Played on GameCube

I’m just going to do a quick review of Super Mario Sunshine, because this isn’t my typical kind of review. Normally I start a game, play it all the way through, then write my review soon after. But I played Super Mario Sunshine back when it came out in 2002, and I was only about 10 years old at that point. I haven’t really played it since, but I decided to pop it back in recently and just play a few levels to relive it. So, most of my memories of this are coming from when I was a child, but I had a lot of fun playing it again and wanted to review it quickly.

Super Mario Sunshine finds Mario on vacation on Isle Delfino. However, just like usual, Princess Peach ends up getting taken by Bowser, who now has a son named Bowser Jr. And the story from here doesn’t get any different than Mario setting out to save the princess from Bowser. There’s some slight “twists” I guess, but most people know better than to come to a Mario game for its story.

Anyway, Super Mario Sunshine was the first 3D Mario game to follow up Super Mario 64, which is my favorite game of all time. And for what it’s worth, I think it’s a pretty good follow-up. I love the 3D Mario games more than anything else in gaming, and while Sunshine seems to have gained a reputation for being the black sheep of the franchise, I still think it deserves some respect, because it’s got some neat mechanics.

The main “gimmick” to Sunshine is that Mario is equipped with a machine called F.L.U.D.D. In essence, this is a container of water that you can equip different nozzles too to gain different abilities. This allows Mario to do things like spray water at enemies and objects, or hover through the air with a sort of water jetpack feature. To me, this is what set Sunshine apart from the rest of the series. It made the game feel so fresh and fun. You also get to use Yoshi in certain levels, which is something that Super Mario 64 did not have available.

I also just need to give a quick shout-out to the worlds in Sunshine. I’ll admit, this is where the game doesn’t quite stack up to 64 for me, but I think the worlds are really fun and inventive nonetheless. My favorite might be Pinna Park, which is an amusement park that Mario must traverse.

Now, I remember being blown away by how the game looked back in 2002. Obviously this doesn’t hold up as well now to modern games, but for what it’s worth I think the game still looks pretty good. It’s a little jagged, but not nearly as bad as N64 games are now. The game has some really bright, colorful environments, and I think that’s what allowed the game to hold up so well all these years. Also, the music in the game will always be timeless. Mario games have a pretty good track record of having fantastic scores, and Sunshine is no exception. It might not feature some of the all-time bests of the franchise, but they’re still pretty high up there for me.

One thing that didn’t hold up as well for me, though, is the voice acting. If I’m not mistaken, this might be the first time we’ve heard the voice of Bowser in a game. This was a great novelty for the time, but when I recently popped it back in, it was kind of alarming. I respect what Nintendo was going for here, but it feels off now.

If you’ve played one of these 3D Mario games, then you’ll be used to the formula for this. You enter a world, and complete a task in order to earn a Shine Sprite (this game’s equivalent to stars). There are a total of 120 Shine Sprites to collect, which gives you a playtime of around 15-30 hours depending on skill level. Considering how cheap you can probably find this game by now, it’s well worth the cost. The hardest thing for completionists is going to be finding the 240 blue coins that are hidden throughout the game, since these go towards the Shine Sprite completion. I was missing a few blue coins for years before finally completing the game for real recently.

I think the biggest barrier to entry for anyone that wants to play Super Mario Sunshine now is going to be the controls. If you didn’t grow up with them, they’re just going to feel a little unnatural now after playing modern games. I had the biggest issue with controlling the camera, but otherwise it was fine once I got used to it again. Other than that, I think Sunshine is a tremendous game that still holds up really well today. I’ve seen this entry get a lot of criticism over the years, which in my mind makes it a really underrated game in the franchise. I don’t like it quite as much as 64 or Galaxy, but I still think it’s an amazing game in its own right.

4.5/5