I'd wanted to save and savour it, so it took me a while, but I finally fired it up.

Super Mario Galaxy was one of those rare pinnacles of Nintendo's history. If we must use "magic," it was magic. I played it thoroughly and wholeheartedly in 2007, then played it thoroughly and wholeheartedly again. Outer space was beyond a setting – it embraced physics with enthused affection, and Mario's love of running and jumping would adapt excitingly to the task of exploring all around small planets with their own centres of mass and gravity, the camera following elegantly behind, making what could have been dizzying and disorienting feel like a skillful apprehension of a wholly un-earthly mentality. (If it was still Lakitu behind the lens, he'd not honed his craft but revolutionized it.) Some areas toyed with gravity in simpler ways, just switching it between "up" and "down" during more traditional 2-D sequences, and some employed normal "down" gravity throughout. But it was impossible to tire of attempting to fling Mario into orbit and coming remarkably close to feeling genuinely light-stomached. And afterward, especially after revealing a star held by a difficult enemy, there was nothing like shifting the view to Mario's first-person perspective and staring "out there," drinking in the unhurried moment of calm and vastness.

Galaxy was Mario's first major title presented at a super-smooth 60 frames per second, and I remember those first experimental moments of gameplay feeling pronounced and futuristic. We'd arrived. The era also introduced scores which increasingly involved acoustic musicians' performances, supplying a new and continuous sense of majesty. Doug and I went in together to buy the CD soundtrack separately from the game.

So, what of the upgraded version included in 3D All-Stars? Two major differences. The original was presented in 480p, and this release goes up to full HD. It deserves it, and it always deserved it. Rosalina's beautiful observatory – the game's home base, which has never left my list of places in video games that I would visit if I could – remains perfect just the way it always was.

(An interjection here with a minor difference. Your saved game file is represented by your choice of 3-D icon: Mario's head, Luigi's head, and some others, like Toad. In the original Wii release, though, the rotating heads of your Miis were also available options, and there's no sign of Miis here. Despite being fully Mii-aware, it saddens me to note the Switch keeps neglecting them in these small ways.)

The second major difference is the controls. The Wii was Nintendo being true to itself under Iwata: pulling out ahead by innovating rather than playing it safe and trendy among the industry it largely forged. No one else would have dared make something like a TV remote the primary controller for a flagship console, and I doubt anyone even dared imagine it. Nintendo used it every which way, and Galaxy beautifully fused traditional controls with an on-screen cursor for collecting star bits from the screen, then firing them back as though with a precise projectile weapon. It felt fluid before long: you could walk, run, and jump with your thumbs while the motion of your right hand did the collecting and aiming. Matt Cassamassina had aptly said "I understand Wii" after trying it.

Porting that – and anything, really – to the Switch invariably means some re-thinking and re-mapping. As with everything, it feels like it gets close, but never doesn't feel a little like a kluge, especially when the Switch has various control methods to accommodate. In handheld mode, you can apparently tap the screen to fire your star bits. Good to have the compatibility, but that was never the intention of Galaxy's original designers. What you truly can't have is the Sensor Bar, which served as a fixed point in the room to which your Wii Remote could refer. If you pointed at the screen, your cursor would appear on the screen. If you pointed away, your cursor would fly off. The Switch's Joy-Con and Pro Controller both have gyroscopes, though, which at least estimate changes in the direction you're "pointing" with them.

But the task of calibrating (establishing which is the direction of the screen, relative to your controller) is now yours to manage. You press R to inform the game you're now "pointing forward," and your cursor appears at the screen's centre. You can mis-calibrate at will, if you care to. When using the Pro Controller, you can imagine an arrow pointing from the controller to the screen, then you can sort of tilt to move the cursor, but out of necessity, you're moving both arms together in very un-remote-like fashion. Picking up star bits this way feels positively hobbled – it feels like it's only there because the Pro Controller is supposed to do everything. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about.

With the Joy-Con, it feels much nicer. You still have to calibrate with R, but the gyroscope estimates your subsequent motion accurately enough that you'd almost believe there was a Sensor Bar there, so that's the way I've been playing, and I've been able to sink into it. Even so, no gyroscope can account for variances in motion over time, and I was in no way surprised to find myself recalibrating regularly. As consolation, doing it often makes it habitual and more natural.

These differences aside, the game feels satisfyingly true to itself, refreshingly un-messed with. I'm enjoying replaying it (my memory of the original is profound enough that I would use the phrase "reliving it"), approaching it from a perspective of slightly more experience in game development and in life, and observing with some pride for Iwata and the team that it feels as fresh and deserving of the attention of today's players as it did – goodness – fifteen years ago.