.

Rather annoyingly, that's still the case in some instances, but Nintendo have tried to split the difference, resulting in a cumbersome overall control scheme.

See, Mario Galaxy's genius relies in its level design; the idea of an evil intergalactic Bowser whisking Princess Peach, the Mushroom Kingdom and a ton of Toads off into space, only for Mario to go planet-hopping to the rescue.

This setup let Nintendo go hog-wild with their level designs, and area to area you'll get everything from a tiny planet of overlapping Bullet Bills to another where conveyor belts made of confectionary try to slow you down. There are always scores of enemies to flip over and kick into the cosmos, catapulting stars to launch you to the next environment, and hundreds of Star Bits to hoover up.

These latter items are where the motion controls came in. You'd be forever waggling the Wiimote so your reticule passes over them, or you could target an enemy and do damage. Neatly, Galaxy on Switch lets player two control the reticule to help Mario on his journey, but the cursor still appears on-screen at all times.

Already that will be an annoyance as Nintendo are letting you hit a button to attack rather than shake the controller, but in all respects, this is still the original Wii game, transposed to Switch.

That said, get inventive and you CAN play without motion controls.

First up, on handheld you tap/swipe to collect Bits anyway (something that gets a bit intrusive mid-challenge or combat), or docked, point your Joy-Con off-screen and tap R to "re-centre". After bringing the controller back to its natural position, the game will still think the centre point is off-screen.

Voila: A version of Mario Galaxy without that damn cursor, that's still mostly playable thanks to new face button controls.

Minigames like the penguin race or other one-offs still require motion controls to complete, but you can use Y to perform a spin attack or climb vines. Handheld you'll be tilting the Switch to steer or direct an item through an obstacle course, and all-round it stands out that motion controls should've been removed entirely.

Thankfully, level designs are stellar, the score is stellar, Mario's movement became the standard for the character in 3D, and there are buckets of charm lavished overtop.

Make no mistake about it: These are the three games we collectively requested, put on Switch.

Besides the HD resolutions and in Mario 64's case, being widescreen at all, these are the same games as on the N64, GameCube and Wii. Mario Galaxy's menus are the exact same, with the chunky Wii U dashboard being your save button in between levels.

You can't knock the quality of these as individual titles, but considering how easy it would've been to add proper camera controls to Mario 64, better movement to Sunshine and zero motion controls for Galaxy, I can't help but think Nintendo missed an opportunity.

Rating: ★★★★☆