Super Mario Sunshine is 10 Years old

[Keyboard Koala]

Twice as old now.

[SMD]

Still as shit

[SeanR]

2 hours ago, SMD said:

Still as shit

[Keyboard Koala]

To be fair, it's never really clicked with me either. With some margin my least favourite 3D Mario platform game.

[jonathanhoey]

I couldn't cope with the X axis being the wrong way round. 

 

Then they flipped it for the Switch version, and I meant to give it another go, but didn't get around to buying it before they deleted it from sale. 

 

Nintendo is baffling sometimes. 

[Paulando]

Love it me. It’s gloriously shit in places but I love the setting, the music, just every little shitty thing about it. Even the watermelons, bring em on. That shine where you need to manoeuvre a leaf on a river, I’ll do it ten times over. I love the Gamecube era, thought it was a super-fun console and loved the controller, and playing Sunshine always takes me back to those days.

 

And you know what, sometimes a game comes along and it’s incredibly flawed, but you just love it anyway. Super Mario Sunshine is that game for me.

[Kevvy Metal]

flaws are subjective, and I too love those aspects of the game mentioned. 

They're friction, but that's basically what's actually good about it. 

[Festoon]

In my case, the flaws eventually drove me away. Just too many tasks that weren't fun - like getting into an infinite loop of getting shocked by an electric ray, Mario recovering, but getting shocked again before he can be moved, etc.

 

So under playtested.

[Shimmyhill]

Love Mario Sunshine, that summer it came out was one of wonder of playing a new Mario game on a brilliant console - im sure half you lot in here are down on it as you played it in winter all grumpy or something

 

 

[megamixer]

Absolutely hated it, personally.

 

Everything just felt too fiddly and the camera could have been better. Also, I've never played a Mario game where such pin-point precision is required - not a great feeling when the camera is against you and you're pissing about with the F.L.U.D.D.

 

So many moments that infuriated me: the sand bird, that pinball table-esque red coin challenge, cleaning up the hotel beach against the clock (and having to get every teeny-tiny bit of sludge), and riding Yoshi across moving boats to get to a pipe for a red coin slide challenge...mess up the slide (which was very easy from memory) and you had to make the Yoshi journey back to the pipe all over again...

 

Admittedly, it has been well over a decade since I last played it so maybe a revisit with older eyes might be worth a punt. I collected 60-ish Shines originally so I more than gave it a chance.

 

I did like the tropical island setting and music though.

[Festoon]

On 09/10/2022 at 20:43, megamixer said:

Admittedly, it has been well over a decade since I last played it so maybe a revisit with older eyes might be worth a punt. I collected 60-ish Shines originally so I more than gave it a chance.

 

Nah, it's worse.

[makkuwata]

I definitely 100% completed this on GameCube but when it released on Switch I had no patience for it. I guess 16 year old me had more patience than mid-thirties me.

 

Always hated the uniform setting though.

[fat flatulent git]

I've had this for years, but never actually put my Gamecube disk into the machine.  Tried it for the first time at the weekend, on Switch.

 

Got fed up quickly.  The controls didn't seem intuitive at all, and I struggled with the chase that you have to do fairly early on.  Then I found the second brown slimy monster difficult as well. So I quit this and went back to Galaxy.

 

It's a pity, because it does look very nice, and initial impressions in the opening video were excellent.  I'll give it another try some time before I completely write it off.

[makkuwata]

The controls on GameCube are much better to be fair. It was designed for analogue shoulder buttons and some shines are absurdly frustrating without them.

[Paulando]

I found the short/far stream on the Switch shoulder buttons to be fine actually, didn’t notice any additional frustrations. In fact, I thought it made some parts better as you didn’t need to carefully hold the analogue button halfway down to spray as you ran around.

[DarhkFox]

When i got it on gamecube i think i played it 7 hours straight. I did enjoy it, but mainly for those awesome void levels.

 

I then gave up playing it at some point because i just found the tasks boring or certain things too glitchy.

 

Its the only Mario 3d platformer i haven't finished.

[merman]

There are a lot of good things in Super Mario Sunshine. And then they get spoiled by silly decisions like making Yoshi die when he touches water, or the placement of certain obstacles that really spoil certain missions/Shines.

 

I will say I love the cave sections WITHOUT FLUDD. They are pure platforming and filled with some clever ideas.

