Janky physics. I love the setting and FLUDD is a cool guy, but some of the challenges the game throws at you get pretty ridiculous. My problem mostly lies with just how slippery my man Mario is in this iteration. I know he's a slippery Italian man, but he's gotten too greasy this time. Also, I wish the game allowed you to choose what shine sprites to get instead of being forced to do the initial seven of each level to be given the opportunity to fight the final boss. Also, that hotel with Boo's was a big waste of time. I got stuck because I didn't know that Yoshi could eat ghosts. I don't think that was ever a thing besides in this game. Cool nostalgia title, but I can't ever forgive it for some of its crimes against game design.

I missed this one back in the gamecube days, so i was very excited to finally play it.

However, out of all the 3D mario games i have ever tried, this one is the one i like the least. The setting is charming and i love the happy sunny music, but there's just something i don't like that i can't quite explain. Is it the levels? Possibly, i liked the Mario 64 levels more.

It's good, but it's my least favourite 3D Mario game. I'm gonna complete it anyway though.

I don't know how this is simultaneously the best Mario game and the worst Mario game, but it really is.

So first of all, it's a Nintendo game, so the charm and style are on point. I've always loved that they made a whole game dedicated to the summer theme and it's explored very thoroughly here. From a bustling harbor with boats and cranes to a summer theme park, the game gets a surprising amount of mileage out of what's basically one theme that it sticks to throughout the entire game.

The only problem is that the gameplay is janky as hell. Mario will go flying for no reason at all when you've barely touched the control stick and some of the platforming challenges without F.L.U.D.D. are brutal.

There's also just a lot of glitches. Clipping through things for no reason, janky collision, it's kind of just - to be blunt - not polished very well, which is very surprising considering this is a Nintendo game, let alone a Mario game.

I still love this weird game, warts and all, but it's pretty hard not to notice all it's flaws. I think it might be a game I have to return to every year or two now that I know I can beat it in two days.

One of the most fun game to just run around as Mario in, the controls are insanely good. I also love the island tropical theme that is present throughout the game and in every level, it really feels like you are actually here on this island, making this one of the most immersive Mario games. However some of the levels/shines aren't the most well design and this game has its "quirky" moments. Still I'd say it is well worth your time to play through at least the essential shines and final boss, but probably too much frustration to complete for most people (including me).

Man, I REALLY wanted to rate this one higher. The controls and movement are pristine, you can have some real fun just moving and doing stuff. I really dig the island setting and the way they tried to expand on what the typical Mario game looks like. I can understand the water mechanics not being to everyone's taste but I thought they did a pretty solid job of giving you interesting objectives that made use of it. Music is pretty nice too. Really, there's a whole vibe here that you won't get from any other Mario game. There's a lot to love here when things are going well, which to be fair is most of the time.

But man, when Sunshine falls flat, it falls FLAT. There are some missions in this game that are just absolute butt cheeks to experience, some of which are mandatory for standard completion too. It also feels like there's a bunch of things that just serve no purpose except to be tedious/obnoxious, like having to bring random fruit to Yoshi to hatch him or having to go through intro screens every time you return to the hub world. Hell I actually thought the secret linear platforming sections were neat thanks to how creative you can get with just Mario's basic movement, I just got tired of having to backtrack through the entire hubworld and manually dig up the entrance again inside the stage whenever I game overed. There's also some other weirdness with hit detection and janky level design that can easily result in you earning a shine just to die to some silly shit on your way to grab it.

This is a decent game, but there are just enough unavoidable rough bits (and they're REALLY rough) that I can't justify giving it a really good rating. I think it needed a bit more time in the oven, but barring that it would have been nice to have the Mario 64 type structure where you unlock stages through collecting Shine Sprites as opposed to repeating the same Shadow Mario chase mission (with no map at that), and you could choose what missions you want to do yourself. But I can imagine that they didn't want the game to feel too "empty" or "samey" for lack of a better term, due to having fewer stages than 64, so fair enough on that front. I think the game has enough good to justify a single normal playthrough, especially since most of the real jank is back loaded. But beyond that? I dunno man.

On the other hand Eely Mouth leaving behind a heart made of coins when I cleaned his teeth made me smile and audibly laugh, so in that moment it was a perfect 5/5.

At first I was quite conflicted on Mario Sunshine, I was having fun which was interrupted with the odd annoying level. However as it went on, I found it just got more and more frustrating to play, especially during the secret levels and overall wasn't really enjoying myself anymore. I do believe there is a really good game here which you could easily find if you ignore some of the more annoying parts and focus on the tropical setting and music which is one of my highlights, but it's too obvious to me that a lot of this game feels half-baked or not even playtested, such as the chuckster level feeling broken at times with the way you're thrown.

Overall I'm glad I've gotten to play Mario Sunshine, but it's definitely the black sheep of the 3D Mario games to me, and nothing makes me want to comeback to this game to 100% it.

