I'm willing to bet that the guy who invented the "gif" saw all of the controversy around the production of the name and decided he'd just tell everyone it was "jif" just because he was an asshole.
Galaxy 2 was great. Given its one of my all time favorite games, might as well throw in my thoughts/opinions as well:
The whole switching the the hub world for a level selection screen was one of the few gripes I had with the game. I've taken issue with Nintendo's recent pattern of cutting the 'open exploration' out of games for a more stream lined,on rails experience, like we've seen in Zelda, Paper Mario, and in Galaxy. Generally I think this trend axes out the fun and replayability of a game. However, out these three franchises, I think that Galaxy was hurt the least by its loss of a hub world and open world levels.
With Galaxy, it was more about cutting out the fat, and focusing on what truly made the first Mario Galaxy so much fun to play. I thought the open world exploration/collection quests and hub world in Galaxy 1 felt a little half assed, as if to say, "We know that Mario 64 and Sunshine were open ended and the Hub Worlds were full of places to explore, but we got tired of making those, so here's a shitty space station with some rooms. Go crazy." I also thought that, the open world levels, such as the Bee level, were a little boring, and devoid of any real secrets to find.
Mario Galaxy 1 was at its best when it was on rails. It never had the free do-what-you-want feeling that Super Mario 64 had, but it had some crazy platforming and great mechanics that will be incredibly hard to top. Galaxy 2 essentially just narrowed its focus on these parts of the first Galaxy, and it worked. The consequence of this was that these parts generally take a lot less time than wandering around aimlessy doing whatever you want, so thats why its so much easier to blow through 50 to 60 stars in a day.
Still, a hub world would have been cool. Or even a hub galaxy, approximately the size of the average level, with new parts of it unlocking as you gathered new stars, and lots of secrets to find within it. Wouldn't have been much more work than just cutting out one of the original levels and replacing the pointless spaceship rock thing with it. But thats just me. Other than that, not too much left to be desired.
Also, the music alone is a game changer. Sometimes I would go back into certain levels that I had already beaten just to here the music again.
Cirt liked a comment on a blog entry in "It's JIF, not GIF"