Sorry, but Mario Sunshine is Incredible.

[JangleLuke]

I'm just going to drop the information that you can play Super Mario Sunshine natively at 60 fps on a modded Wii/U via Nintendont.

You just need a cheat file in the right folder and the correct settings on Nintendont, and you're freaking golden.

Seriously, it's piss easy to set up.



It's so SMOOTH, and with negligible quirks.

 

[Maccix]

I grew up with the NES and SNES, had every Nintendo console at launch, played Mario 64, Zelda OOT, Mario Galaxy at launch and i still liked both Sunshine and Windwaker more than any other Zelda and Mario. Maybe it was the time it came out,or that summer vacation atmosphere,but i had such a great time with both despite their flaws. Odyssey and Botw where the first ones that came close for me(or surpassed them).

 

[Undeniablybiased]

It does surprise me how much some people seem to love this game, especially in comparison to other mario games. I have to wonder when the last time they tried to play it to completion was, or how much of the game they've just forgotten about. It just... it just has sooooooooooooo much bad stuff in it. Like, every stage has 2-3 or more really bad missions in them, and the structure forces you to go through just as much bad stuff as good stuff. You can't pick and choose which shines to get like you can with stars in 64, and the ratio of bad levels to good levels is way off for a game with so few levels to being with. Noki Bay is horrible. Pianta Village is horrible. The Hotel is horrible. And of course the final area is super boring, short, and annoyingly difficult.

And it's weird to say that so harshly, because I do enjoy the game, but if we wanna talk about it in comparison to other mario games? It's clearly, far and away the worst one. It offers very little of value to the average player outside of its vibes, and its best aspects are inaccessible to the vast majority of players because they require too much skill and dedication. Some of the coolest speedruns you'll ever watch, though, sure.

 

[Aaron D.]

Nothing to be sorry about.

I think Farming Simulator and Candice DeBébé are better than most modern AAA productions.

We like what speaks to us.

 

[NuclearCake]

I too like the game that was terribly rushed and unpolished with terrible mission and level design, boring boss battles, and the weakest enemy designs in the series much more than the game that's basically the opposite of all of that.

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Way to go completely hyperbolic with this take. I never said i liked Sunshine more than any other Mario game or that i dislike other Mario games It's quite the opposite in fact.

 

[mael]

Nothing to be sorry about.

I think Farming Simulator and Candice DeBébé are better than most modern AAA productions.

We like what speaks to us.

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To be fair, I'd wager that Farming Simulator is far more straightforward and with far less BS Mtx than most AAA out there.
Also if you like farming there's quite nothing like that in the industry.

 

[nogoodnamesleft]

It's a great game , better than Odyssey

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Its not even close, personally. Odyssey has best in class controls with worst in class fun and platforming. Sunshine is just more fun than Oddysey.

 

[mael]

Its not even close, personally. Odyssey has best in class controls with worst in class fun and platforming. Sunshine is just more fun than Oddysey.

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Yeah, who doesn't like getting the blue coin hunts in Sunshine or any of the random chase that passes as bosses?
At least you can ignore the BS in Odyssey and if you want challenging platforming, you can always exploit the level design in ANY and ALL levels out there.

 

[BanetteAndBaguette]

Yeah, you seem to be taking being wrong very well.

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I legit don't know. Odyssey is better than Sunshine on almost every points.

Style? Uuuhh, if you like beaches and luxurious islands then Sunshine is for you? With Odyssey, you go from some strange dark Tim-Burtonesque village to a big steampunk structure designed to grow vegetation. Did I mention New Donk City which has the balls to introduce detailed humans in the game? Or Mount Volbono, a delightfully colorful volcano themed around food? How about a Japanese styled temple serving as Bowser's castle?

Moves? In Sunshine, Mario has a pretty good number of moves that all have their interesting roles with FLUDD, I won't deny it. Yoshi seemed interesting but it just felt under exploited to me. Odyssey is just magnificient in that regard. The combinations that can be done with Cappy are endless. You can jump on him, re-throw him to gain some momentum, and do a long jump to hop on an incredibly far platform. You can also make Cappy spin around you, and oh shit did I forget something? Ah yes, the transformations. They just add so much to the gameplay it's unbelievable.

