Super Mario Sunshine

The Good
The thing that standed out the most were the graphics and the wide variety of colors. The graphics were very detailed (especially the water in the harbor level). The colors were eye-popping and a upgrade from Mario 64.

The Bad
The 2 things I didn't like were the music and the voice text. The music was corny and boring like in the other Mario games. Plus, the music overshadowed the voices in the game. Peach's voice was scrambled and the Toads just made funny noises.

The Bottom Line
You feel like you got your money's worth with this game. If you like Mario games or games with a mixture of humor and seriousness, you should buy this game.

The Good
Nostalgia was sparked for me while I was cleaning an old Gamecube controller of mine. An incident involving a mix of laughter and hot chocolate being ejected from my adolescent self’s nose left it sticky and unusable for about a decade. While I was meticulously cleaning the gamepad inside and out, I found myself wandering the dusty depths of my memory, plucking choice images of some of my favourite games. Though thoughts of Rogue Squadron 2 and F-Zero GX were at first competing for my attention, I came to the realization that I never actually completed Super Mario Sunshine. It hadn’t clicked for me in my youth, and while I made it very near the end – the final boss’s front doorstep, no less – I lacked the motivation to actually cap the game off with a victory.

So I picked it off my shelf and started up a new file and was soon to discover that I couldn’t really remember much about the game. Some of the images lined up with my memory, but the game’s progression through the various worlds, and even many of the mechanics, had all been filed away in the trash bin of my mind. Rarely have I ever been given a chance to actually re-experience a game from my youth, so I certainly wasn’t about to pass up the chance.

The game’s framework is set up in a series of cutscenes that provide a stark reminder of why voice acting should be kept to an extreme minimum in Mario games. Mario has been framed for spreading graffiti around the resort hotspot of Isle Delfino and is forced to clean up the mess left by his dark doppelganger using F.L.U.D.D., a device that spews both water and tutorials in a number of inventive ways. The one I got the most usage from was the hover nozzle, but it’s also fun ripping around with the booster, and the rocket is great for getting to high places.

Aside from the added water pack, gameplay is extremely similar to Mario 64. You’re placed in a hub world and must travel to various lands to collect Shine Sprites and return sunlight to the tropical paradise. Most of Mario’s moves from its N64 predecessor have returned with some new ones added and some others removed to accommodate F.L.U.D.D.’s repertoire.

The biggest difference between the two games isn’t actually Mario’s new backwear; it’s the cohesiveness. Mario 64 was very abstract, so all the tasks were largely unrelated, but Sunshine is much more grounded and most of the challenge revolves around cleaning up the mess left by Shadow Mario. It vastly changes the feel of the game. Most of the challenges faced are explained by NPC’s, and most shines and blue coins are obtained by helping them. Levels are based around places that feel more natural, such as a theme park or hotel, and since the platforming had to be adjusted with this in mind, it feels less mechanically straightforward. This unfortunately winds up hurting the game in a number of ways.

Still, the cohesive world does have its advantages. The scenery is often very striking, with the spooky hotel bathed in the red of the setting sun, and a tribal village surrounded by trees and mushrooms that glow in the night like a black velvet painting under ultraviolet light. It also allows there to be a bit more story development, but that’s largely squandered (probably for the best). Levels feel smaller, but there’s a lot more incentive to explore the nooks and crannies. Delfino’s inhabitants have a lot to say, and while it’s rarely interesting, it does make the world feel like somewhere people actually live, rather than a cluster of isolated lands. This is highlighted by the ability to view other destinations on the island by looking off in the distance, making the island feel like a singular world.

The Bad
Mario Sunshine seems like the odd one out when you look at the core Mario series, and it’s for more reasons than just its bizarre inclusion of fully voiced cutscenes. The series has always involved adventure in far off and wondrous places that are incredibly abstract in their design, but Isle Delfino is a pretty grounded resort town filled with inhabitants who have petty problems for you to solve, and this is the root of the game’s major problem. It’s an interesting and unique departure for the Mario series to have it so grounded, but it’s also rather mundane, and this permeates a lot of the design.

The most problematic deficiency is in the challenges presented. While there’s a lot of carryover from Mario 64, such as dealing with boss problems or collecting a set number of red coins, there’s also a great deal of what feels a lot like janitorial work. The worlds simply aren’t built like Mario 64’s, and so there’s less that actually challenges control proficiency and more that challenge patience. For example, in each world there is a shine you obtain by chasing down Shadow Mario and spraying him with enough water. However, there is no limit on how long you have to finish him off, nor does he recover any health by avoiding your jet. This means it’s only a matter of time and patience before enough shots are finally landed on him and he goes down. There’s no challenge to it, it’s not thoughtfully designed or even fun, and you have to do it once in every single world.

