It's never been the most well received Mario game, and the Mario fandom in general seems to be completely split in regards to whether they like it or not. But what I think Super Mario Sunshine does 'wrong' isn't what people think it does. It's unpopular because at its core, the game really isn't a platformer.
Sure it has secret levels with bottomless pits and an inability to use FLUDD, but they really don't make up that much of the experience. In fact, about half the levels in the game technically don't require you to leave the ground, and most of the areas you explore have no bottomless pits or other stereotypical dangers found in most 3D platformers.
And that's why people either love it or hate it. That's why the game sold least of all Mario games in the series, people play Mario games to jump across platforms and stomp on enemies, and most of these basic elements are used sparingly or discouraged enirely (most enemies and bosses in the game are either immune to being jumped on or are damaged more effectively using FLUDD).
As a game in itself without the whole pressure of being a follow up to Super Mario 64 though, the game is excellent. The graphics are fantastic and really make you feel as if Mario is exploring a tropical island. It's even better when you realise that this was the first ever game in which Mario had his 'modern' image, the look found in recent Mario games that wasn't either a blocky Lego like character or a 2D sprite. As a result of this, the game looked one hell of a lot better than Super Mario 64 ever did:
to
Got to admit that's quite a jump in the level of detail, right?
Music is pretty good too, although it admittedly falls short of the later games in both quality and variety. Part of this is arguably the tropical island theme, it doesn't leave much room for a varied 'feel' to the soundtrack since every level is to some extent upbeat and rather cheery. It also means traditional level themes that always have their own unique style of music (like snow levels, ghost houses and castles) are absent and hence the soundtrack suffers a bit as a result. The other part is that th game came right before the point where Nintendo decided to start orchestrating the series soundtracks and didn't have a hope in hell at matching the music used in Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2. Still, there are some memorable themes regardless:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcSPK5yn9K8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA8JClD7jDg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZaL95n2Isc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvZWxiUfrNo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVpKQljWtyo
And the music always suits the levels perfectly. It's just that because the general theme of the entire game was 'happy go lucky tourist resort', the music doesn't quite stand out as much as it does in the rest of the series.
Gameplay is mixed to say the least.
On the bright side, the levels are excellently designed and often really do feel like living places that you'd want to visit on holiday one day. This is a nice leap in quality from the locations in Super Mario 64 which often felt like mechanically constructed death courses designed entirely to make Mario's life a living hell. See, Lethal Lava Land, Rainbow Ride or Wet-Dry World:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhn9pPj88vI
Why exactly are all these platforms here again?
Because of this, it's often just fun to go run around and explore the different worlds or set yourself challenges like you might on a real holiday. Indeed, I'd say about half my childhood was spent messing around in this game and seeing what kind of death defying stunts I could pull off in the later levels with clever use of Mario's jumps and the hover function. The game's great fun to play with others too, despite not even having any form of multiplayer. Seriously, get a few people round and see who can make Mario do the most ridiculous stuff, it's pretty entertaining. Especially if you're a bored bunch of teens or preteens with way too much time on your hands.
That's what's fun about Super Mario Sunshine, it's not the missions themselves but the joy of running around and actually exploring the different parts of Isle Delfino, about finding the blue coins and secret shines, finding all the little easter eggs and secrets littered about and using Mario's wide variety of moves and power ups to just go crazy on this quiet resort town. If you're the kind of person who likes Rare's games like Banjo Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64, Super Mario Sunshine is your type of game.
There are also a lot of good ideas in general. Like the section where you have to defeat those Cataquack like monsters on the mirrors to remove Wiggler from the sun tower, or where you ride the sand bird through the heavens while collecting the red coins situated across the giant creature. The secret courses are excellent too, with lots of interesting hard as nails platforming and a general feel which can be described as a 2D Mario game in 3D. Some arguably don't work as well as the ones mentioned (like Blooper surfing or brushing Eely Mouth's teeth with FLUDD), but at least the developers tried to keep the gameplay interesting and made every level at least fairly different from one another.
What was also great about the game was how after the seventh mission, the worlds actually calmed down. Once you'd driven out Bowser's forces you could try the eighth level and enjoy the location in the way it was before Mario even arrived. There was a definite progression here, the final level in each area was always set after Shadow Mario's defeat and was pretty much a sidequest. I liked these missions just because of how relaxing they were.
Oh, and the bosses are pretty good in this game. There's the semi common issue of bosses being reused in later levels, but each of the fights bar maybe the final one is well thought out and fun to play. The Mecha Bowser battle is excellent for example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jX4CVnfYcd0
It's also Mecha Bowser's first appearance in the series, which is good.
However, the game isn't without its problems. First and foremost, while exploring the different locales is fun in itself, the game relies a little too much on this in the mission design. Seriously, it seems every second mission is 'collect eight red coins in a specific location' even if there wasn't really much of a reason to have them in the level. True Super Mario 64 did this too (why was there a sliding puzzle in Mario 64's Lethal Lava Land again?), but here you often had two whole main missions dedicated to nothing but collecting coins.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYTJqjpr74A
Thankfully, if you hit the Pianta in the rubber ring or rocket nozzle box, you can fall off the Blooper and not get killed...
