Lately I've been digging deep into the world of
Super Mario, from the 1985 NES release and working my way towards
Odyssey, leaving no Goomba unstomped. Many of these games I've played many times, but there are several I hadn't played before and I got to experience them for the first time. Currently I'm 15 games into my project and got to revisit the GameCube staple,
Super Mario Sunshine. This game has always stuck out in the series to me, but I haven't quite been able to articulate why. Having so many
Mario experiences in such a short time I feel has finally given me the perspective I've always lacked and may allow me to better discuss why I think
Super Mario Sunshine feels so out of place as a
Super Mario title.
I think the obvious place to start is Mario's movement. In every
Mario game up to this point I'd argue that the best part of the game is simply controlling Mario. It's always a bit different, but right from
Super Mario Bros' (1985) forward focused momentum, to
Super Mario Land 2's (1992) floatier gliding jumps, to
Super Mario 64's (1996) vast array of jumps and flips, these games are all fun to play because Mario is fun to move. Each game is designed around it's specific power-ups as well to enhance these movements. Hitting that run speed in
Super Mario Bros 3 (1990) or
Super Mario World (1991) to take to the air with a Raccoon Tail or Cape is an unparalleled feeling, as is stomping through the bottom of an underwater level with the Metal Cap in
Mario 64. It's pretty challenging to find Mario in any form up from 1985-2001 that isn't fun to be in control of no matter the stage, the power up on hand, or the platform you're playing on.
Now the movement in
Super Mario Sunshine does borrow much from
Super Mario 64, but misses a few key moves including my personal favorite, the long jump. These in themselves wouldn't be a big deal if they were replaced with something equivalent. Unfortunately, the F.L.U.D.D. pack that they.strap you with from the get go is a poor replacement for the pure joy of previous games that actually let you feel the heft of Mario's moves. Instead your default two newest moves are a sluggishly slow moving Hover Nozzle (that negates the whole idea of this being a platforming game) and a Squirt Nozzle (that encourages Mario to spray targets and enemies while standing still or strafing). The Hover Nozzle behaves like a crutch and disincentives players from having to get better at the game, as any missed jump can simply have you arc around and safely land on the platform that was missed. The Squirt Nozzle can be used to make Mario slide which admittedly does feel fast and fun... until you quickly crash into something and lose all that momentum with a slow painful crashing and getting up animation. This is really only helpful on clear straightaways as it has next to no cornering abilities. Not much of the game is not designed to take advantage of this mechanic and it seems lost on anyone outside of the speed running community. If that was it it would be bad enough, BUT on top of these less enjoyable mechanics the developers thought it would be a good idea to make you refill your F.L.U.D.D.'s water supply so you'll occasionally run out of water and not even be able to use your new skills. This isn't much of a problem on most stages, but when it is you've usually climbed or traveled a fair distance and are close to your target and are then forced to back track to find a refill if you wish to proceed. Not a fun mechanic.
Late into the game you can unlock 2 new Nozzles; the Rocket and Turbo Nozzles. Both of these make Mario's movement quite a bit more enjoyable, but unfortunately most of the game is not designed to take advantage of them and you'll often find yourself in situations requiring one of your initial 2 Nozzles with the 2 newer ones only used for a handful of Shines and challenges.
Up to this point in the
Mario series, with the notable exception of the 2
Super Mario Land titles for GameBoy, every time a new cast of badguys has been introduced they have been pretty fantastic and enduring. Goombas, Koopas, Shy Guys, Chain Chomps, Wario, Wart, Bowser, Koopa Kids, Bullet Bills, Hammer Bros, and on and on. Mario has never lacked a good cast of villains.
Mario 64 may have introduced mainly forgettable new ones (other than Unagi, Big Boo and Whomp I'd argue), but it also had excellent 3D interpretations of many of it's important classic characters.
