Super Mario Galaxy 2 Climbs to Third-Highest Rated Game Ever on Metacritic

A quiet but significant reshuffle has taken place on Metacritic’s Best Games of All Time list. Super Mario Galaxy 2, Nintendo’s 2010 Wii platformer, has jumped from a Metascore of 97 to 98, landing it in third place on the all-time chart – a position it had not previously held.

How the Rankings Now Look

The shake-up was first flagged by ResetEra user Truno, and Famiboards discussion picked it up shortly after. Super Mario Galaxy 2 is now the third highest-rated game of all time on Metacritic after the update increased its score and moved it forward. The top of the list now reads:

Metacritic’s highest-rated games mostly include older classics, with Ocarina of Time taking the number one spot and the original SoulCalibur right behind it in second place. Until recently, the third slot belonged to Grand Theft Auto IV.

What Changed – and Why Nobody Knows

Metacritic’s scoring system updated Super Mario Galaxy 2‘s score from a 97 to a 98, which was enough to push it past both the first Galaxy and GTA 4 to put it in third place. The precise cause remains unexplained. The number of critic reviews on the page did not change, leaving it unclear whether Metacritic adjusted their weighting system or whether something else happened to produce the one-point gain.

Neither the first Galaxy nor GTA 4 had their scores changed at all. The Wayback Machine suggests the change took place earlier in July, and it went unnoticed until Truno pointed it out on ResetEra.

Metacritic’s Metascore is a weighted average that assigns different levels of influence to different publications, meaning even a small internal recalibration can shift a score at the decimal level – which then rounds to a different whole number on the public-facing page.

A Long-Standing Debate

The fact that the all-time list is dominated by games from the late 1990s and 2000s is not lost on fans. Scores from the late 1990s were based on only a couple of dozen magazine reviews, where it is more likely to receive perfect marks across the board than from the far larger pool of online outlets that review games today. That structural quirk is a big reason why recent critical darlings like Elden Ring, Baldur’s Gate 3, and Red Dead Redemption 2 sit well below games that launched with a fraction of the review count.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 was originally released on May 23, 2010, developed by Nintendo EAD and published by Nintendo. At launch it was almost universally praised, and review scores at launch hit an average of 98 percentage points, signalling just how unified reviewers were in their appreciation of the game.

Where to Play It Today

Super Mario Galaxy 2 never received a standalone re-release after the Wii era, but it has been available through Nintendo’s digital storefronts. If you want to revisit – or discover – one of the most critically acclaimed platformers ever made, check current pricing below.

You can pick up Super Mario Galaxy 2 today for [price] – check the live price table for the best deal available in your region.

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