The biggest beneficiary of Galaxy ’s heightened ambition may have been its narrative, which mainline Mario games had long struggled to enhance via their music. It takes less than 10 minutes in the first Galaxy to set up the series’ central leitmotifs, which convey the games’ character, story, and scope through sound alone. Upon booting the game up, a swift run of horns plays the main theme, a magnificent game-spanning refrain which appears during the mightiest moments, from title screen to credits. When the gameplay starts, the jaunty woodwinds that score the intro level’s joyous “Star Festival” are almost immediately brought to a devastating halt by the now-iconic choral chants that shout Bowser’s new villainous leitmotif, “Catastrophe,” which reappears throughout the various fights with him in both games. Bowser, to this day, has never schemed on a more gargantuan scale; for a brief moment, the scores behind his newfound universe-conquering motives made him feel closer to Sephiroth than King Dedede.…