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A not so relaxing vacation.
Console: Nintendo Switch (via Super Mario 3D All Stars). |
My vacation was starting, the sun was shining, and what game would be perfect to play I wondered? 'Well, what about Super Mario Sunshine?' said a voice called YouTube's autoplay function when it started to play 'Johnny vs Super Mario Sunshine' just when I started to ponder that very question. And hey, if I can't go to a tropical island paradise myself, I might as well play a game that gets me there by proxy!
Even so, this little holiday-from-home might not be the smoothest ride if its reputation is to be believed.
Super Mario Sunshine was the big follow-up to Super Mario 64, the game that put 3D platformers on the map. It introduced many features common today, arguably making it one of the most influential games of all time and an immediate classic. Sunshine had big boots to fill back in 2002.
While Sunshine was critically acclaimed and a hot seller like its predecessor, it never quite reached those same heights. Isle Delfino just didn't click as well with people, and the title is remembered for how difficult it is to 100% complete. The lower sales of the GameCube compared to the Nintendo 64 didn't help matters much either.
Not that I care too much about that. Thanks to the lovely bundle that is the Super Mario 3D All-Stars collection, I can play both 64 and Sunshine without the need for expensive original hardware. Unlike many, I don't care much for 64, so perhaps I'll go against the grain here too and enjoy Sunshine far more than most seem to?
Without further ado, let's talk about this game!
Princess Peach, Mario, and a bunch of Toads arrive on the sun-drenched tropical paradise that is Isle Delfino for some well-earned R & R. Their vacation takes a turn for the worst however with Mario arrested by the local police only minutes after landing. Someone who looks suspiciously like our favourite moustached plumbers has been vandalising the island, spraying paint and graffiti everywhere. The native Piantas believe Mario is the culprit and sentence him to clean everything up—and they won't let him leave until he has.
Together with the sentient water pack 'Flash Liquidizer Ultra Dousing Device' aka F.L.U.D.D., Mario sets out to clean up the island, find the real vandal, clear his name, and enjoy that vacation after all.
Isle Delfino everyone aka our hubworld for this adventure. |
Super Mario Sunshine has some interesting oddities. It’s one of those rare stories where the princess doesn’t get kidnapped—well, at least not right off the bat. Yeah, she does get snagged later on, but it’s nice that for a couple of hours, she’s just hanging around, enjoying the sun, and actually talking to Mario for a chance.
When she does get kidnapped, at least there’s more of a reason behind it this time. Bowser has kidnapped the princess so many times that the whole schtick feels hollow. ‘Shadow Mario’—and yes, I won’t spoil this 20+ year-old title unlike the loading screens in this collection—has a very specific reason to kidnap Peach and discredit Mario. A nice, small change of pace.
Also, a change of pace is the voice acting. Yes, you read that right. Super Mario Sunshine has voice acting in its cutscenes. There’s not much of it, but stands out as the only time we have some beefy voice acting in a Mario game, it sure does. These things make the story aspect of Sunshine, always flimsy in Mario games, just a bit more memorable.
I’ve spent more words on the narrative than I thought I would, so now it’s about time I get to the good stuff. How well does this game play? Very well, but with some very clear room for improvement.
Mario has all the moves in his repertoire that you'd expect—the double jump, the ground pound, the somersault, you name it. I got a lot of use out of the latter in particular but that isn't the big attraction here. No, that is F.L.U.D.D. You don’t just use it to clean up all the graffiti; it’s a very welcome extension of Mario’s moveset.
You can spray enemies with it as an attack or use the standard hover nozzle to extend your airtime a bit. Like Astro with its laser feet, to pick a currently relevant example. I quite like this—probably my favourite new movement option the red plumber has gotten over the years. I’m not very precise with, well, everything so having the opportunity to save myself from a bad jump? I'll always appreciate that.
I do wish that the team had taken a different approach to F.L.U.D.D.'s nozzles, though. The way it works is that you always have the standard 'Squirt' nozzle equipped, and with a press of a button, you can switch to one of the special nozzles. The 'Hover' is the default one while the, the 'Rocket' and 'Turbo' nozzles, can be found in coloured boxes in certain levels. The latter means that they're only available to you when the game wants them to be.
Shame. Would've liked to find my own path to the goal by creatively using these special nozzles.
I would’ve gotten more use out of these two like that, but just as with Yoshi, their use is limited. It may very well be that they’re used more in later missions but I really won't stick around for that.