[Ketchup]

This does have a good amount of good shines in it. The levels themselves are wonderful, the graphics, sounds and atmosphere top notch. But the rough edges are difficult to deal with, there is a bunch of shines that are just pure pain, the blue coins are not fun beyond the obvious ones and whilst we know it was clearly rushed to launch it still has a lot going for it.

 

I do find Mario a little tough to control at times, especially on void levels as he's sometimes a little too slippery in places and momentum plays against fludd in a lot of ways. Mario 64 is a game i can 100% and besides a tiny handful of stars, love every moment. Sunshine is closer to like 60% of the game is pure enjoyment and 40% painful.

[Oh Danny Boy]

Always felt that Sunshine is the Mario USA of the 3D Marios, has its strong points but is very flawed and doesn’t feel like a proper Mario game, because it originally wasn’t. I always suspected that Sunshine started life as a different IP before becoming a Mario game later in development. 

[MattyP]

Got a 'Cube with this as a pack in back in the day. Finished it... but that ferris wheel can do one.. and the melon race for that matter!

 

Loved the game mostly though. The void levels were great.

[Festoon]

3 hours ago, Oh Danny Boy said:

Always felt that Sunshine is the Mario USA of the 3D Marios, has its strong points but is very flawed and doesn’t feel like a proper Mario game, because it originally wasn’t. I always suspected that Sunshine started life as a different IP before becoming a Mario game later in development. 

 

Nintendo don't really do that with first party games though. They design a mechanic and go from there. I think they did they fludd and then realised the hover broke the general mario mechanic and had to design very vertical levels which can be quite fiddly.

[Festoon]

The fucking sunglasses!

 

Would you like your visuals:

a) too bright and washed out?

b) too low contrast and dull?

[Anastrophe]

I remember the pre-launch chat on here about it (and the GC) possibly being a 3D console/game

[makkuwata]

Has there ever been confirmation that they were intending to launch the GameCube with some sort of proto-Wiimote?

 

Luigi’s Mansion with the Poltergust. Sunshine with Fludd. Wind Waker with…the Wind Waker.

 

On 11/10/2022 at 10:20, Paulando said:

I found the short/far stream on the Switch shoulder buttons to be fine actually, didn’t notice any additional frustrations. In fact, I thought it made some parts better as you didn’t need to carefully hold the analogue button halfway down to spray as you ran around.

 

Does the Switch version have the stationary aim you got when clicking in the GameCube shoulder buttons? I haven’t played it since it came out but I remember being annoyed about some sort of loss in control.

[Paulando]

18 minutes ago, makkuwata said:

 

Does the Switch version have the stationary aim you got when clicking in the GameCube shoulder buttons? I haven’t played it since it came out but I remember being annoyed about some sort of loss in control.

Yep, one of the shoulders does a full press, one does a half press. Sounded awful, works fine.

[Paulando]

 

The music in this is just so lovely too. And the gleaming white walls in Bianco Hills. The opening bit where you run forward and slide on the spraying water is just heavenly. Also a big fan of the clippity-clop of Mario’s clogs.

 

It’s flawed, of course. And is it really a Mario game? Not really. But it’s lovely. Can’t think of a non-Mario 3D platformer I’d rather play.

[Ketchup]

4 hours ago, makkuwata said:

Has there ever been confirmation that they were intending to launch the GameCube with some sort of proto-Wiimote?

 

 

Not launch the GameCube with it, but launch a wiimote on the GameCube, pretty late in it's life. Instead they held it back for the Wii which was the right, if scary move to make at the time. Same for the 3D stuff, they made a screen for the GameCube to play games in 3D but it was tiny and expensive, again held back for the 3DS.

[Keyboard Koala]

[Marlowe]

Sunshine is flawed, but I'd play it any day over Galaxy.

 

The movement is the killer thing for me. Mario is an utter joy to control in Sunshine, and the FLUDD only increases the combinations you can put together. They inexplicably reduced the moveset and made him slow and heavy in Galaxy.

[SMD]

1 hour ago, Marlowe said:

Sunshine is flawed, but I'd play it any day over Galaxy.

 

The movement is the killer thing for me. Mario is an utter joy to control in Sunshine, and the FLUDD only increases the combinations you can put together. They inexplicably reduced the moveset and made him slow and heavy in Galaxy.

 

tell me you're shit at mario galaxy without saying you're shit at mario galaxy