You can now (unofficially) play Super Mario Galaxy on Android, no emulator needed

We saw a major milestone recently as Super Mario Galaxy became the first Wii game to be fully decompiled. This reverse-engineering milestone opens the door to fan ports of the game on other platforms, while also helping the community understand its inner workings.

Now, developer Mohammed Huzaifa has released an unofficial Super Mario Galaxy port on Android, called Galaxy-Android. This port, which is available on GitHub, is indeed based on the aforementioned decompilation, though the developer also clarifies that it was an “AI-assisted” port.

In any event, Galaxy-Android requires the Super Mario Galaxy ROM but is pretty easy to set up. Simply tap “Choose disc file” and select the game ROM from the resulting file picker, then choose “Install & launch game” to get the process started. Once this step is done, the game will automatically boot up, although you can tap the “Launch installed game” button for subsequent play sessions. You can also choose to forego cutscenes prior to installation if you’d like to save ~2GB of storage.

As for performance and stability, it’s still very early days for the project. One major bug I’ve seen across two devices is that Mario and non-player characters are missing altogether. That’s a giant omission, but this port is less than 24 hours old as of writing. I’m optimistic that the developer will address this issue, as they have already released an update with fixes for a couple of problems reported on Reddit.

Otherwise, the game defaults to a 60fps cap and 1080p resolution, but it actually ran at a playable frame rate on the ANBERNIC RG 55G1, which has a Snapdragon G1 Gen 2 chip. Meanwhile, the ~$500 Redmi Note 17 Pro Max has a Snapdragon 6 Gen 5 chip but delivered extremely smooth gameplay that’s miles ahead of emulation. The developer has also reported good performance on a device with an aging Dimensity 920 processor and 6GB of RAM, while others with similarly budget devices have reported playable performance too.

In other words, there’s a good chance you’ll run into glitches with this unofficial Super Mario Galaxy port on Android, but it’s extremely early days. And it seems like a great bet that your cheap phone can deliver playable performance.