Super Mario Galaxy began in late 1996, shortly after Super Mario 64 came out, when Nintendo staff noticed that 3D games were pushing some players away. Designers worried that camera controls and depth confusion made the genre intimidating. Shigeru Miyamoto's team first worked on a successor called Super Mario 128, which was shown as a demo at Nintendo Space World in 2000, and its spherical planets carried over into Galaxy. The developers then had to decide how simple to make the game, eventually reducing the number of hits Mario could take while adding more extra lives and checkpoints. Ideas such as the spin attack, which was shaken out of the Wii Remote, came from practical problems with jumping on round worlds. The result was a game designed to be enjoyed by players aged from five to ninety-five.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.