Mario Sunshine on the other hand, introduces an entire cast of duds which is crowned with the king of duds, Bowser Jr. The few throwback enemies either have ugly remakes (Bullet Bill, Bob-omb) or behave like a different type of bad guy completely (Blooper, Piranha Plant Cheep Cheep).
Mario has consistently had a small, but endearing cast of allies. With the exception of Daisy in
Super Mario Land, Mario has a solid core cast of himself, Luigi, Toad/Toads, Peach, and Yoshi. The end. It's a tight cast considering how many games just that small handful have appeared in. Yoshi was a big deal when introduced and had an impact and a game that was designed to highlight him that was much needed when joining the others as a recurring character. In
Sunshine your new additions are Toadsworth... and Piantas. Aside from the fact that Piantas could also be considered antagonists, let that sink in for a bit. First new ally since 1991 and you get Toadsworth? Why bother?
Mario has always been extremely light on the story and that has never been a bad thing.
Super Mario Sunshine tries really hard to push a narrative into the game and while that goal is admirable, the end result is simply terrible and even leaks it's way into the games progression, which I feel hurts it substantially. The earliest
Mario games are straightforward and linear, no question about it. Starting with
Super Mario World, then followed by
Super Mario Land 2 and
Super Mario 64 the games really start to allow the player more freedoms with which levels to tackle.
Super Mario 64 has my favorite progression to this point in the series, where you simply need to beat X number of stages to unlock more stages. You choose which challenges to tackle and in which order and you can even obtain Stars in a stage that is not the one you selected when you entered the stage. Simple and genius progression system. With
Super Mario Sunshine's ambitious story progression system you are locked into a single Shine at a time, no variance. On top of that as you progress through the Shines in each stage the game attempts to tell a story in that particular stage, with usually at least 4 Shines being completely irrelevant to that story out of the 11 available in each stage. Some of the Shine's don't even make sense story-wise, such as Shadow Mario stealing your F.L.U.D.D. for certain challenges, only for you to have it back for no apparently reason afterwards? Also the Piantas, which you are helping clean up their island and return their Shines, seem to be in possession of at least a quarter of the Shines you have been tasked with obtaining. Why push a narrative if you don't make it a logical narrative? Now the game never explicitly tells you that you need to reach the 7th Shine in each of the main stages to open the final battle with Bowser. I had 80+ Shines and hadn't seen any game progression in ages because I didn't realize this. Just kept plugging away until something hopefully happened. That's bad design, but also not my biggest issue with this style of progression. Because each Shine has can have a different stage layout this makes it impossible to achieve the 100 coin Shine on most of the stages; you have to trial and error them until you find the Shine that actually allows you to complete this challenge. That's a mess. And on top of that certain Nozzles and hidden blue coins are also locked away in very specific Shines on every stage. Maybe all of this would be forgivable if that story was great (spoiler alert, it was not). The cutscenes are some of the most painful even for the era this game was released. Unskippable as well!
Mario games to this point have done a great job of giving the player a good variety of level types: Castles, Overworlds, Underworlds, Underwater Stages, Cloud Stages, Ice Stages, Pipe Worlds, Little Big Worlds, Outer Space, etc. All you get in
Sunshine is Tropical Island so you'd better like it. The Haunted Hotel that you unlock after clearing yet another beach is a bit of a change of pace, but everything else offered feels very samsie.
Super Mario World also took place on an island, but it felt so much more diverse than
Sunshine. You know what else
Super Mario World did better? Yoshi! The Yoshis in
Sunshine are devastatingly disappointing. One drop of water and he is gone. Did I mention this was a tropical island covered with and surrounded by water?
To say that all previous
Mario games are without technical issues and glitches would be a lie. But it is true that running across one is far from the norm. Even in the ground breaking
Super Mario 64 it's quite rare that I run into any technical problems that can briefly distract me from my platforming bliss. Oh baby is
Sunshine littered in common issues, though. From the camera getting stuck or passing inside of objects, to falling through the stage completely, to regular game freezes, it can really start to grate on a player. And the final fight, that moment you've been working your way towards, is unforgivably broken. When Mario falls through the giant target that he is meant to smash into in order to advance the fight, 25% of the time what should be a tense and triumphant battle turns into a teeth gritting test of patience.
