Super Mario Sunshine Review
I heard it's been 20 years already! Time to look back at this little gem and one of the best summer-set video games ever.
Developer: Nintendo EAD
Publisher: Nintendo
Platform: GameCube, Switch
Release Date: 19th July 2002 (Japan), 26th August 2002 (NA), 4th October 2002 (EU), 11th October 2002 (AU)
For my brother’s 14th birthday back in 2004 he got a GameCube, the black Mario Kart Double Dash!! pak which also came doubled with the special Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask collection, and he also got with it Super Mario Sunshine. At this point we had gone through two— no, three consoles already; the SNES we got from our uncle, the PlayStation I got for my 7th birthday and a PSOne my brother got I think when he was 10? Maybe 12. Somewhere around there. So the GameCube was the first next-gen console we had at that point, the first console with greater, more up to date graphics and it was wonderful. It blew our little child minds more than the SNES and PlayStation did. Well, it did me anyway, I dunno what it did to my brother.
The first game he played was Double Dash and that was so exciting. I had played Super Mario Kart before elsewhere, like on one of my many trips to A&E in the kid’s playroom in the waiting area, so comparing that to this was a little incomprehensible for my 12 year old brain. The mass of colours, the light bloom and lense flares, the crystalline water, the fact that it was two characters on one kart, it was so much fun! But I’m not talking about Double Dash today— I’ll do that another time— I’m talking about Super Mario Sunshine!
Watching my brother play that for the first time, also with the abundance of bright, summery colours, lense flares, sharp lighting, beautiful cartoony graphics, and getting dumped on an island airport to fight a weird inky plant monster I knew good times would lie ahead. And you know what, they did! Sunshine sees Mario, Peach and Toad decide to go all “fuck this, we need a holiday!” and rereat to Isle Delfino, but once they get there Mario is framed and arrested for stealing all the shines on the island and causing havoc. So naturally his holiday is ruined and using the FLUDD he found at the airport, he has to run about the island collecting all of the shines again before he even gets to relax. And of course Peach gets kidnapped by this inky imposter. Seeing the change in lighting once you got to Isle Delfino to a more gloomier tone due to the stolen shines and then with each shine collected in each world the brighter things progressively got, it was a genius design. And then seeing how Mario controlled and watching my brother run and jump about and climb buildings like a ninja, chasing down the inky Mario imposter and washing everything away with F.L.U.D.D. and even turning it into a jetpack! The playability was so exciting to see! Oh, and then when he got to the first world to play in seeing the incredible detail on the water, I hadn’t seen anything like it before or since! In my mind the graphics to this game were remarkable and felt like they were reaching a level that could only be dreamt of.
Then later on when it was my turn to get to play I was mesmerised by it all. How Mario felt to play, the feel of the GameCube controller being so much different and inherently stranger from what I was used to with the PlayStation 1 controller and the SNES controller from before, how the buttons reflected on screen what to do, the connection of the controller to the game’s controls. What I knew about video games was beginning to change excitingly. Between this I of course played Double Dash and Ocarina of Time but those I’ll cover another time. Either way Sunshine was the first GameCube game I ever played and I don’t think I could’ve started it any better.
Super Mario Sunshine is a fantastic game and I would argue one of, if not the best Mario game. Easily. (Ok, I’ll admit to bias too.) And yes, even better than 64! While 64 was great for a first time 3D adventure platformer and built a strong foundation for what later platformers would rightfully emulate and build upon, Sunshine just took everything that 64 did well and fixed all of its problems with controls and camera. In Sunshine you have a fully functioning easily maneuverable camera that can rotate all around and even go over the shoulder for a more direct look at what you see. And the controls themselves, as I said earlier when I was watching my brother run around Delfino Plaza like a ninja, you feel incredibly agile! You can hop, skip and jump and somersault with a lovely flourish like what 64 did with A button. You can slide on your front on the ground with B and if you do it on water you can slide along faster and longer. You can triangle jump between walls, do flips and twirls and while doing this still squirting FLUDD to splash everything around you. You can pick up and throw objects with B and jump and ground pound with L. And in general just moving Mario around it feels way tighter and more precise. You have much finer control over Mario. With a flick you can rapidly change direction and with a delicate push Mario will walk cautiously. Everytime I have played Sunshine I’ve never had difficulty moving him around. Yes, even with the watermelon part on Gelato Beach, the sand bird you have to climb along carefully and the special levels without FLUDD. The pachinko machine part, however, that one is a pain to do.
Speaking of FLUDD, it’s one of the best game tools I’ve ever used. You start off with a basic nozzle to squirt things with R and pressing X you can change it into a split nozzle for a jetpack! Later on you get additional nozzles such as a rocket nozzle where holding R to charge it will blast you off into the sky with pressurized water. A propellor nozzle where holding R sees you speeding off forward, quick enough to run across water, it’s amazing! And of course each nozzle will wash away goo left by enemies. There’s other little uses for the main nozzle as well, such as floating enemies can latch onto your nozzle and holding R you can fill them up making water balloons out of them. Release and watch them fly and splash enemies and goo in front of you! It’s so playful!
So it controls fantastically and the world you navigate in is equally as phenominal. As Delfino Plaza serves as the central hub of the world, you have 7 other areas to visit around the island; Pinna Park, Sirena Beach, Ricco Harbor, Noki Bay, Pianta Village, Gelato Beach, and Bianco Hills. Each world is accessible through inky portals dotted around the Plaza that with a splash of water activates and you hop right into.
