Squeak, I find it fascinating that you think Mario's game design should be closer to Zelda than to the 2D Marios. Up till I first played Galaxy 1,
the Mario experience to me used to be SMB3. I played M64 to death, but it never was as fun to me as 2D Mario was, SMB3 especially. Main reasons being: levels have too few proper platforming compared to 2D Mario and I've never liked how Mario controls in M64; he's too heavy (I feel the same about SMB1, by the way). Galaxy 1 and 2, on the other hand, took SMB3 style of levels, adapted to 3D and doused an absurd amount of delicious crazyness on top of it. They're my perfect Mario games, focused around what truly matters in Mario games to me: fucking awesome platforming.
M64 feels truly archaic and outdated to me (and I'm not one to feel this way often about old games... hell, I fucking love the first Metroid and I played it for the first time this year). I like the more linear levels like Rainbow Ride or the Bowser levels, because they actually feel like Mario. But stuff like Dire, Dire Docks or the sand level? Sooo boring.
I mean, this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0215X7THco
feels more like 2D Mario than this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5VpLHsaH_g
?
Notice that I'm not necessarily trying to argue with you if Galaxy is better or not than M64. I could have chosen a much better galaxy than Space Junk for the example above. I just chose a random early level from Galaxy to contrast against an early level from M64. Which one feels more like this type of stuff?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0GS9y1siB4&feature=related
Sorry for the ramble, but I found it interesting that you think exploration is the main value behind the 2D Marios, instead of straight platforming. I'd like you to elaborate on that.
Personally, I obviously think that Mario should be about platforming before all else, but, on the other hand, I'm not necessarily against Nintendo branching out and giving some new dimensions to the series. I just think they can do much better than in M64 and Sunshine when trying to focus on exploration (as evidenced by games like A Link To The Past or Metroid Prime).