Now what about game design? It's awful in Sunshine. Like really. Remember that stupid Manta ray boss? The awkward platforming under Pianta village? The areas where all cramped and unsatisfying. The actually really good platforming sections where the FLUDD-less levels and they where 5% of the game. It's like the employees where forced to create dumb missions to exploit the maps at their maximum ( the watermelon contest is one of the worst challenges in any Mario game period ). And when they tried something different, like the sand bird, it just was unfair and frustrating. Odyssey fixed all of this with a fuckton of hidden door and rocket levels. The main worlds also always felt pleasing to explore and not cramped, it just felt like it was spacious enough to get the player as concentrated as possible on the platforming.

Don't get me started on the camera.

As for the music, it's subjective and I admet that I remember more Sunshine tunes.

Oh, and Sunshine's cutscenes where horrible, especially the one with Bowser talking to his son. It's so awkward.

 

[nogoodnamesleft]

Yeah, who doesn't like getting the blue coin hunts in Sunshine or any of the random chase that passes as bosses?
At least you can ignore the BS in Odyssey and if you want challenging platforming, you can always exploit the level design in ANY and ALL levels out there.

Click to shrink...

Lol, the lowest lows in Sunshine are still more fun than the highest highs in Oddysey. The best part in Oddysey is fanservice in NDC, not even gameplay related (unless you call that 2d section that lasts 5 or so minutes....gameplay?)

The special levels in sunshine are better than the entire Oddysey *game*.

 

[BanetteAndBaguette]

Its not even close, personally. Odyssey has best in class controls with worst in class fun and platforming. Sunshine is just more fun than Oddysey.

Click to shrink...

We don't have the same definition of fun

 

[MayorTortimer]

i really would love to revisit Sunshine in a remake (or heck, just a port)

 

[NuclearCake]

It does surprise me how much some people seem to love this game, especially in comparison to other mario games. I have to wonder when the last time they tried to play it to completion was, or how much of the game they've just forgotten about. It just... it just has sooooooooooooo much bad stuff in it. Like, every stage has 2-3 or more really bad missions in them, and the structure forces you to go through just as much bad stuff as good stuff. You can't pick and choose which shines to get like you can with stars in 64, and the ratio of bad levels to good levels is way off for a game with so few levels to being with. Noki Bay is horrible. Pianta Village is horrible. The Hotel is horrible. And of course the final area is super boring, short, and annoyingly difficult.

And it's weird to say that so harshly, because I do enjoy the game, but if we wanna talk about it in comparison to other mario games? It's clearly, far and away the worst one. It offers very little of value to the average player outside of its vibes, and its best aspects are inaccessible to the vast majority of players because they require too much skill and dedication. Some of the coolest speedruns you'll ever watch, though, sure.

Click to shrink...

I complete ever mainline mario game to full completion every two years or so. Hope that answers your question.

Sunshines most frustrating aspects can be pretty much negligible once you master the controls somewhat. Not speedrunner levels obviously but just enough to be able to make effective use of the spin jump and the dive jump, moves that pretty much put this game alongside other Mario games in terms of difficulty, and that's really not out of the reach for most players. However most people for whatever reason don't do these moves when they are basically required like in the fludless stages, even tho the game kind of expects you to do them there. Maybe it's the games fault for not explaining them to the player, but this stuff was all in the manual.

The only level that i would call unfair and broken is the Pachinko level, thanks to it's collision detection, but most of the game is pretty much smooth sailing if you know what you're doing. The shine order restriction in this game is the result of the game changing the levels somewhat with each shine. So it wouldn't make sense to collect shines out of order as it does in 64. It also allowed developers to implement a smoother difficulty curve across the game with this design decision which i think is valid. Other 3D Mario games don't let you complete objectives out of order. 64 is the outlier.

 

[JustinH]

The only thing I don't like about the game was the voices. I loved Sunshine.