Mario Sunshine is an interesting game. Its buggy, likely a biproduct of coming out early in the 6th gen's life style and I can only assume a brutal production timeline, it's got some of the most fucked up stars in the whole franchise (i'd argue that lily pad IS the worst star in the franchise), and an odd structure to its stars making atleast 30 of its stars feel redundant; more if you don't reconsider anything that's not attached to its own mission or secret area unnecessary.

And I wouldn't change a fucking thing.

Okay well maybe I'd change Lily Pads.

I love Mario Sunshine, I'd even say it's my favorite 3d mario, with the only aesteric being that I haven't played galaxy 2 in like 10 years so idk how I really feel about it. For all it's jank and weird design choices lie a ton of soul, cool stars, fun movement, an unmatched aesthetic and Levels Were You Can Actually Die.

Sunshine's main gimmick is is FLUDD, a funny little talking water gun on your back who you use to shoot water or flip between a hover mode or eventually a rocket mode or a turbo speed mode. FLUDD rules. Like every game mechanic I like it's multi purpose and you can is used in many creative ways without designing specific interactions, and benefits the level design. it's weird that a lot of the cool fludd stuff (slip and slides/shotguns blasts/ect) are hidden and you just gotta figure it out on your own but it's whatever you've watched a sunshine speedrun before and watched them turn shadow mario to dust. I have no problem with fludd, he's great.

Individual stars are a mixed bag. I'd argue that most of them are good, but the stinkers are crazy. I said it before but lily pad red coins is genuinely awful. I do think a lot of the levels people point to as being annoying is mostly just because people didnt fully understand the mechanics. Things like the Manta Ray/cleaning up Sirena beach are much easier then they seem if you know what a shotgun blast is; and to be honest I never understood how people walled by things like Sandbird/blooper racing.

But the stars that ARE definitely fucked up, things like Pachinko or I'm A Chuckster! idk I just think they're funny. If dying in a single player video game hurts your ego no matter what or something, first go to therapy second it's not really a big deal. Most of the Secret levels have a 1up mushrooms early in the level to keep you going. Is pachinko fucked up? yeah. It is really funny to see mario go to hell on a stub? also yeah. Am I being bias? yeah fuck you.

And like I mentioned before, something I really like about this game is difficulty. If you read my review from a few years ago on Galaxy 1, what brought me down on that game was that despite it's insane polish and strong gameplay gimmick, was how easy the game is. All the polish in the world means nothign to me when most of the game is completely frictionless because there's like 5 stars total where there's even a risk of dying, it becomes a snoozefest. Mario sunshine is much harder then it's companions, and I like that. It's not like it's a complete ball buster but I have pay attention and try to win, and most of the Secret levels are gonna take you multiple tries to get at. 64 is not as bad about thsi but most of 64 is kinda a cakewalk anyways.

Something I like about this game that doesn't come with an * is the aesthetic . God. This game is still wonderful to look at. I've been chasing this game's aesthetic since it came out. One of my incredibly bias gripes about Pokemon Sun Moon (bet you didnt think that game would show up) is that I thought that game aesthetically would be the Sunshine 2 that i craved, and in the end i got Just Regular Pokemon.

The summer theming and the commitment to the aesthetic. It's so so good. No backing down to generic areas, the most generic you get is a volcano area and thats the final level. It's a summer vacation aesthetic; We got the easy beach stage but we also got other sick shit; an amusement park, a dock, a scenic beachside nice hotel with the casino you parents didnt let you come with and it might be haunted too (idk whats up with this I never really associated summer with horror but it's apparently a classic japanese summer thing so w/e), villages that are probably tourist traps, ect. It's wonderful. I want this more and no game as given it to me. It's either every level looks the same or every game has rapidly different designs for the sake of variety. The commitment to an aesthetic idea and variance without giving up on the core idea. it's perfect. I will never get this game's aesthetic again and it hurts.

To get back to being negatives despite that I love this game, the game's star structure is weird. To hit credits you need to beat the 7th level of every stage unlike 64 which was just get X amount of stars to progress to the next part of the castle, leading to only needing 49 stars to beat the game. Along with that a large chunk of the stars in this game are attached to blue coins, which suck but oh now you all agree with me that collectathon shit like banjo sucks? you all love banjo but hate blue coins? whatever man. To put it all together the reward for 120 stars is really ass; 64's isnt much better but there's not that many stars that feel like filler in 64 and obviously later into the franchise you get crazy 120 star rewards like galaxy. I say do all the main stages and grab delfino stars, and see how many blue coin stars you got by the end, you're not missing too much going blue coin hunting. you can also skip lily pad. fuck lily pad.


Sunshine is flawed, but I love the flaws. For everything it lacks it has something nothing else has. I'm also bias. fuck it. I should replay mario galaxy 2.