Bianco Hills is the first place you visit, with a stream of water and nifty cottages and a windmill which has Petey Pirhana at the top of spewing shit out of and rolling down the hill. It all looks rather Dutch, it’s nice. Gelato Beach is the beachiest place on the island with tropical bars and a giant reflector at the top of the hill. The place is abundant with wigglers and cataquacks. Sirena Beach is more a fancy hotel on a beachfront with a beautiful sunset to it. Your first time there you have to defeat an electric stingray monster made of ink that slides along the floor but with every one defeated it splits off into two more and so on, making it a clever boss fight but can be a huge hassle. Once that is done you’re free to enter and explore the hotel but— oh no, it’s haunted by boos! Pinna Park is a giant theme park that is so much fun to run around, just like a kid at LegoLand would do, only at LegoLand you don’t fight a giant MechaBowser on a rollercoaster. Noki Bay is a beautiful little coral of the nokis, little sea-shelled people of the island. Here you can climb all the way to the top of these shelled towers or dive ever deeper down into the water below and become an eel’s dentist. If ever there was a motivator that made my want to brush my teeth better as a kid this was it. Ricco Harbour is exactly what it sounds like. Here you run about a harbour, ride squids in a race and beat up an even bigger squid by pulling its tentacles off then its snout. Kinda the meanest boss fight I ever saw. And finally Pianta Village, village of the piantas who resemble more Polynesian folk. Your first go here it’s night time and everything is on fire because of a loose chain chomp that’s leaving a trail of basically lava so you have to put out the lava goo, cool it off and ping it off into a pool to keep cool. After that it’s all bright and sunny again, you race against a mysterious guy cosplaying as a pianta, help out other villagers about the place, and you can ride a Yoshi!
Which, Yoshi is very interestingly used here. Find a Yoshi egg and it’ll have a bubble above it indicating what fruit it wants. Go and find it, grab it, bring it back and it’ll hatch! Holding R you can spew forth juice and depending on what fruit Yoshi eats, either given as an egg or eaten additionaly with Y, he’ll change colours and so will the juice he spits! It's neat. Don’t go into water though or he’ll disolve and garbble a death rattle. Oh well.
The music is wonderfully playful and tropical as well with steel drums, xylophones, and synthesizers. It is wholly appropriate, adds the right tone to the game and makes things more immersive. There are tracks that are utterly mellow and gentle for deep sea exploration, reused tunes from past Mario games with this game’s tropical twist, and of course frantic and anxiety inducing boss themes. It’s great! It’s very pleasing to the earballs.
So the goal is to catch all the shines in the game, pretty obvious. Pressing Z will show a map and a list of how many shines there are left to get. You can get a shine for each level completed (70 in total), collecting red coins in every level, for every 10 blue coins collected that can be traded in for a shine in a hut in the Plaza (240 blue coins total for 24 shines), and 100 coins collected in all 8 areas. In total there are 120 shines to collect. There are also secret pipe levels you can dive into which also seem to serve as not just a callback to 64 but also a demo for how Galaxy’s levels would be laid out. Shadow Mario swoops in, steals off your FLUDD and you’re left to traverse the proto-Galaxy level the old fashioned way. The designs of these levels are great, too, and very challenging, though the wooden blocks often reminded me of preschool toys which I think was intentional.
Now what exactly is going on in Isle Delfino? Why have the shines all gone missing? Well, this inky Mario imposter stole them all and lured Mario in so he can steal Peach because, as it turns out, it’s Bowser Jr.! And he’s weilding a peculiar special paint brush creating these inky monstrosities that bares the same logo on it as FLUDD; that of Gadd Science Incorporated and created by inventor Professor Elvin Gadd, the same lunatic who baited Luigi into ghostbusting. And why has Bowser Jr. gone and kidnapped Peach? Well, because it turns out she’s his mother! Somehow. So he’s stealing her so he can have his mother. Weird.
And for the grand finale, after beating Bowser Jr. at Pinna Park, you must climb Corona Mountain, delve into the fiery volcano depths and face down— Bowser now?! Alright. So you slap his shit about, the volcano erupts, they’re defeated, Isle Delfino has all of its shines back and Mario and Peach can finally have their holiday. Meanwhile, Bowser and Bowser Jr. are left stranded and Bowser Jr. motherless. No more than before anyway as Bowser tries to delicately explain that— nevermind, Bowser Jr. knows already that Peach isn’t really his mama. But he vowes vicious vengeance upon Mario!
And with all shines gotten and game completed, there’s a particular Pianta on the beach in the Plaza that when you have collected 30 shines you get to wear a pair of snazzy shades. They also effect the screen as a tint goes over it simulating actually wearing shades. Clever! And once you’ve completed the game, talk to this guy again and you’ll be rewarded with an even snazzier hawaiian shirt with shines on it. How lovely. Now you can go and enjoy your holiday! Which he really can. If you go on the beach (or anywhere really) and not move his idle animation will be laying about on the ground and sleeping. Rest and relaxation at last!
I understand there is some division with Sunshine, especially when compared to other Mario games, 3D Mario games especially. But I don’t fully understand why just yet. Is it because of the changes made to the typical formula everyone had known at that point? The controls? Levels? Difficulty? Setting? I don’t know.
What I do know, however, is Sunshine is an amazing game and worthy Mario game. It is incredibly beautiful to look at with its bright colours, almost water coloured/ oil painted graphics, blindingly realistic lighting and gorgeous water detail. It has tightly satisfying controls making this a joy to play. It is a wonderful little summery playground to splash around in that looks amazing. It’s highly imaginative and creative. It is exceptional in all forms of a video game. There’s a reason why it’s hailed as one of the best GameCube games, let alone the best platformer on the system.
It got a limited rerelease on the Switch (which itself was silly to limit availability to), but even if it didn’t it still holds up remarkably today. A perfectly idyllic game to play through in the summer.
Where to Purchase (as of 20/07/2022):
Ebay: £17- £1,800 / $14-$690
Amazon: $34-$800
CeX: £18