Coffee Beans
E3 is right around the corner and while Nintendo won't be holding their typical E3 press conference, they will be doing a Nintendo Direct for the Wii U on June 11th, and smaller conferences at E3 as well. The Wii U's first 3D Mario game is supposed to be shown this year, and even be at E3 in playable form (maybe even at the Best Buy E3 Wii U demo stations?).
Before looking forward at the Wii U's first 3D Mario title, with whatever trailer and news Nintendo shares at E3, let's take a look at one of the Wii's 3D Mario action/platforming games: Super Mario Galaxy 2.
Super Mario Galaxy 2 released for the Wii on May 23, 2010 with a MSRP of $49.99, and received an ESRB rating of "EVERYONE" with "Mild Cartoon Violence" listed as content for parents and gamers to be aware of. The game was developed by Nintendo's EAD studio, like the original Super Mario Galaxy was as well.
If you own a Wii or Wii U and haven't played Super Mario Galaxy 2, but are interested in it, how many hours can you expect from it? Brew yourself some coffee, and let's take a look at the official U.S. Wii Nintendo Channel data to see how many hours Wii owners have reported playing the game, and the average hours reported so far!
The Brew
Super Mario Galaxy 2 now has approximately 660,796 U.S. Wii owners with over 23,000,000 Total Hours of game-play reported, with about 1,100 days reported. This is an increase of nearly 650,000 more U.S. Wii owners with game-play data reported for SMG2, than were reported when its data first debuted in May 2010.
The 23+ million Total Hours of reported game-play is more than half the time span of the world's recorded history. If you're not sure what that is, it means Super Mario Galaxy 2 has been played for more than 2,500 years worth of time.
From the Nintendo Channel data reported, U.S. Wii owners have averaged playing the game 35 Hours 28 Minutes, which averages out to about 2 Hours 2 Minutes played per time reported.
How have the critic and customer reviews changed for the game since we looked at the game in May 2011? Well, Super Mario Galaxy 2 still ranks in the Wii's "Top 10" games according to critics' reviews averages on GameRankings.com, and its review score average is slightly higher now at a 97.35%, based on 56 reviews on GameRankings.com.
The game's Amazon.com customer review score average has increased slightly as well, and is now sitting at a 92.85%, based on 400 customer reviews; compared with having 284 customer reviews in 2011.
Caffeinated Thoughts
Super Mario Galaxy 2 is not a game in our Wii/Wii U collection, and it's one I still haven't played. If we did end up getting it now, I would play it on our Wii U in the system's Wii mode though, due to me trying to limit the disc drive use in our Wii.
If you have never seen any footage from the game, here's a trailer for it that might get you interested, especially if you're a fan of Luigi and are happy about the "Year of Luigi":
Nintendo made the original Super Mario Galaxy, which released in 2007, a "Nintendo Selects" title in 2011. Surprisingly, or perhaps not knowing Nintendo recently, Super Mario Galaxy 2 has still not made it in the Nintendo Selects lineup of Wii games, and finding the game online for under $50 new, is a bit challenging on the world's largest online retailer. Even GameStop doesn't have the game available to be purchased new online. Which, makes me wonder if Nintendo is about to expand the Wii's Nintendo Selects lineup of games, and add Super Mario Galaxy 2 to it? I don't know, but I do find it interesting Amazon.com and GameStop.com don't currently have the game in stock to sell directly.
If you are a Wii U owner and didn't own a Wii, you probably know by now that the Wii U is backwards compatible with Wii games (unlike the Xbox One and PlayStation 4?). So, if you haven't played Super Mario Galaxy 2, you can play it on your Wii U if you have the proper Wii Remote and Nunchuk controllers.
I know many consider the Super Mario Galaxy Wii games to be the best looking games for the system. I think it will be interesting to see if the Wii U's 3D Mario keeps the same graphical art style as those, and really shows what the system can do (I hope), or if Nintendo will change it up like what has been done with the Zelda games over the years.
I'm thinking the Wii U's first 3D Mario game might even be titled Super Mario Universe, continuing off the "Galaxy" theme; but Nintendo could just throw a "U" on the end like they did with New Super Mario Bros. U, and call it Super Mario U. No matter what they call it though, I am interested to see the art style of the game and what direction they have gone with it.
While I'm thinking the setting will be more like the Super Mario Galaxy games, I kind of hope they do a throwback to Super Mario 64's setting with Princess Peach's Castle being where you run around and select levels from.
Questions
Have any of you perhaps recently played and beaten Super Mario Galaxy 2, if so, what'd you think about the game? If you played the original SMG and SMG2, which one did you enjoy more?
Also, with Nintendo revealing the Wii U's first 3D Mario action title in just a few weeks (12 days really!), is there anything you're hoping to see from the game?
You can buy Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2, and a few other Mario related items from Amazon.com below!
If you're interested in reading/seeing older data reports on Super Mario Galaxy 2, you can find them linked here, here, here, here, here, here, and also here.
