Retro Review: Super Mario Sunshine

Over the course of thirteen years, Mario has been fortunate enough to star in three 3D platform games. Super Mario 64 was, of course, a true classic, featuring hours of neat challenges, revolutionary (for its time) game play, and non-stop fun. Super Mario Galaxy was an even greater game, combining elements of the 2D and 3D titles to create a masterpiece of epic proportions. In between the releases of these gems, however, there was Super Mario Sunshine, a game with the potential to be just as good as (if not better than) either title. Unfortunately, it ended up being a game that feel is one of the worst Mario games ever created. What went wrong for the usually reliable Nintendo? I shall explain that to you now.

Every hero needs some time off now and again, and so Mario, along with Princess Peach, Toadsworth, and several Toads head off to Isle Delfino to spend a nice vacation. No sooner than they arrive, however, than the trouble begins: the island has been covered in goop, and its Shine Sprites have vanished, leaving its inhabitants in darkness. The culprit responsible resembles Mario, so, of course, the real Mario is arrested and sentenced to cleaning the island with the aid of a water tank called FLUDD. As he rids Isle Delfino of all the goop, he must also retrieve the sprites and unravel the mystery of "Shadow Mario." This is another retread of the evil twin storyline, and some later portions of the tale make for even worse moments, the likes of which I will not dare spoil here.

The game play features many aspects from Super Mario 64. For starters, many moves such as the triple jump, side somersault, and wall kick have been brought back, and each of them become imperative to clearing some parts of the game. As in the previous game, your mission in each world is to complete tasks in order to obtain the missing Shine Sprites, though unlike Mario 64, you are given clues to the sprite's locations before the missions begin. The game's courses are connected to the hub world of Delfino Plaza, which has some extra sprites that you can access as you clear some portions of the game. There are coins that can replenish your health and green mushrooms that give you extra lives.

For much of the adventure, Mario is equipped with FLUDD, which has a variety of uses. Its main function is to squirt out water, cleaning goop and graffiti as well as damaging enemies. It can also allow you to hover in the air for a few seconds. As you explore the worlds, you will find upgrades that give FLUDD extra abilities; namely, boosting yourself high in the air and using a turbo propeller to move really fast. FLUDD only functions when it is filled with water, but fortunately, water is almost never in short supply. Lastly, FLUDD can talk and will give you some useful advice about the game controls and how to solve certain challenges.

As for those challenges, they can range from boss battles to completing mini games to collecting red coins. Many of these tasks can be at least somewhat difficult, but they are nothing compared to the special stages hidden in each world. In these levels, you must jump across platforms and try not to fall off and lose a life...all without the aid of FLUDD. These stages are often frustrating and likely will cost you quite a few lives before you perfect them. Worst still, you must beat these stages at least once to even finish the game (more on that fact later), so be prepared for plenty of aggravation. If you are trying to go for every last sprite, you can revisit the stages and take on some timed red coin challenges, this time with FLUDD equipped, which makes them slightly easier to beat.

Mario also gets help from his old friend Yoshi, whom he can use in various parts of the game after rescuing him from Shadow Mario. Once he is fed a certain (usually random) type of fruit, Yoshi will come to your aid in a variety of ways. He can jump a bit higher than Mario and go a bit further with his flutter jump. His long tongue is useful for eating fruit and enemies, and he can even spit juice. Unfortunately, some of the ways that Yoshi works here is also one of the game's problems. You must constantly keep him well fed lest he disappears as a result of hunger, and he also vanishes if he falls into water. At times when Yoshi is required to complete a task, this aspect is especially annoying. Hopefully, the little dinosaur will be better utilized in Super Mario Galaxy 2.

I have mentioned a few problems with Super Mario Sunshine already, but there are plenty other worth noting. For one thing, other than the hub world, there are only seven courses in the entire game, less than half of the number of major worlds in Mario 64. Additionally, these worlds share some sort of tropical theme, meaning that there is no haunted world, ice world, desert world, etc. to be seen. There is a fire world at the end, but it mainly leads to the final boss. To their credit, every course does have eleven stars to collect (eight episodes, plus three hidden sprites), but Nintendo could have easily made even more worlds and more challenges. Instead, they came up with an artificial way of collecting extra sprites...