It’s also a bit of a cop-out that 24 of the shines need to be bought for ten blue coins each. There’s 240 in total hidden throughout each of the worlds (about 30 in each), but there’s no way to view how many remain in each world. This reduces a portion of the game to nothing more than a grand scavenger hunt, and considering there’s already the red coin challenges carried over from Mario 64, it’s entirely lazy and unnecessary. This is part of the reason why I decided not to pursue collecting all 120 sprites. The coins are entirely optional, luckily, since the only requirement for completing the game is beating Shadow Mario in each of the worlds.

Even the challenges that strictly have you reaching a certain area are complicated by thoughtless design. I often found myself the victim of tasks that required several long and tricky steps that had to be repeated when I failed. One such section required obtaining food for a Yoshi from a machine and using it to freeze enemies and climb a series of platforms. Each time I fell into the water I had to start the whole lengthy and tedious sequence over again. Every once and a while, the game gives no mercy. It can aggravate.

Lastly, where the hell is Luigi? So, what, he gets to star in Luigi’s Mansion, but he doesn’t even make an appearance in Mario Sunshine? Snubbed, just like in Mario 64. Unforgivable.

The Bottom Line
During the time I was initially enamoured with Super Mario Sunshine and delighted to have the chance to re-experience it from what felt like scratch, I pledged myself to collect every Shine Sprite in the game. Eventually, reality set it and I realized I just wasn’t enjoying it enough to go that far, and considering I went the completionist route for the Mario Galaxy games and more than once for Mario 64, that’s all I feel I really need to say. Super Mario Sunshine is certainly a GOOD game, one that I was glued to for a few straight evenings; it’s just a pretty weak entry in the core Mario series. It’s a fairly unique entry, but at the same time it’s less polished and more mundane. Don’t get me wrong, I totally recommend it, but if you skip it and go straight for the Super Mario Galaxy games, I can definitely understand.

The Good
Super Mario Sunshine was released in 2002 to pretty much universal acclaim. IGN gave it a 9.5 and I'm fairly sure Eurogamer was ready with a 10/10 for this bad boy. It's an interesting game because it incorporates storytelling devices that Shigeru Miyamoto tends to avoid in his other games. The most notable new feature is voice acting, however I can get to that later.

In Super Mario Sunshine Mario is off on a vacation with Princess Peach in a hilariously camp giant pink jet. They land on Isle Delfino (which is probably like the Mushroom Kingdom's Florida) and right away Mario is accused of vandalism. It seems some sort of shadowy imposter has been running around grafitto-tagging the beautiful buildings and natural environment of Isle Delfino and standing accused of a crime he didn't commit Mario is forced to pay penance by cleaning the entire island. With a helpful talking water pack strapped to his back called FLUDD he travels around various locales...cleaning. It's more exciting than it sounds really, after all it's Mario.

Our portly plumber controls almost identically to his appearance on the Nintendo 64 save for a couple of new FLUDD specific moves and a new spinny, jumpy type thing that can be used to clean himself or get to higher places. The FLUDD pack is used to glide, rocket about and clean off the goop that is covering Isle Delfino. The pack also talks, meaning it is used as a defacto guide around the island and provides hints every now and then. I quite liked the addition of the FLUDD pack, the whole cleaning aspect of the game had the potential to be an outright bore but miraculously it's really quite fun and satisfying to clean away all of the mess and end up with a pristine beach or side walk. The FLUDD pack is also used to defeat enemies and as I mentioned before, is an aid while platforming. The platforming is quite weak in Sunshine, so the inclusion of the FLUDD makes potentially controller breaking portions of the game very bearable, until you are forced to go without the FLUDD pack. This brings me onto the new “secret” areas. These “secrets” aren't really very secret at all, they are always very obviously placed. The secret areas are FLUDD-less portions of the game that play like a more linear, back to basics platformer. You are tasked with going from A to B negotiating obstacles while trying not to fall into the void below. These secret areas range from really inventive and fun, to downright malicious.

The level design in Sunshine is very solid and interesting. The game shines (no pun intended) when Mario is tasked with simply going from A to B, practicing his platforming mastery while defeating enemies and collecting coins. There is a lot of this in the game, but not nearly enough. Level goals vary from racing to defeating a boss enemy to breaking into a spa to collect a shine sprite, the requisite collectable in the game.