I think I tried ripping it on my Wii to play in Dophin but I kept getting problems. I should give it another try soon, I think.

 

[NuclearCake]

Yeah, who doesn't like getting the blue coin hunts in Sunshine or any of the random chase that passes as bosses?
At least you can ignore the BS in Odyssey and if you want challenging platforming, you can always exploit the level design in ANY and ALL levels out there.

Click to shrink...

You can do pretty much all of this in Sunshine as well. From a gameplay perspective the Blue Coins are the exact same thing as the Moons were in Odyssey. Not that i mind. Yes they were filler but collecting them wasn't different in the slightest. It's a collecthathon platformer.

 

[Mass Effect]

'm always reminded of how much i love 64,Sunshine and Odyssey. I started to feel like this place likes to shit on these games for what to me at-least seem completely nonsensical reasons.

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Nobody on Era is shitting on Odyssey or 64 in any great capacity, outside of some drive-by hot-take troll posts in this thread.

Sunshine is a good game, but it's not anything truly amazing. Take out Mario and it would have instantly become a 7-8/10 game at best. When the best parts of your game are the little side levels that remove the central gimmick from the gameplay, that's when you know you have a problem.

But I do find it funny that people are dropping their one-liners about how it's better than Odyssey while giving absolutely no explanation as to why.

 

[SantaC]

This is what I said last summer:

I am replaying this and it is better then I remember it to be. I am suprised how much variation there is. Some examples other then red coin collecting and paint cleaning up:

-shoot rockets from a rollercoaster
-try to solve your way through a hotell
-chase shadow mario
-play at a casino
-3d platforming worlds
-minigolf bonus like world
-sandbox your way with different fludd abilities
-use yoshi to unlock new secrets
-loving the amusement park area. Really cool ideas.
-race with squids
-ride a giant sand bird
-etc

 

[BanetteAndBaguette]

Nobody on Era is shitting on Odyssey or 64 in any great capacity, outside of some drive-by hot-take troll posts in this thread.

Sunshine is a good game, but it's not anything truly amazing. Take out Mario and it would have instantly become a 7-8/10 game at best. When the best parts of your game are the little side levels that remove the central gimmick from the gameplay, that's when you know you have a problem.

But I do find it funny that people are dropping their one-liners about how it's better than Odyssey while giving absolutely no explanation.

Click to shrink...

this

 

[Crayolan]

It's one of the best controlling games ever, making it fun to just run around aimlessly. It has faults in other areas sure, but the core movement is so good it makes up for most of its shortcomings imo.

 

[henlo_birb]

100%. I adore Mario Sunshine.

 

[Undeniablybiased]

I complete ever mainline mario game to full completion every two years or so. Hope that answers your question.

Sunshines most frustrating aspects can be pretty much negligible once you master the controls somewhat. Not speedrunner levels obviously but just enough to be able to make effective use of the spin jump and the dive jump, moves that pretty much put this game alongside other Mario games in terms of difficulty, and that's really not out of the reach for most players. However most people for whatever reason don't do these moves when they are basically required like in the fludless stages, even tho the game kind of expects you to do them there. Maybe it's the games fault for not explaining them to the player, but this stuff was all in the manual.

The only level that i would call unfair and broken is the Pachinko level, thanks to it's collision detection, but most of the game is pretty much smooth sailing if you know what you're doing. The shine order restriction in this game is the result of the game changing the levels somewhat with each shine. So it wouldn't make sense to collect shines out of order as it does in 64. It also allowed developers to implement a smoother difficulty curve across the game with this design decision which i think is valid. Other 3D Mario games don't let you complete objectives out of order. 64 is the outlier.

Click to shrink...

A lot of that stuff actually is out of reach for a lot of people. One because the game doesn't explain it, and two because people don't have the patience to learn. And it's especially difficult to have that patience in a game like Sunshine with so many horrible segments you have to get through. And I'm not saying having to collect shines in order is always a bad thing, just that because this game has so many bad shines, it's annoying that you have to get through bad shines so beat the game. An annoyance that's alleviated in other Mario games by either having significantly less annoying stuff (Galaxy, 3D World), or allowing the player to focus on stuff they like rather than stuff they don't (64, Odyssey).