And while the Shadow Mario mission was generally fun, they really were much too similar to each other. Really, he never acted in any way different to how he did in Bianco Hills and Delfino Plaza and hence the seventh mission in each level was practically identical to how it was in every other one.
Another issue was how the story practically vanished when you reached Pinna Park. Up until then, the whole plot point about Shadow Mario being some mysterious imposter who framed Mario and how this forced him to clear his name was key to everything. Bowser wasn't around, Princess Peach wasn't even kidnapped and it seemed like the story was actually building up to something.
Then they blew it all at Pinna Park. Bowser Jr gets revealed as Shadow Mario's true identity, making the whole imposter thing completely pointless. Bowser is guaranteed to be present making the story pretty much a carbon copy of every game prior to then, and oh look, Peach got kidnapped again and you won't see her again until the final boss battle. It was at that point when the game became just Super Mario 64 on a tropical island, and that point where whatever interest the story had in it completely evaporated.
To make matters worse, you soon start to realise how rushed the later parts of the game seemed to be. Not the main levels themselves, Noki Bay and Pianta Village were excellent levels, but Corona Mountain and the secret levels in each area. The former is an absolutely pathetic climax to a fun game, being a short dull platforming sequence with no enemies and the return of a game mechanic nobody liked in the first place, the latter ended up being mainly collect red coins in secret areas. Then you realise that they've used 24 shines for the blue coin hunt, and it seems more and more apparent than the last parts of the game were probably rushed to completion as quickly as possible. It honestly wouldn't surprise me in the least if the devs were given a two week deadline and told to get the game out the door as quickly as possible when it came to designing Corona Mountain and the extra shines, that's how poorly thought out they were.
As for the voice acting and its quality, the less said about that the better. It's pretty much impossible to watch the scene with Bowser Jr talking about 'Mama Peach' or the pre final boss cut scene and not cringe at how terrible and overly childish the whole thing is. Good work voice actor peoples on destroying Bowser's tough guy cred in seconds!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOgR3GOplVY
Mario! How dare you disturb my family vacation! You almost expect him to say 'and you must die' CD-i Ganon style...
All in all though, Super Mario Sunshine is an excellent game. Just be willing to accept that it's not really the same genre as the likes of Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario 3D Land, and that it's more about the adventure and feel of a living world than the traditional platforming. Think of it as Banjo Kazooie with Mario characters and on a tropical island and you're not that far from the truth. Just remember to mute the volume whenever anyone speaks.
Sure it has secret levels with bottomless pits and an inability to use FLUDD, but they really don't make up that much of the experience. In fact, about half the levels in the game technically don't require you to leave the ground, and most of the areas you explore have no bottomless pits or other stereotypical dangers found in most 3D platformers.
And that's why people either love it or hate it. That's why the game sold least of all Mario games in the series, people play Mario games to jump across platforms and stomp on enemies, and most of these basic elements are used sparingly or discouraged enirely (most enemies and bosses in the game are either immune to being jumped on or are damaged more effectively using FLUDD).
As a game in itself without the whole pressure of being a follow up to Super Mario 64 though, the game is excellent. The graphics are fantastic and really make you feel as if Mario is exploring a tropical island. It's even better when you realise that this was the first ever game in which Mario had his 'modern' image, the look found in recent Mario games that wasn't either a blocky Lego like character or a 2D sprite. As a result of this, the game looked one hell of a lot better than Super Mario 64 ever did:
to
Got to admit that's quite a jump in the level of detail, right?
Music is pretty good too, although it admittedly falls short of the later games in both quality and variety. Part of this is arguably the tropical island theme, it doesn't leave much room for a varied 'feel' to the soundtrack since every level is to some extent upbeat and rather cheery. It also means traditional level themes that always have their own unique style of music (like snow levels, ghost houses and castles) are absent and hence the soundtrack suffers a bit as a result. The other part is that th game came right before the point where Nintendo decided to start orchestrating the series soundtracks and didn't have a hope in hell at matching the music used in Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2. Still, there are some memorable themes regardless:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcSPK5yn9K8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA8JClD7jDg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZaL95n2Isc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvZWxiUfrNo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVpKQljWtyo
And the music always suits the levels perfectly. It's just that because the general theme of the entire game was 'happy go lucky tourist resort', the music doesn't quite stand out as much as it does in the rest of the series.
Gameplay is mixed to say the least.
On the bright side, the levels are excellently designed and often really do feel like living places that you'd want to visit on holiday one day. This is a nice leap in quality from the locations in Super Mario 64 which often felt like mechanically constructed death courses designed entirely to make Mario's life a living hell. See, Lethal Lava Land, Rainbow Ride or Wet-Dry World:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhn9pPj88vI
Why exactly are all these platforms here again?
