SMG2 ditches hub for world map

By Robert Purchese Published 23 March, 2010

Universal applause.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 will ditch the hub world and opt for a traditional world map instead.

Creator Shigeru Miyamoto spilled the beans to GameInformer.

"You can think of it in terms of something similar to Super Mario World or New Super Mario Bros. Wii, where you will have a rather convenient map to navigate," he said.

"We want players to focus on the joy of the action instead of getting to each game course. We wanted to make it as accessible as possible and as easy as possible for the players."

"Also," he added, "because we're going to incorporate a number of different stars and conquering all the stars is going to be one of the most challenging missions for the player, we want them to understand as easy as possible where they should go next and which places they should go back to in order to get access to the remaining stars."

Super Mario Galaxy 2 will be released on 11th June, exclusively on Wii.

Catch up with our hands-on impressions of the game from February to find out more.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (24) Latest comment 2 years ago

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  • f00b_inc #1 2 years ago

    Love it

  • wizlon #2 2 years ago

    Sounds good to me. Catching all those purple stars in orbit was a bit of a pain.

  • Vice.Destroyer #3 2 years ago

    For as long as I will be a gamer, I will always have time for a new Mario game. And having a map again, rather than a hub seems to be a step back at first glance, but thinking about it a lot more, I would prefer the map again. Call it nice throwback to an earlier time.

  • polymorph #4 2 years ago

    Good move shigs, that is all.

  • andywilkie35 #5 2 years ago

    I really need to finish the first one - have around 80 stars and the next one comes out the day I start a two week holiday. I'll finish it this weekend!

  • modo_komodo #6 2 years ago

    Excellent idea!

    I'm so pleased that Nintendo have the stones to make this change - especially as it worked so well in Mario 64.

    The level navigation was my only complaint about SMG - a little too cumbersome.

  • jimboton #7 2 years ago

    Prefer a map to a hub like Mario Galaxy's which was mostly a waste of time. But an interesting, explorable and full of secrets hub like Mario 64's would have been even better..

  • asphaltcowboy #8 2 years ago

    Yeah, I'd prefer a hub that has plenty of stuff to discover and explore!

  • RobotRocker #9 2 years ago

    Everyone who hated the hub music in SMG is an inhuman monster.

    I'll wait and see the implementation of this before judgement though.

  • roz123 #10 2 years ago

    The hub was a bit annoying until you got the ability to fly around it and then it was amazing

  • sneetch #11 2 years ago

    Sounds good especially if we're going to be chasing comets again but I do like the hubs, especially when they've hidden goodies scattered about.

    Banjo-Kazooie had the best hub I think.

  • Stuz359 #12 2 years ago

    I actually really liked the hub in SMG. It's not a major loss to SMG2 though, I can live without it.

  • kinky_mong #13 2 years ago

    I'm a bit peeved at this move to be honest. It wasn't the hub that was the problem with SMG, it was that you had to keep going backwards and fowards to that star who moved the prankster comets about that was annoying.

    Running around the hub world's finding secrets was great fun in all the previous 3D Mario games and I'll probably miss it in SMG2.

  • retr0gamer #14 2 years ago

    A world map of a galaxy?

    I'm confused.

  • Golgo #15 2 years ago

    Bummer. I enjoyed capering around the hub. The NSMB style maps are drab.

  • Rubarack #16 2 years ago

    *Joins in universal applause*

  • andywilkie35 #17 2 years ago

    The Mario64 hub (i.e. the castle) was excellent, I find this a bit of a shame to be honest, not going to let that stop me loving it though

  • smelly #18 2 years ago

    @andywilkie35 : Remember - you've not TRUELY completed it until you've played through the game again with luigi.. some of those are MUCH harder with him - especially the races.

  • ignatiusjreilly #19 2 years ago

    @smelly

    Bah, you successfully trolled me. For a minute there my mind was blown...
    Edited by ignatiusjreilly at 23/03/10 @ 15:27

  • alcides #20 2 years ago

    Given that the hub in SMG was pretty much useless, this is a no brainer. There was some funny dialogue though...

    I thought that by world map he meant genuinely interconnected levels. But let's get real, this is Nintendo. A Mario game.

    On Wii.

  • Koozer #21 2 years ago

    But I like hubs...especially Delfino Plaza, that was fantastic.

  • smelly #22 2 years ago

    I hope this works. .because i like the hub mechanic and discovering new things in worlds...

  • smelly #23 2 years ago

    @ignatiusjreilly : Eh?

    Erm, just in case you didnt know.. when you complete Mario galxy, you get to play the whole game through again as luigi, who controls differently, and some of the levels are now much harder.

    Complete with luigi and you open a new world (apparently - i've never managed it, i'm stuck with 5 stars left to go with him)

    I'm gonna try to beat this again properly after i finish FFXIII before SMG2 comes out.. Unless the new metroid rocks in which case i wont.

  • JeroenZM #24 2 years ago

    I loved walking around Delfino Plaza but the observatoty was like "Which area had that level I like in it again? Damn, it wasn't this one. Argh the camera went weird and I fell off."

    I still listen to the hub music a lot though.