However since we knew what to expect from this game, I feel that the orchestral pieces in this game, such as "Sky Island" and "Cloud Garden" don't have as much impact as their equivalents from the original. For me, the original game's orchestral pieces were fantastic, especially as we wouldn't normally expect that from a Mario game. "Sky Island" is Super Mario Galaxy 's "Egg Planet" (Good Egg Galaxy) and "Cloud Garden" is this game's "Wind Garden" different tunes but similar style and function. The other main orchestral piece in this game, "Cloud Garden", gets some of it's own nods and arrangements too. Super Mario Galaxy 2 doesn't rely on its main theme too much, which gives other music a chance to shine as well. There are other variations and arrangements of this tune scattered throughout the soundtrack, such as a nice guitar-supported arrangement in "Jungle Glider" and a "Christmassy White Snow", though my favourite is "Pipe Room", which is quirky but works surprisingly well out of context. The variety of the orchestrations of this piece is great throughout the soundtrack we hear the tune played light-heartedly by flutes in the "Overture", then given a fanfare-like brass interpretation in "Sky Island" and a fully-fleshed orchestration in "Theme of Super Mario Galaxy 2". It's a different tune to the ones found in the original game, but stylistically it's essentially more of the same, with a bit of "Wind Garden" (Gusty Garden Galaxy) from the original thrown in for good measure. The soundtrack opens with, appropriately enough, the "Overture", which introduces us to the main orchestral theme of the game in a very light-hearted way.
With other tunes such as "Starship Mario" and "Sky Beach", Nintendo were nice enough to put multiple versions of the track on the CD, with each version representing a different layer of interactivity, so people can pick and choose their favourite. In other tracks, such as the Overture and "Koopa, the Great Mighty King", the interactive parts of the track are layered on as the piece progresses, with I think works well.
This being said, none of these things detract too much from any of these tracks. Personally I prefer a lot of those pieces with the added Yoshi percussion but I'd imagine other people would prefer them without. For example we don't get any speeding up or slowing down in "Ball Roll" or "Slide", and we don't get the percussion line that plays when you're riding Yoshi in any of the tunes either. As a result of this, we don't get some of the effect that we would get within the context of the game with some of the tracks. The main problem with presenting the music of this game as a soundtrack CD is that a lot of the Super Mario Galaxy 2 music is interactive. Koji Kondo, Mahita Yokota and Ryo Nagamatsu have done a great job in taking what was established from the original game and advancing it. There's less of the story and the cut scenes in this game, which I thought would harm the game and the soundtrack, but I was wrong. The only difference being that the order of the tracks rather than having the live tracks on one disc and the electronic ones on the other, the soundtrack is roughly in the order at which you encounter the pieces in the game. There's slightly less music than in the platinum edition of the first game, though it's not too big of a difference. This soundtrack is more akin to the platinum edition of the first game, featuring two discs of all of the music from the game. With the first game, we got a normal version and a platinum edition of the soundtrack. We also get some jazz thrown in for good measure, recorded by live instruments as per the orchestral music. More of the memorable orchestral music, synth music, quirky boss themes, and remixed music from Mario's past. Where the music is concerned, on a basic level we've got more of the same as the original game. The original was an absolute masterpiece too, but Nintendo somehow managed to improve on that with the second game it was more challenging yet more accessible (there's even a beginner DVD included with the game) and it had more variety too. Nintendo said they simply had too many ideas that didn't make it into the first game, which they felt a bit guilty about, so we got a second game as a result, and it ends up being officially one of the highest rated games of all time from game journalists. Over two and a half years on from the original Super Mario Galaxy, we get a second offering. Super Mario Galaxy 2 Original Soundtrack :: Review by Joe Hammond
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