That's why I said this game was amazing and horrible at the same time. For dedicated people that want to push their skills forward and take a step towards mastery (regardless of whether they reach it or not) it can be pretty amazing. But for the majority who will just play through it, it has far too many dumb annoying segments.

 

[Anth0ny]

the movement in 64, sunshine and to a lesser extent odyssey is why they're my favorite 3d marios

 

[ShinUltramanJ]

Incredibly poor maybe. FLUDD sucks period.

I don't care what the "skill ceiling" is because that amounts to nothing. Playing Sunshine isn't going on my resume. I want enjoyment, and Sunshine's FLUDD mechanics put a damper on that. It's telling that the very best stages are the ones without FLUDD!

 

[Deleted member 6730]

Way to go completely hyperbolic with this take. I never said i liked Sunshine more than any other Mario game or that i dislike other Mario games It's quite the opposite in fact.

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It was more directed at the "Sunshine is better than Odyssey" crowd. I respect your love of the game just fine.

 

[Vampirolol]

It's an unfinished and slightly broken Mario game, anyone saying "it's better than Odissey" probably hasn'y replayed it recently. The game is aging really badly.
On the other hand, the atmosphere, the FLUDD mechanics and some levels are still among the best ever. I would love to see a sequel that improves on the formula.

 

[Deleted member 48897]

Mario Sunshine is the star-collection 3D Mario (i.e., not including 3D Land and World) that has the fewest creepy eels. Yes, eely-mouth exists but only in one mission of one stage and is fairly benign

 

[NuclearCake]

the movement in 64, sunshine and to a lesser extent odyssey is why they're my favorite 3d marios

Click to shrink...

I knew you wouldn't let me down.

 

[nogoodnamesleft]

Also for anyone capable of doing so, play Sunshine on Dolphin with the 60fps hack, updated textures (ymmv in terms if if you prefer this look or not) and at 4k native. Bliss <3

 

[jts]

Not great, not terrible. The 3.6 Roentgen of Mario games

 

[Denamitea]

Ya, it's great and overly shat on, imo. I played it for the first time a year or two ago and it still plays pretty well. I think a lot of the criticisms are valid but blown out of proportion.

 

[Goddo Hando]

i recently revisited this game for the first time in like 15 years, and i was kinda shocked by how much open empty space was in the game.

not saying it's a bad thing, but newer mario games pack stuff into level design tighter

 

[Kino]

It's a great game thats definitely less than the sum of its parts. The decision to make the whole game tropical themed was truly inspired and it really felt like a getaway from the series usual level themes.

I didn't mind the weak platforming because I had more fun just exploring the locales and pretending Mario was actually on a vacation. Frankly, Odyssey should have taken a page from this chapter of Sunshine's book because the kingdoms were very lacking in depth.

 

[virtua_44]

Hmm always felt like Sunshine was the opposite of "tight". Always felt like I needed to be more exact/precise with my movements in this game than I could possibly achieve with a Gamecube controller. I think it was Miyamoto or someone who said (during the development of Mario 64) is that 3d environments are not very good for precise movements/jumps or somehintg. I agree and thats why I didnt like it.

On top of being glitchy (i'd fall through the floor in places where I certainly shouldnt), having the worst camera in a mario game, and having some poor level design (that Yoshi's fruit challenge on Ricco Harbor, the pinball bonus stage, and steering any kind of boat with the FLUDD)

I agree the FLUDDless levels were the best part, but they were few and far between, on top of looking like an obstacle course made in ROBLOX - no joke - the art for those stages are whack af.

 

[CyberWolfBia]

I mean, tastes and everything.. more power for you! But for me, it was the lowest point among 3D Mario games. Not terribly unplayable, but the one I like the least.

Not really looking forward to revisit in the Mario marathon I'm running on my channel

 

[Dead Guy]

Sunshine gets way more shit than it should. I do think it's the worst mainline Mario game but it's still amazing. Anyone who says it's legitimately a bad game has some explaining to do.

