It’s a new era for Boss Fight Books.
The book publisher has decided to skip Kickstarter for their 42nd release, Jordan Minor’s Super Mario Galaxy, and sell copies of the book straight to fans from their own website.
Jordan Minor, a writer at PCMag and the author of Video Game of the Year, used his pen to wander across the stars and examine the creation of Mario’s first 3D adventure on the Wii.
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.
Super Mario Galaxy will be published by Boss Fight Books in both paperback and ebook formats on November 30. You can pre-order the book now through BossFightBooks.com or wait for it to show up on the shelves of your favorite bookstore soon.