Looking at Mario’s moveset, I don’t see why they couldn’t have mapped the hover feature so that you wouldn’t need to switch nozzles at all. There’s really no need to spray water while in the air, so they could’ve made it so you automatically hover when activating F.L.U.D.D. mid-jump. I would’ve liked that. I often forgot to switch nozzles and ended up plummeting to my doom more times than I care to admit.
Now, let’s get to the point that truly makes this game the black sheep of the 3D Mario games: the level design. Since this is pre-Odyssey, we have the old mission structure, so I’m sure you know how it all plays out. Each world has a handful of levels that put Mario through a variety of challenges. From collecting 8 red coins to helping out locals—like getting a Wiggler down from their tower—to levels that take away F.L.U.D.D. entirely and focus on pure platforming challenges.
That´s one angry Wiggler! |
My inherent issue with this structure, where you’re locked into completing one objective at a time and can’t move forward until you do, sadly pales in comparison to some unfortunate design choices. The camera rotates left and right to about 340 degrees and no further. You can easily end up with a weird, unhelpful camera angle that you have to wrestle with to get right again to see what you're doing.
Much has been said about the struggle to 100% complete this game due to the hard-to-track blue coin hunt and slow boat rides, but that’s not what caused the low points for me. It’s the difficulty and the length of the levels that are responsible for those.
Now, it has been a couple of years since I played Super Mario Galaxy—three in fact—but I can’t remember any levels in Galaxy being as tedious or long as some I encountered here. There are levels, like 'Uncork the Waterfall', that starts off fun but took me so long to complete due to, often, tedious tasks that they overstayed their welcome. I even turned the game off mid-level at points because I was so annoyed and done with it. The level design is so demanding, that it sometimes feels like these challenges would be better suited as post-story levels rather than part of the core campaign.
Those issues aside, once I get into a groove, this game is incredibly addictive! It's at its best when you can jump in for a quick session, get a Shine or two, or face off in a boss fight. When you can jump, spray some water, and enjoy the otherwise excellent platforming, doing all of that is so satisfying and fun.
Even those long, frustrating levels—while hair-pulling at times—offer a real sense of accomplishment. When I finally got that Shine in 'Goopy Inferno', I wanted to jump off the couch and raise my arms in victory!
I also don’t mind the Paradise Island theme at all. Yes, it means Sunshine doesn’t have as diverse or varied locations as your typical Mario game, but it pushed the team to get more creative with their level designs. An amusement park? A haunted hotel full of Luigi’s Mansion nods and Easter eggs? Those were unexpected and not done before. The little detail that you can see in certain levels in the background of others is such a neat touch as well. It’s a subtle reminder that yes, all of this is happening on one island.
Since I’m playing the 3D All-Stars release, I got to enjoy the improvements that package brings: a new control scheme that, from what I’ve read, makes controlling F.L.U.D.D. far easier thanks to the extra buttons, and polished-up graphics that clean up the experience nicely. It’s not quite like Galaxy, where you could mistake it for a modern game, but don’t get me wrong—it’s still a significant improvement.
There are some pretty neat shots here, if you know where to find them. |
I’m a bit annoyed, though, that while they cleaned up the UI assets, they quit the job halfway through. If you’re using a GameCube controller, no harm no foul, but with Joy-Cons or the Pro Controller, you’ll need to remember that the 'X' button on-screen isn’t actually the 'X' button.
In that same “annoyed because they didn’t fix it” category is a persistent audio glitch that the longer I played, the more it bugged me. Whenever you jump out of water, with or without F.L.U.D.D., you hear the 'water jet' sound for a split second. Once I noticed it, I couldn’t stop hearing it. Every single time. It drove me nuts! It's such a small thing, so why did they never fix it?!
Now that I’m on sound—let’s talk about the music. It’s fine. Other than some tracks that play often, like the Delfino Plaza theme and the non-F.L.U.D.D. Levels, I can’t remember much of it. That said, I never heard a track I disliked, so while it’s not my favourite Mario soundtrack, I have zero qualms with either.
Conclusion
A game of sunny highs and downcast lows—that’s Super Mario Sunshine in my eyes. F.L.U.D.D. is such a useful tool, and when the level design is firing on all cylinders, the game is so fun and addictive. However, when you’re stuck in one of its overly long and tedious levels or fighting the camera, it can be truly frustrating.
As long as you don’t aim for 100% completion and remain patient when you hit one of those difficult levels, you’ll find there’s a lot to enjoy in Super Mario Sunshine. I enjoyed it more than Super Mario 64, controversial as that may be. So by all means, give it a shot if you’ve played the other 3D Mario games!
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