Because of this, it's often just fun to go run around and explore the different worlds or set yourself challenges like you might on a real holiday. Indeed, I'd say about half my childhood was spent messing around in this game and seeing what kind of death defying stunts I could pull off in the later levels with clever use of Mario's jumps and the hover function. The game's great fun to play with others too, despite not even having any form of multiplayer. Seriously, get a few people round and see who can make Mario do the most ridiculous stuff, it's pretty entertaining. Especially if you're a bored bunch of teens or preteens with way too much time on your hands.
That's what's fun about Super Mario Sunshine, it's not the missions themselves but the joy of running around and actually exploring the different parts of Isle Delfino, about finding the blue coins and secret shines, finding all the little easter eggs and secrets littered about and using Mario's wide variety of moves and power ups to just go crazy on this quiet resort town. If you're the kind of person who likes Rare's games like Banjo Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64, Super Mario Sunshine is your type of game.
There are also a lot of good ideas in general. Like the section where you have to defeat those Cataquack like monsters on the mirrors to remove Wiggler from the sun tower, or where you ride the sand bird through the heavens while collecting the red coins situated across the giant creature. The secret courses are excellent too, with lots of interesting hard as nails platforming and a general feel which can be described as a 2D Mario game in 3D. Some arguably don't work as well as the ones mentioned (like Blooper surfing or brushing Eely Mouth's teeth with FLUDD), but at least the developers tried to keep the gameplay interesting and made every level at least fairly different from one another.
What was also great about the game was how after the seventh mission, the worlds actually calmed down. Once you'd driven out Bowser's forces you could try the eighth level and enjoy the location in the way it was before Mario even arrived. There was a definite progression here, the final level in each area was always set after Shadow Mario's defeat and was pretty much a sidequest. I liked these missions just because of how relaxing they were.
Oh, and the bosses are pretty good in this game. There's the semi common issue of bosses being reused in later levels, but each of the fights bar maybe the final one is well thought out and fun to play. The Mecha Bowser battle is excellent for example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jX4CVnfYcd0
It's also Mecha Bowser's first appearance in the series, which is good.
However, the game isn't without its problems. First and foremost, while exploring the different locales is fun in itself, the game relies a little too much on this in the mission design. Seriously, it seems every second mission is 'collect eight red coins in a specific location' even if there wasn't really much of a reason to have them in the level. True Super Mario 64 did this too (why was there a sliding puzzle in Mario 64's Lethal Lava Land again?), but here you often had two whole main missions dedicated to nothing but collecting coins.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYTJqjpr74A
Thankfully, if you hit the Pianta in the rubber ring or rocket nozzle box, you can fall off the Blooper and not get killed...
And while the Shadow Mario mission was generally fun, they really were much too similar to each other. Really, he never acted in any way different to how he did in Bianco Hills and Delfino Plaza and hence the seventh mission in each level was practically identical to how it was in every other one.
Another issue was how the story practically vanished when you reached Pinna Park. Up until then, the whole plot point about Shadow Mario being some mysterious imposter who framed Mario and how this forced him to clear his name was key to everything. Bowser wasn't around, Princess Peach wasn't even kidnapped and it seemed like the story was actually building up to something.
Then they blew it all at Pinna Park. Bowser Jr gets revealed as Shadow Mario's true identity, making the whole imposter thing completely pointless. Bowser is guaranteed to be present making the story pretty much a carbon copy of every game prior to then, and oh look, Peach got kidnapped again and you won't see her again until the final boss battle. It was at that point when the game became just Super Mario 64 on a tropical island, and that point where whatever interest the story had in it completely evaporated.
To make matters worse, you soon start to realise how rushed the later parts of the game seemed to be. Not the main levels themselves, Noki Bay and Pianta Village were excellent levels, but Corona Mountain and the secret levels in each area. The former is an absolutely pathetic climax to a fun game, being a short dull platforming sequence with no enemies and the return of a game mechanic nobody liked in the first place, the latter ended up being mainly collect red coins in secret areas. Then you realise that they've used 24 shines for the blue coin hunt, and it seems more and more apparent than the last parts of the game were probably rushed to completion as quickly as possible. It honestly wouldn't surprise me in the least if the devs were given a two week deadline and told to get the game out the door as quickly as possible when it came to designing Corona Mountain and the extra shines, that's how poorly thought out they were.
As for the voice acting and its quality, the less said about that the better. It's pretty much impossible to watch the scene with Bowser Jr talking about 'Mama Peach' or the pre final boss cut scene and not cringe at how terrible and overly childish the whole thing is. Good work voice actor peoples on destroying Bowser's tough guy cred in seconds!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOgR3GOplVY
Mario! How dare you disturb my family vacation! You almost expect him to say 'and you must die' CD-i Ganon style...
All in all though, Super Mario Sunshine is an excellent game. Just be willing to accept that it's not really the same genre as the likes of Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario 3D Land, and that it's more about the adventure and feel of a living world than the traditional platforming. Think of it as Banjo Kazooie with Mario characters and on a tropical island and you're not that far from the truth. Just remember to mute the volume whenever anyone speaks.