This next part is far more subjective, but I've found that I love playing every dang level in most
Super Mario games. In
Super Mario 64, which has a whopping 120 different challenges for you to complete, I find 10-12 of them not overly fun and the rest are incredibly satisfying experiences. I'm not saying
Super Mario Sunshine has no fun to be had. I like quite a few parts of this game, but when stacked up next to pretty well any other
Super Mario title it's quite joyless. From a ridiculous Pachinko Machine Shine to slowly traversing boats travelling at a snails pace with a Yoshi, who can't make one misstep with his slippery controls or face defeat, to walking around spraying every F*#$ING slightly out of place bit of scenery and grain of sand in the game's many many beaches in hopes of stray Blue Coins or the occasional Shine, there are just so many moments that are far more monotonous or frustrating than fun. It's pretty telling that the most universally praised parts of this game are the Secret Shine Stages in which the game strips you of it's main mechanics and themes and even music. Carrying fruit is not fun. Spraying inanimate objects with water is not fun. Cleaning pollution off the ground is not fun. Getting 80-90 coins in a stage and realizing you have to exit to try the next Shine to get the full 100 coins is not fun. Buying Shines from vendors with the cruelly hidden blue coins is not fun. Waiting for birds to fly back towards you when they get out of range so that you can spray them is not fun. There are so many parts of this game that are not fun, but they are not one off experiments they are repeatedly reused as if they are supposed to bring the player some sense of accomplishment.
You may have noticed in the last paragraph that I took a small jab at the music in
Super Mario Sunshine. That was very intentional. This game also has one of the least memorable soundtracks in a
Super Mario game. It's largely forgettable. Not much more the elaborate on there.
Secrets have always been a big part of the
Super Mario experience. From the simple beginnings of Coin Heavens and Warp Pipes to the far more rewarding Star Road players are always rewarded for exploring or mastering levels in
Super Mario games. The reward for 120 stars in
Super Mario 64 I'll admit is quite anti-climactic, but when you finish the Star Road levels in
Super Mario World you are rewarded with both a message from the developer, as well as a great new look to the game and many of it's enemies. After what is a quite grueling experience of getting all 120 Shines in
Super Mario Sunshine my hope was that effort would be paid off with something more akin to the
Super Mario World experience as opposed to the
Super Mario 64 one. What you are rewarded with is simply a post credit postcard with a picture to remind you just how forgettable this entire new cast has been. It was without a doubt not worth the effort to obtain.
I know I've been pretty hard on this game, but that's just because I love the
Super Mario series so much that I'm likely being overly critical. There are very few
Super Mario games I'd recommend someone interested in the series to skip. I'm kind of torn on this one in that regard. It really didn't do anything that another game hasn't done better, either before or since and looking back it doesn't feel like it hit any important milestones for the series that a player could benefit by seeing it's place in the evolution of
Super Mario. The one thing that used to stand out to me was it's attempt at a narrative in a
Super Mario game, but I'd rather direct players to
Super Mario Galaxy which did a better job telling an interesting story in the
Super Mario universe by magnitudes. It is as of this writing the ONLY game in the series that I feel requires a player to go to outside sources in order to 100% it. Every other game gives you the tools in the game to achieve that goal. When racking my brain to end on a positive note the best I can do is that the Secret Shine Stages are awesome and it's colorful.
I know this game has it's defenders and if you've read this and are one of them please speak up. Have I stated anything that is inaccurate or did I overlook some of the positive qualities of
Super Mario Sunshine. What are your favorite parts of this game and why? I would love to have a discussion about where this game fits into the
Super Mario Bros scale in terms of it's quality. I don't think it's the worst game in the series, but I do think it's quite close to it.
