Super Mario Galaxy’s Most Wasteful Secret Is Also Its Sweetest: The Credits Load Forever So It Never Forgets Its Creators

Just when I think I have heard every oddball Mario fact, a new one drops that is equal parts tech-nerd and unexpectedly sweet. This time, it is about the Super Mario Galaxy games quietly carrying their staff credits around in memory the entire time you play.

Mario trivia hound Supper Mario Broth flagged the quirk on Bluesky, pointing to research from HEYimHeroic. The gist: both Galaxy and Galaxy 2 keep the full credits text loaded in RAM from boot-up to credits roll, even though you do not see it until the very end.

"In the Super Mario Galaxy games, the staff credits text is always loaded into RAM despite not being needed until the ending. While horribly inefficient, this is inadvertently heartwarming as the games appear to honor their creators by keeping them in memory at all times."

Here is the simple version, minus the jargon:

• Super Mario Galaxy: The game loads a single giant text file and never lets it go. That one file covers every line of text in the game, credits included. Per Supper Mario Broth, it is 4,643 lines long and takes up about 1/400 of the system's RAM at all times — space that could have held 1 or 2 extra in-game objects.
• Super Mario Galaxy 2: Smarter approach overall — the sequel splits text into separate files for each galaxy to save memory. But the credits still ride along in RAM the whole time, same as the first game.

Fans have been picking apart these games for years, but this one stands out. It is not some intentional design flourish so much as a side effect of how the text system was set up back then. Still, the idea that the staff list literally lives in memory from the moment you hit Start until the final scene feels like a tiny, unintended tribute to the people who made the thing — which is not exactly how Nintendo tends to handle crediting these days. Inefficient? Absolutely. Weirdly sweet? Also yes.