The shine sprite's are supposed to power the island and without them...well it's not really clear what the big deal is with the shine sprites. The island isn't imploding or anything because they have all been scattered, it's more of a minor inconvenience really. Anyway, the point is, they function like the stars did in Super Mario 64. Your progress through the game isn't really governed by the amount of stars you collect though, it's mostly down to finishing up to episode 7 of each level. It's a nice new progression scheme, one I like. You still find yourself grinding those shine sprites though, the game is just that addictive. Graphically this is one of the best looking Gamecube game's out there. The engine is super solid. I have not noticed the frame rate dip once while I have been playing and the vivid, almost pastel like textures and gorgeous environmental effects like heat haze are just superb. Mario animates fantastically and I especially like the awesome way he seems to demolecularize when he enters a level. I'd like to note the approach towards the aesthetic elements of the secret area's as well. They seem to have this spherical texture that wraps around the void that the simplistic platforming elements are suspended in. They are very minimalist areas and I was very charmed by them.

The Bad
Super Mario Sunshine is a game of extreme's, either it's being extremely good or extremely bad. I've never found myself just mildly frustrated by this game, either you can do something the first time or you constantly have to restart. The problem isn't the fundamental dynamics the game relies upon. I already said how solid these are. The problem is the lazy, ill programmed and downright malicious camera system. The camera is an insufferable prick, pardon my french. I cannot tell you the amount of occasions it has totally screwed me over, doing ridiculous things that really, it shouldn't be doing. It's the main reason the secrets range from awfully fantastic to just plain awful. If the secret is a relatively simple one with a course that doesn't wind too much the camera will do an adequate job of keeping up. However if the secret has multiple levels, snaking turns or giant moving things the camera will totally ruin your day. The main problem is that it is lazy. It takes forever to circle around to an adequate view of Mario meaning you'll constantly have to manually manipulate it to get a view of the action that won't get you killed. Having to concentrate on executing difficult jumps while manipulating this piss poor camera is a pain in the ass and ends up causing way too much undue frustration. There are even indicators that the team knew the camera sucked and without any extra development time to spare on it applied a quick fix. When Mario heads behind something a silhouette will appear, with little question marks indicating enemies and objects. If the camera naturally snapped to a decent three quarter perspective of Mario under normal circumstances there would have been no need for this. Also, when being launched upwards, instead of fixing itself on Mario and zooming out to give you an indication of where you are heading the camera stays where it is and points directly up at Mario meaning you're basically flying blind. It's atrocious. Like I said, if your current activities are relatively simple there probably won't be a problem but when things heat up, the platforming because more demanding and the environments become more complicated, you're going to notice how utterly broken the camera system is.

Another thing I wanted to mention was how monotonous the whole tropical setting for the game becomes. It's always sunny and there is very little variation in the general aesthetics for each area. I get that the team was trying to convey the illusion of this cohesive environment but the variety in artistic direction suffers because of this and frankly it becomes a little tiresome. The inhabitants of Isle Delfino are also pretty much all identical with a bit of pallet swapping going on here and there. This goes for the music as well. Apart from a couple of awesome tunes (which happen to be remixes of music from better Mario games) a lot of the music in Sunshine is just an endless variation on this one theme with a different crappy instrument. The only regular level theme worth mentioning is Noki Bay, and even that isn't worth downloading. The soundtrack is forgettable and lackluster. Frankly, I expect better from Kenji Kondo.

I just briefly want to talk about the story for a moment. I admire Shigeru Miyamoto for finally including something of a more meaty narrative to power the game along, but it's just not very good. It's like very little effort was put into it, we know who the antagonist is going to be, it's not like the game was going to introduce any new major characters. Therefore it stands to question whether the inclusion of such a weak, poorly acted narrative was all that necessary. Peach still ends up getting kidnapped, the antagonist still ends up being Bowser, so why convolute it beyond an opening cinema to establish what is going on?.

The Bottom Line
I got totally addicted to Super Mario Sunshine and kept playing it for hours despite its flaws. There is a lot to like about the game and the core platforming game play is incredibly solid and satisfying. The game is a blast when the challenge is to simply negotiate a platform challenge while collecting coins and grabbing that shine sprite at the end. The variation in level goals was a treat, but ultimately I just wanted to platform, and I wish there was more of it in the game. Sunshine is beautiful, with one of the most solid graphics engines I have ever seen on the Gamecube and the FLUDD pack, which could have been nothing more than a forgettable gimmick, ends up becoming a really cool platforming aide.

The camera system however ends up taking the greatest aspect of the game and smashing it into tiny pieces on the ground. The camera is a total prick that constantly sabotages your efforts at negotiating the tricky secret areas by not following Mario, following him too rigidly or becoming stuck on things. It wasn't taught to negotiate simple obstacles, stick to Mario properly or zoom out to give the player an adequate view in the appropriate circumstances. I just don't understand the almost universal glowing praise when this piss poor system was implemented 6 years after Super Mario 64 which was supposed to have kicked off this dynamic camera revolution.

While I loved Super Mario Sunshine the woeful camera, monotonous artistic direction, lack of real platforming, weak soundtrack and flimsy narrative keep it from being a truly great game.