Gaming exploitation: Super Mario Galaxy 1 & 2 extra star bits.

The Super Mario Galaxy series is actually a pretty decent bunch of Mario titles, and honestly, I was happy that they increased the difficulty in Super Mario Galaxy 2, although it was still much too easy. Still, while the game was kind of fun most of the time, it is not without its degree of annoyance and demands that you use motions when one could literally place each motion inputs in this game on a button press. Spin jump could be relayed to a button, the flying minigame you just have been done with a joystick, the Luma feeding could have just been done using a scrolling menu. Really, the only things that could not be transposed on a button input were parts of the game that were frustrating an unnecessary. And those that could have been transposed on a button input would have worked better that way. Nevertheless, the control scheme can easily be abused to your advantage.

In ball-rolling minigames, all you need is one hand, and you tilt the controller standing up as if it was a bad joystick with no resistance. The game also features the possibility of having a second player do the lame job of using a second Wiimote as a pointer and getting star bits, shooting them (which you will never do because you want to accumulate star bits) and giving minor, rather pointless help to the player. Combine these two concepts and you can see the possibilities. Now that you don’t have to use the nunchuck and have one free hand, you can technically grab a second Wiimote and get the star bits on the screen. First, you are much more likely to get an extra life, so you can potentially restart the minigame as many as you want if you mess up, and you just get more star bits to unlock future stages. Finally, you look stylish. This can also be done in the bird flying minigame since if does not require the nunchuck, but you don’t have the option to just stop and collect like in the ball-rolling minigame.



Certainly, it is only a small bonus and will maybe only reduce the time it takes to beat the game by about twenty minutes, but that is twenty minutes of less collecting star bits pointlessly and a few extra lives.

Tune in next time.