Super Mario Sunshine

Nintendo - 2002 - Gamecube

I've been revisiting some of the Gamecube's greatest hits recently so I of course had to play through 2002's Super Mario Sunshine. Like Luigi's Mansion, this was the first time I had played through this game in maybe 15 years and this game holds up too, but man does it have some giant flaws. 

First of all, this is probably the most dialogue and cutscene heavy of any of the mainline Mario games. Which in and of itself is not a bad thing but Super Mario Sunshine opens with about 15 minutes of unskippable cutscenes and dialogue before you're finally set free in Delphino Plaza. 15 minutes is an eternity for a Mario game where I really don't care about the story or Mario's motivations. I just want to run and jump around. Although the whole FLUDD and pollution clean up is a very weird angle for a Mario game, I think the hover, turbo boost and rocket jump are a good addition to the 3D Mario moveset. The first few levels with wide sprawling areas and lots of upward vertical movement are a perfect compliment for the new moves given to Mario with FLUDD. The hovel nozzle allows you to steady your aerial approach when trying to land on the small bouncy cables and the rocket boost allows you to get up high quickly if you fall off. I think there's some decent level design on display here, but let me highlight one of the worst and most egregious errors in player input mapping I have ever seen. Ricco Harbor and Pinna Park both feature vertical AND horizontal chain link fence link surfaces that Mario can climb on. While Mario is climbing on a vertical fence, his A button is mapped to "jump" while his B button is mapped to a punch command which can hit enemies climbing on the opposite side of the fence. While Mario is hanging from a horizontal fence surface, his A button is mapped to the punch command while his B button LETS GO OF THE FENCE. NO, NO, NO! Bad! Bad! Bad! The horizontal controller mapping is the exact opposite on the vertical controller mapping! Pinna Park has vertical fences placed right next to horizontal fences with enemies crawling on either surface. I can not tell you how many times I accidentally fell off of the level while attempting to punch an enemy with the same button I had just pressed a second ago. Terrible. 

This game's other huge problem is with the concept of a difficulty curve. The curve is all over the place with this game. In some levels, the stars get easier as you go. This is most noticeable at the end of the game where you're required to paddle through lava and jump through clouds in a relatively difficult platforming challenge. Then you fight Bowser which has got to be one of the easiest things to do in the entire game. I beat him in about 30 seconds on my first try. The other noticeable difficulty spikes are with the "secret" stars. The ones that require you to complete a platforming challenge without the use of FLUDD. I think the idea here is that FLUDD makes some of the platforming too easy. You can sort of use FLUDD to compensate for mistimed or misspaced jumps, so taking FLUDD away would lend for some interesting platforming challenges. The problem is that you get so used to using FLUDD to "cheat" that the platforming becomes that much more hard when its taken away from you. Add in the fact that making a platforming error on one of these stages usually results in Mario plummeting to his death instantly and now you've got some really unforgiving and incredibly challenging stages. Which is fine. But these "secret" stars are relatively much, much more difficult than most other stars.

Okay one last nitpicky thing. Remember Hotel Delphino on Gelato Beach? It was the one infested with a bunch of Boo ghosts. It was actually my favorite level as a kid. It was my least favorite this time around. There's a star that requires you to get Yoshi up to the attic to get past some Boos since they can only be defeated by being eaten by Yoshi. It's possible to fall through the attic into a room that you can only exit by opening a door. As far as I can tell, you cannot open doors while riding Yoshi. Which means you have to leave him in the room you fell into and he's trapped until he despawns, which is on a timer. The problem is a new Yoshi won't respawn until the old one dies, so if you fall into these rooms, you're basically stuck waiting two or three minutes for your Yoshi to die. Bad design. Oh also the underwater levels still suck in Sunshine.

Summary

I know I've done pretty much nothing but complain about Super Mario Sunshine, but I still think it's a good game. I mean if you compare it to other Mario games, it's probably average. But in the grand view of all video games, it's still good. It's worth taking another look at if you played it 15 years ago like I did, but I'm not sure I could recommend this one for a new player. It's far from Mario's best offering. For that, check out Super Mario 3D World.