I also indulged myself with a few of the tracks but like Angela, I'm saving most of the goodness for the game itself (which has been shipped to me but I unfortunately won't get for a few more days).

Wow whee. Are these big packages? The d-load estimated time is an hour. O_O

Not that I'm complaining, or anything; it's just good to get them at all...

*avoids the obvious joke*

I actually just added new links in my original post for even larger packages.  There is a TON of music on the SMG2 game disc.

Played a little of the game last night, so awesome.  YOSHI!

Thanks for the rip, Miker!

I won't listen to any of the music until I get the game (thursday is SO FAR AWAY!), but I'm betting it'll be awesome again

Lightweight I'd love to hear these, but it would take me longer than than a week to dl. Here's hoping for a physical release as well. Missed out on the first one

My copy of the game arrived today, and knock on wood, my Wii console has been holding steady so far.  Long enough, at least, for me to net about five stars.  Definitely having a great time.

The big addition is Yoshi.  The game does a fine job at easing you into his control scheme, and it all feels about as natural as Mario himself.  I have only one qualm with the green dino I'm sure I just have to get used to.  It's the fact that his tongue only appears to operate on a single plane.  So, say you have an edible enemy or object below or above him; the cursor will always highlight the target as you point, but since his tongue only shoots straight out, you still need to be on the same level in order to slurp up the target in question.  The same goes when you're looking to spit-shoot; you can still point the cursor to shoot anywhere on the 3D space, but it'll still only shoot on the same level as Yoshi himself.  So, it's not like you can knock a floating Lakitu off of his cloud above you.

The drill power-up is interesting to use.  I freely admit I got stuck at one point on the Spin-Dig Galaxy; I couldn't find the proper dig point to proceed, so the hint screen came along after a couple fruitless minutes.  The boss battle using the drill was ingeniously done.

A big thank you to Mike for the rip.  Looks like you've done a tremendous job with it, and I can't wait to listen to the whole thing! 

The "Starship Mario" themes are a delight, a worthy replacement for the first game's lovely Rosetta Observatory theme.  I'm getting the warmest feeling of nostalgia, as it somehow reminds me of the Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse's stage one forest level theme.

The game finally went on sale in Japan as well today, so I picked up my copy first thing in the morning.
I played for about 2 hours and managed to get 10 stars. I don't know how many there are this time round, but I'm assuming we're looking at about 120 again.

It IS an absolute blast, the level design is as brilliant as the prequel (something that I cannot say about any of the older 3D Marios) and going to the same level to get a different star always takes you to totally new places, which is great.

I can't say I've experienced the same problems as Angie though.
Yoshi is perfectly able to slurp up enemies and objects that are not on the same level as him, including Lakitu.
Is this a case of your Wii doing things that aren't supposed to happen again, Angie? Cause I can't think this is a difference between the JP and US version...
You DO need to make sure that there are no other objects in your way, and it also doesn't work when you're standing on an upward slope and trying to eat something higher up the slope, but under any other circumstances Yoshi's tongue will shoot up without any trouble.

The spit-shooting thing is correct though, you're going to have to adjust for height yourself there.

The Drill Power and Cloud Power are a lot of fun to use, although I think I prefer the latter.

The Boss Battle using the drill would have impressed me more if it didn't remind me of this one so much:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjAHyEYK-AM

The music is great, although I haven't heard anything on quite the same level as the first game yet.

Looks to be strong contender for Game of the Year this one!

This is pretty much all I've been playing lately.  60 stars so far and effing loving it.  It's no secret that the original was my favorite 3D Mario, favorite Wii game, and second favorite game of the last decade.  I wasn't even hyped for this one due to all the "1.5" talk when they first revealed it, but damn did Nintendo deliver.  This is how games are supposed to be.

Just finished up the game with every star.  The little message that went to my Wii message board says that it took me 31:21.  Easily the best thirty hours of gaming that I've spent since... well, Mario Galaxy 1, I guess?  I should give it some time to sink in, but my feeling right now is that this is now probably my favorite Mario game, 2D or 3D (the first Galaxy was before now).  The variety and complete insanity won me over so quickly and then never let go.

