Q&A with Jordan Minor, author of Super Mario Galaxy

Our 42nd book will be Super Mario Galaxy by Jordan Minor. For the first time ever, we are funding the book entirely on our own site -- no Kickstarter, no stress -- and the book ships just one month later. Over email Jordan and I discussed book pitches, Rosalina's storybook, girldad life, Donkey Kong, the Galaxy Movie, Switch 2, and the game's new enhanced version.

Gabe Durham: Let's offer readers some sweet, sweet context. Could you tell us about how you first came to Super Mario Galaxy -- and what struck you about it at the time?

Jordan Minor: My journey to Super Mario Galaxy really coincided with my journey to paying more attention to video games as a whole. This era was when games transitioned into entertainment I actively sought out as a teenager, no longer just gifts I passively received as a child. The lead-up to the Wii was the first time I was super aware of an upcoming console before it launched, by reading magazines and websites, so my impatient hype was extra potent. 

When I first saw Super Mario Galaxy footage from E3 2006, it wasn’t just a cool game to me but a representation of the future I could finally get an early glimpse of. That’s kind of an unfair expectation, but fortunately the game was good enough to meet it! What struck me most about it was how it didn’t just feel like the next Mario game, but how all of its creativity coalesced to make it a truly reinvented, next-generation Mario game.  

When you were originally pitching to Boss Fight in 2022, had you been kicking around other topics? Or was Mario Galaxy the one and only?

I don’t know if you remember this but I actually pitched you back in 2014, right around when the publisher first started taking submissions. I was just out of college, reviewing a lot of iPhone games, so I pitched a book about Flight Control and mobile games as a whole. I also pitched you another idea after that but I’m still trying to pull off that project one day so I won’t spoil it here, ha. 

But after I sold Video Game of the Year and started thinking about ways to continue that momentum, a Boss Fight book on Super Mario Galaxy was by far my strongest idea and I knew that immediately. A book about gaming’s icon as seen through his most acclaimed and unique game, the game that I have the most specific opinions on, just made too much sense. 

As you dug into playthroughs, research, and writing for the book, how did the book change? What discoveries surprised you?

The book was always meant to be structured in a way that hopped between Super Mario Galaxy’s major components, mirroring how the game joyfully blasts from one planet to the next. So a lot of it came together in the editing and figuring out where to best place which observations, seeing which elements were in conversation with each other. All of a sudden I’ve written so much about just the first level or how to replay the game years later that those become entire chapters in their own right, and the perfect spots for some of my favorite interview quotes.

Something else that surprised me was just how many opportunities there were to make comparisons outside of games, which I think is key to having a well-rounded approach to discussing games in the broader context of art. I knew going in that The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry would be a major reference point. But then I find places to discuss works by Lionel Richie and David Lynch, Hideaki Anno and Wes Anderson. One of the early readers suggested I call out Boethius, and when I dug into that I just started laughing at how apt it was to view this Mario game through this ancient Roman philosophy framework.  

Since you and I are newly girldads this year, I've got to ask about the physical edition of Rosalina's storybook that you bought your daughter. What does she think of it so far? And what other books have been a hit with her? (This week, my daughter got very excited by The Very Hungry Caterpillar, though at four months old she's too young for me to tell exactly why.)

So I haven’t actually shown Rosalina’s Storybook to her yet! It’s a hardcover, and right now we’re just reading her these soft plush books so she can grab them when we’re done. We’ve got one about different animal feet and another about how a seed grows into a tree. Talking about grand life cycles is sort of Galaxy adjacent, yeah? But I will say those John Oeth acoustic guitar covers of Super Mario Galaxy songs you sent me have been a huge hit during tummy time. 

The book was almost entirely written before the game's Switch rerelease, so your book only touches briefly on the newly bundled Super Mario Galaxy 1+2 . What did you think of the enhanced version? Is this now the one you'd recommend to players, or are there reasons to go back to the original Wii edition?

I’m a big advocate of just playing classic games in whatever way you can. Having access isn’t always a guarantee, which is a tragedy that Super Mario Galaxy demonstrates. So I would absolutely recommend checking out the enhanced versions. They’re beautiful and the controls translate well enough. I’m shocked Nintendo actually added more story material. The Super Mario Galaxy games hold up just fine against modern games and arguably still surpass many of them. If you can track down a Wii then knock yourself out, but I value having the experience more than denying yourself because you’re not having the “right” experience.

This week my wife brought home a Switch 2 for work, so I've suddenly got access to Nintendo's latest games. What from the Switch 2 library do we have to play? (She's already got the new Fire Emblem locked & loaded.)

I’m a huge Donkey Kong sicko. I love that Super Mario Galaxy is vindication for the Nintendo Tokyo dev team’s prior work on the deeply underrated Donkey Kong Jungle Beat. So Donkey Kong Bananza I think is a must-play. The way DK’s destruction abilities make you fundamentally rethink 3D platforming is reminiscent of how Galaxy uses gravity. His moveset is so expressive, too, and made me realize how much the “combat” in 3D Mario is a part of those games we just tolerate rather than enjoy for its own sake.

Beyond that, Mario Kart World is a masterpiece of a remix album with a really beautiful and nifty open-world kart racer attached. Mario Tennis Fever and Metroid Prime 4 have mixed reputations for whatever reasons but I’m a big fan of those games as well. Also, don’t be afraid to check out third-party ports if you, like me, prefer the convenience of a portable system over maximum visual fidelity. 

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie didn't have as much of the game's DNA as fans hoped, opting for a more general "Mario's in space now!" plot. If you were in charge of a do-over, what would your own Mario Galaxy movie be like?

Normally I’m all for adaptations flouting the source material, but in this case I would simply make a Super Mario Galaxy movie. I would lean into the more emotional, borderline depressing elements of the story that the movie is so clearly frightened by. Although to be fair some of those heavier elements were added secretly to the game by Yoshiaki Koizumi, which the book touches on. I did appreciate that Rosalina’s arc still involved family abandonment, in this case Peach as her long-lost sister, but it’s barely a plot point. 

There are so many beloved animated kids movies with unexpected sadness, and Illumination could have kept that by just adapting the game Nintendo already made, so the fumble was pretty disappointing. Even the first Mario movie felt a little weightier than this. It’s not like I want to make babies cry (we both know now that they cry enough on their own) but themes matter. Feelings give art meaning, and that should include games as well as the movies based on them. At least we have this remarkable video game, and now we have proof that Super Mario Galaxy really is doing something special because look what happens when its elements are stripped away. With this book, I believe I gave those special elements the analysis and appreciation readers deserve.

 

Secure your copy of Super Mario Galaxy before it floats out of orbit.