 

[Deleted member 23893]

"Better than", "best", etc. are always going to be subjective labels and unarguable. But I can't help but feel like what we're seeing here is the sum of this equation:

Nostalgic people who were kids back in 2002 + long time defenders + people who have long heard "how bad it is" and coming to it now with lowered expectations = rewriting the narrative to this somehow being an unfairly hated on gem.

When in reality Sunshine is as it has been since the day it was released. An unfinished, unpolished, 7 out of 10 game that was rushed out to make sure Gamecube's first year had a Mario game hitting in summertime to match the game's fun setting. If it had come out in Summer 2003 with another year of development maybe it would have been a different story...

 

[Cheezus H Rice]

The flud-less levels have aged like fine wine. They're just timeless platforming challenges, and very replayable.

The rest of the game ain't so hot.

 

[SantaC]

 

[Mediking]

Iconic but trolling levels everywhere

 

[mael]

Lol, the lowest lows in Sunshine are still more fun than the highest highs in Oddysey. The best part in Oddysey is fanservice in NDC, not even gameplay related (unless you call that 2d section that lasts 5 or so minutes....gameplay?)

The special levels in sunshine are better than the entire Oddysey *game*.

Click to shrink...

We clearly don't have the same definition of fun.
sunshine is frustration and boredom made into a platformer.
The water levels of Odyssey are vastly more fun to navigate.
the best part of Odyssey is absolutely NOT the fan service, that's inconsequential.

You can do pretty much all of this in Sunshine as well. From a gameplay perspective the Blue Coins are the exact same thing as the Moons were in Odyssey. Not that i mind. Yes they were filler but collecting them wasn't different in the slightest. It's a collecthathon platformer.

Click to shrink...

Yeah but the non filler content wasn't fun as well unlike Odyssey.
There's nothing like the pachinko level as well so point for Odyssey there too.

 

[Mekanos]

It's a neat game with some cool, experimental ideas but I think compared to other Mario games it has pretty problematic game design trends and that makes it seem worse. If it was a unique IP it would be lauded as a cult classic, but it's hard for a game like this to live in the shadow of Super Mario 64.

 

[neon/drifter]

it's my favorite 3d mario. i love the world, the music, the jetpack mechanic, it's just fantastic.

 

[AnonymousApple]

Let me correct you - "I'm sorry, but Mario Sunshine is Crap". /s

The game has some fatal design flaws that just make it a step below the rest of the 3D Mario games, in my opinion.

 

[Croix]

I love Sunshine. It has some really cool levels (I think Sirena Beach is a bit underrated, personally) and Delfino plaza is probably the most fun hub in any 3D Mario, but it is also kinda unpolished compared to the other entries and you can feel it in some ways, mostly during the secret levels in my opinion. Some of them can be pretty difficult (though some are enjoyable as well) and, coupled with the blue coins collection, are the only reasons why I've never completed it with all the sprites even though it's probably one of my most replayed games.

 

[CloudCircus]

Loved 64, never played sunshine.
Isn't it hard to go back to with the inverted controls?

 

[TrojanAg]

It's a good game, but it's also probably the worst 3D Mario.

 

[StrappingYoungLance]

I would love another Mario with FLUDD/Mario's Moveset in Sunshine. That's and the more focused proto-galaxy platforming challenges are about all I really like that game for.

Failing that a Sunshine remaster that addresses the game's problems the way Wind Waker HD did would be really cool.

I do like the game more than 64 tbh.

 

[fontguy]

I get weak in the knees just thinking about Noki Bay. Levels/areas that asked you to methodically ascend to great heights was bizarrely rare in 3D platformers.

 

[StarErik]

Super Mario Sunshine is my favorite Mario of all time. I love it. The hover mechanic feels so good. And the hunt for the blue coins. And the music. The polluted water course can go fuck itself, though.

 

[badnewsbeers]

Don't apologize. I hated the initial trailer, it was right after the mature Zelda trailer and I had high hopes for a "mature" Mario. What even is that??? Mario sunshine was a blast and a pleasant and happy diversion. Complete success.