It's finally time for Mario to face his biggest enemy yet; not Bowser, not Bowser Jr., not the camera, not even the slopes... but the legal system.

Super Mario Sunshine is weird, yeah I know, what a daring statement, but I’m not referring about its presentation and ambience, I’m talking about how it manages to be an amazing and incredibly fun platformer that I would even go as far to say that holds in store some of the best parts in any 3D Mario period… and an absolute mess of a game with glaring flaws in both pacing and design that make it at various points flat out infuriating, frustrating and tedious. I’m baffled at how they screw up in some areas, ‘cause I really cannot stress enough how much of a home run is the good stuff in here.

Delfino Island and its locales amount to what it’s perhaps the best assortment of levels out of any Mario game, at least thematically that is. Peach’s Castle in 64 was a pretty good main hub, and the rest of the series followed suite and they all have fantastic central areas that hold up very well in their own regards (except Odyssey I guess, mainly ‘cause it really doesn’t have one), but none of them hold the candle to Delfino Plaza; not only it’s a fantastic starting point full of secrets and side-quests and a playground to experiment with the mechanics and F.L.U.D.D. as well as very neat introduction to the whole concept of shines and how the isle operates, but it also feels like central area, one where, even if you still have to use paintings and pipes to get to the levels, everything feels interconnected naturally. Being able to see other places from certain levels or the Delfino Plaza itself helps a lot on this regard, but what sells it all it’s how every place works together to form a strong thematic feeling; Mario games aren’t really that into having a particular theme, the only other exception maybe being Galaxy with its space setting, but Sunshine is just on a whole another world: the playful and whimsical nature of Pinna Park, the striking sunset and seemingly endless hotel rooms of Sirena Beach, the ancient and massive looks of Noki Bay… The concept of platforming across the different places in a tropical island was already good, but Sunshine uses this idea and takes it to its fullest potential. With the exception of maybe Pianta Village which fills a tad artificial and purely focused on the platforming challenges, every single one of the main areas are real places in which the inhabitants live or the tourists go visit or have fun, and it just so happens that they are fantastic places do some platforming; of course I’m not saying that there aren’t parts that don’t feel gamified, in fact there are a lot of subareas that are completely obstacle-course focused (we will get to those later), but in the moment to moment gameplay this immersion is only matched by a few other platformers, it’s creativeness it’s only paralleled by the joy-filled sounds and soundtrack, how well these places are designed and how fun it is to traverse them… ‘cause yeah I actually adore the movement and platforming in this game AND I SHALL DIE ON THIS HILL.

It's honestly shocking how despite limiting Mario’s base movement compared to the last entry and putting a focus on vertical movement, Super Mario Sunshine lends itself to be a joy to control using all the capabilities at your disposal to the maximum and being a ton of fun… or at least 50% of the game does… again, we will get to that later. F.L.U.D.D is obviously the star of the show; it’s completely unexpected and bonkers to focus the sequel to motherfucking Super Mario 64 on water and how to use it as a movement tool, but despite only being able to do a handful of things, this water tank trumpet looking-ass is a game changer. The squirt nozzle is a great way to expand of combat and making boss fights WAYYYYYYYYYY more interesting than they ever were, but it’s with the hover nozzle that the game goes insane; hovering in itself is a super cool ability, but in this game not only is mandatory to use it for certain sections, not only it is highly convenient and a life saver in multiple instances, it is what gives you the chance to break entire missions in half, having this tool makes you think outside the box and a ton of the fun of the game comes exactly from that. The missions themselves are also mostly fun (emphasis on mostly), some offer really cool platforming challenges as I said, but a ton of the levels do actual story progression within each of them, having small narratives that advance as you complete chapters and gain shines; it’s a really compelling way both gameplay and story wise to make me just keep playing chapters aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand Shadow Mario stole F.L.U.D.D. … Uh-oh.

Yeah… the fludless levels are by far the most disliked part of the game by many, and while I do think there are some fun levels of this kind here and there… yeah no more often than not they are highly frustrating. It’s really strange to me that the developers decided for this to be such an important and mandatory part of the game considering how every single part of the experience is designed around having F.L.U.D.D., which includes the moments you don’t have the goddam thing. A lot of people say that it feels like Mario’s shoes are slippery or on soap, but I think that’s not exactly the problem: again, I think Mario itself controls pretty well, it’s move set is focused on verticality yeah, but by itself there’s not much problem with it… until you can’t hover, and that’s when you realize the physics on this game are atrocious. I swear whoever designed these sub-areas must have had a terrible day, not only there are some almost mean design aspects that make them overly difficult, but if Mario as much as touches a slope, that plumber is already dead. And ignoring the almost comical aspect of Mario letting himself be stolen by Bowser Jr. MULTIPLE times, it’s terrible how some of these sub-areas connect to the main mission; some do it fine enough, but in other’s you’ll be doing a totally normal and actually fun mission to then be immediately teleported to one of these with no reason at all and suffer! Isn’t that fun?!. All of them having the exact same song and visually similar doesn’t help in the slightest, and it juts results and a bunch of stuff that you really don’t want to do… and that’s something that not only affects these obstacle-courses.