The method in question is collecting blue coins that are hidden in each world. Whereas in Mario 64 these coins were merely used to help you reach the 100 coins needed to obtain a star, here they can be used, ten at a time, to trade in for more sprites. The fact that Nintendo ended up with this system instead of creating more worlds to explore tells me that they were rushing to get this game out as fast as possible, but that is not the worst part of it. The coins are so well hidden, so spread out throughout each mission, and require so many tactics that people may not even think about themselves except possibly by accident, that finding every single coin without consulting a guide is practically impossible. The blue coin system should have therefore been scrapped, and luckily, it was nowhere to be seen in Mario Galaxy.

As was the case in Mario 64 and Mario Galaxy, it is not necessary to collect every single sprite in order to complete the game. Although you can choose to collect all 120 sprites before or after defeating the last boss, you need only fifty of them to clear the game. However, you cannot just pick up any fifty sprites. Instead, you have to clear the first seven missions out of eight in each world, along with the sprite that you get at the start of the game. In addition to giving you some truly hard challenges, including all of the annoying bonus stages, this action practically destroys the nonlinear feel of its predecessor and successor, both of which had only a handful of required stars and which did not mandate that you collect at least one star from every world. Yes, you can still go back and forth between the worlds as you unlock them, but I would have liked to have fewer required sprites and many more optional sprites to collect.

Many of the moves work fine, but a few of them, sometimes vital ones, leave something to be desire. The somersault jump is a bit tricky to pull off, and in the bonus stages where it is often essential to your success, it can be quite annoying. There is a super jump that you can pull off by spraying while holding onto a rope, but for the life of me I could never get it to work. Particularly ill-served are the boat controls, which require you to spray to get them moving. It can be difficult to get the boat to go at your desired speed or direction, and if it crashes, it does not regenerate unless you exit and re-enter a world. Beware that the boat is needed to get through part of the final world as well as to grab some precariously-placed blue coins, so prepare for a lot of frustration.

What other problems does this game have? Well, you can fail at a mini game, and right then and there you lose a life rather than having the option to try again on the spot. Dying to a boss I can understand, but dying as a result of losing a race? In most cases, losing a life will send you back to the start of the course, though if you lose in a bonus stage, you start at the beginning of it until you clear it or you lose your last life. Many of the classic Mario enemies are either nowhere to be seen or are few and far between. The story takes a semi-predictable (for a Mario game) twist, followed by a "shocking" revelation that ends up making no sense at all. Lastly, the reward that you get for beating the game with every sprite is not special in the least. Nintendo could have taken a lot more time to polish this game, but chose not to do so, just like Rare did not get a chance to make Star Fox Adventures the epic game that it should have been.

All of this is not to say that Mario Sunshine has absolutely nothing going for it. There are challenges that are quite fun to do, and some of the ways that water can be used are quite ingenious. The boss fights are neat, if mostly easy, and some of the mini games are pretty cool if you take away the fact that you die if you fail to complete most of them. Veterans of Mario 64 will feel right at home with the similar controls and challenges, and in one of the game's early cut scenes, you can even see footage of some of Mario's earlier (and far better) games. There is a great game in here somewhere, but it would take Nintendo five more years to craft the superior sequel to Mario 64 that was Super Mario Galaxy.

Visually, the game is a mixed bag, with some realistic water effects and cut scenes that look to be only slightly better than the in-game graphics. Mario and his friends and major antagonists look fine, but other characters and areas look as if they belong on the Nintendo 64. The music consists of some nice tropical music as well as some neat remixes of classic Mario songs that are quire relaxing and make you feel as if you are vacationing with Mario. However, the voice acting is hit-or-miss. Some characters, such as Mario and Peach, sound decent, but others, like some of the Piantas (inhabitants of Isle Delfino) and the last boss (no, I will not tell you who it is) sound terribly miscast. Granted, voice
acting is something that Nintendo usually eschews and should be a welcome addition, but not when it sounds like it does here.

I really wanted to enjoy Super Mario Sunshine, having immensely loved Mario 64 and many of the plumber's previous titles. Unfortunately, I did not, for such reasons as challenges that were way too frustrating, a lack of courses and variety within them, and the poorly-implemented blue coin side quest. What should have been another Nintendo masterpiece instead became one of the plumber's weaker moments in the spotlight. If the company had taken the time to polish the game even more, it surely would have turned out to be much better. I am relieved to know that Nintendo would make Super Mario Galaxy a way better game, and hopefully, they will do the same with next year's sequel. You may try Mario Sunshine if you are a die-hard Mario fan, but be warned that it does not have the type of amazing quality that Nintendo tends to deliver. Mario deserves a much better fate than to be placed in an unpolished game such as this one.