My first reaction was: "how the Hell did that take you over 30 hours!?", then I actually finished the game with 120 stars (just now) and I totally understood.
This game just earned itself 500 more awesome points.

Really enjoying the game (have 65 stars) but some of the purple coin challenges are just twisted!

I finished it and stopped with 115 stars.  The last five aren't worth the pain, especially since they brought back that god awful Luigi purple coin stage from the first game (that's where I called it quits in that one, too).  At any rate, it was awesome.  Easily game of the year, and best game I've played since the original SMG back in 2007.  Between the the two, I don't think I can say one is better than the other.  The first gets more points for originality, but the addition of a workable Yoshi (he was damn near unplayable in Sunshine) was surprisingly welcome.  For a game I wasn't expecting much going into and for the second full blown Mario game in six months, all I can say is, "Wow."

Try "The last 127". You're not even halfway there man, and you're missing out on some of the greatest challenges in the game.

(highlight for spoilers)

Hell no, son. Super Mario Sunshine was platforming bliss as far as I'm concerned.

I'm at 103 stars and what's mostly left are the purple coin challenges (like the aggravating one in the Rainbow Road level) and the equally as annoying chimp challenges. It took me twenty tries to beat the purple coin hell in the first "S" level (that looks like Mario) so I'm not looking forward to this.

I stand by my statement of "the last five."  The rest are just busy work for kids with mean parents who won't buy them a new game to play.  It's nice of Nintendo to give them something else to do, but I've got plenty of other stuff to play and I don't hate myself that much.

Haha, yeah, some of them can be quite infuriating

Still, I liked the fact that where the first 120 stars require you to perform tasks or just make it to the end of the level, the last 120 encourage you to explore and try and reach places you wouldn't have thought of going to otherwise.

The last 120 felt much more like the Mario 64 style of gameplay to me, which was nice.

Yeah, I actually count the final 120 as part of the total - I actually think I enjoyed them more than the initial 120 because I like exploration. XLord, out of curiosity, would you consider them to be "busy work for kids with mean parents who won't buy them a new game to play" if Nintendo had just given each galaxy double the number of stars from the get-go?  Because that's what this basically is...

Edit: I might also add that I LOVE how difficult they make some of them.  I never thought Nintendo would ever actively make me murder Yoshi. 

I guess for me the whole point is that I want to be having fun while I game these days.  When I was a kid, I would try for 100% completion no matter how tough because I only got six games a year and it was either play what I had or be bored.  With 115 stars, I had a great time and I enjoyed some challenging stages.  I feel like I've already gotten my $50 worth.  It'd be nice if the green stars would show up w/o having to complete the insane comet stars in the special world.  I might like to try for a few of them for fun, but there's no way I'm going through the frustration of some of the purple coin challenges in the special world in order to do that.  I love the exploration and thrill of controlling Mario in the Galaxy series, but I'm not much of a fan of the "collect x # of something in x min" challenges.  They're just annoying.

Totally agreed, which is why I loved the green stars so much. 

I was within a hair's breadth of smashing the game to pieces yesterday over some of the BS going on in World 5 (Fluzzard can go fly into a lit cannon, the monkey's ice-bumping game is Rare-level bonus-game bastardry, and shut up you stupid fat tank, I don't need to take a break, you need to shut your worthless gob), but you guys know exactly what to say to motivate me to keep going. I especially look forward to killing Yoshi and being rewarded for it.

I've been seeing similar complaints from other players, but it never bothered me.
He only says that when you talk to him. It's not as if the game is actually automatically paused for him to make his snide remarks.

Not in the JP version at least.

He also says it (unskippably) after every Game Over, which has been happening more and more in these later levels.

Ha! Yeah, I did the World 5 Fluzzard level yesterday as well and probably died 25 or so times (between both levels and going back to get the comet metal). I was PISSED. Just six stars to go...