Super Mario Galaxy by Jordan Minor (Preorder Now)

Available for preorder. Ships 11-30-26. (Note: If you add this book to your order, the ENTIRE order will not ship until end of November.)
ISBN: 978-1-940535-44-9
5x7", matte finish, 164 pages
Cover art by Jack Bloom / Cover design by Jack Grimes

** Every paperback preorder of Super Mario Galaxy comes with a free copy of the ebook edition and a limited edition bookmark featuring the book's cover art. Ebook and paperback ship simultaneously. **

The Book

When Mario’s adventures escalated from Bros. to Land to World, the only direction left for an ambitious plumber was up into the stars. In Super Mario Galaxy, defeating Bowser means launching from planet to planet, pausing for just a moment in each Launch Star to wonder what pleasures and challenges await. 

The sheer joy of navigating Super Mario Galaxy’s varied, clever, and physics-defining planets to Mahito Yokota’s uplifting score is more than enough to satisfy Mario fans. And to casual players, brought into the hobby through the Wii phenomenon, Galaxy offered new delights beyond motion tennis and bowling. Yet the game also contains a surprisingly sophisticated hidden layer of Little Prince-esque melancholy, beautifully embodied by Rosalina and the Lumas. Director Yoshiaki Koizumi was so committed to the game's emotional core that he developed Rosalina’s heartwarming storybook at night and snuck it into the game without telling his boss, Shigeru Miyamoto.

In this critical and personal appreciation, Jordan Minor takes on a game that influenced his career as a games journalist, offered a chance to bond with his wife, and—after years of watching the game go unsupported on modern consoles—made him a believer in game preservation. Today, with a Switch 2 remaster and a new animated movie out in the world, Galaxy’s legacy has never been more certain.

The Author

Jordan Minor is a veteran entertainment and technology journalist. He is the author of the gaming history book VIDEO GAME OF THE YEAR: A Year-by-Year Guide to the Best, Boldest, and Most Bizarre Games from Every Year Since 1977. For years Minor was senior editor at Geek.com, and he is currently a writer on the Apps and Gaming team at PCMag. He has also written freelance articles for multiple prominent gaming outlets, including Kotaku, The A.V. Club, Paste magazine, 148Apps, and The Escapist. Minor graduated from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. He is a proud member of the New York NewsGuild, the New York Video Game Critics Circle, and the 2023 Game Awards Future Class. He lives in New York City.

Advance Praise for Super Mario Galaxy

"Super Mario Galaxy is a singular achievement, and Minor's book is a comprehensive guide detailing how this piece of video game history was developed, including the lessons from Super Mario Sunshine's failures that helped guide the artistic triumph Galaxy represents. It's an awesome and well-researched read." - Heather Anne Campbell, host of Get Played and Writer/Executive Producer at Rick and Morty

“A game like Super Mario Galaxy warrants an interplanetary scope, and I can think of no better pilot to guide us through the cosmos than Jordan Minor. This book joyfully introduces readers to the artists, designers, musicians, fans, and critics floating in the game's orbit. Between expeditions, Minor returns to his own experiences with the spacefaring plumber, affording us moments to relax and refuel. The result is a book that combines criticism, history, and original reporting into something truly stellar.” - Chris Plante, host and founder of Post Games

"Jordan Minor takes us on an orbital tour of one of Mario's most beloved and thematically textured games. His insights into Galaxy (and the company and console that produced it) are insightful, but also personal, reminding us that each individual player is a co-pilot on this interstellar journey." - Keza MacDonald, author of Super Nintendo: The Game-Changing Company That Unlocked the Power of Play