Look, Sunshine isn’t the hardest game out there, and despite me not being the most skilled player out there, I actually didn’t find parts of it as other people said they would, hell, some stuff like the sand bird or the watermelon mission I managed to do them just fine! The problem with this game isn’t that its consistently hard, more.so that is consistently annoying. Even some of the missions that I’ve been praising can be a slog, they are just not fun and repetitive, and death meaning being booted back out and having to start from the very beginning is actually evil and an huge waste of time, considering how entering a levels takes a lot more than it did in 64. It’s made even more frustrating ‘cause you’ll be presented with a very cool and original level where you have to clean a huge eel’s teeth and is super fun and challenging, only to have to do one where you have to be thrown by Piantas with 0 aiming skills or having to traverse and overly long, boring and confusing maze; there’s no middle ground, the missions are either 10 out of 10 or a torture beyond human comprehension, and a lot would be remedied if the game just was more friendly in communicating what the hell you need to do; sometimes is clear as water, others, the way to progress is at the exact opposite plaxe from where the start of the level is (fuck you too Pianta Village!).

Progression is also kinda weird; the story is weirdly fast pace, with basically no spoken dialogue or cinematics after a certain boss fight and they disappear until the ending, and the way you obtain the nozzles and Yoshi is also really weird, the nozzles are fine I guess, but it’s weird that you only really unlock them for the main hub (and I believe they would work far better as permanent upgrades) , and that they are also pretty imbalanced, the rocket is WAYYYYY more useful than the other one that I only used like two times and don’t even remember the name. Yoshi is also kinda bizarre since you need to beat a specific mission for it you unlocked, but hey, it doesn’t really matter, after all, all 7 first chapters of every single level and mandatory, so it really that big of a deal!... Wait a second WHAT.

Look, I’m fine with tying the progression with the defeats of Shadow Mario instead with the Shines themselves, that idea at a base level isn’t bad, what IS bad is that because how it is made, shines serve absolutely no purpose unless you want to get 100% completion, which actively makes the already kinda frustrating coin and blue coin MULTIPLE shines even more pointless AND this teensy-little fact is NEVER told by the game EVER. WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS SUNSHINE, I WANT TO LOVE YOU SO BADLY.

Super Mario Sunshine it’s beyond flawed, and its missteps only become more and more apparent as the game goes on… but still, I have gained a huge fondness for it; at times it’s a fantastic experience, and I value it both for what it s and what it is not: it is a fantastic game with some of the best platforming in the series and incredible sense of style, and it is not just a sequel to Super Mario 64, it’s its own thing that would go on to define modern Mario and a lot of the design choices, like the pan out of the level and showing the objective and the more developed boss fights that , would go on to inspire future 3D Marios, and in that alone it has value, and plus, it’s still a damn good game. I think I’ll ponder over this one for a bit, but as of now I now clearly but even with flaws, it’s worth playing it and discover the surprises it has in store.

And now, officially, summer begins…

I have heard quite a few things about Mario Sunshine before I started playing it, from one person I heard it was a really bad game, from another I heard it was essentially a B-movie in the fact its so bad its good...and from another they told me its a good fun game.

I lie somewhere in the middle in the fact its a really fun game with some nightmare fuel levels due to them being tricky by design and also the mechanics of sunshine makes them hard. Like 64 had some freaking maddening levels but some of these were in another league (Im looking at you river leaf and Pachinko level, I didnt do them because I didnt wanna suffer the pure torment considering I lost it in some of the non-Fludd levels.)

But anyway, for the most part, I actually really loved Sunshine, sure the voice acting in the story leaves...something to be desired but the area's in this game are superb and about 60 to 70% of the episodes were pure fun and great in design, like gathering the red coins out of the coral reef or the mysterious hotel delfino level. Some of the bosses are absolute classics that are really fun and have gone down to be favourites in the mario universe, like Petey Pirahna and Gooper Blooper so if that doesnt tell you all the greatness this game accomplished, I dont know what will.

Overall, this is a super fun game and despite its flaws, is really something special in my opinion. It may make me want to punch someone in some places and its not exactly perfect with its sensitive controls and unbalanced mechanics at some points but its fun factor overall more then makes up for it. I probably wont pick this up again for a long time but im very happy that I played this.

The most mixed bag of a mario game. I love the setting and characters, but MAN that gameplay is mixed. The general control of mario feels fine and good, but I hate F.L.U.D.D. A device used only to spray shit which gets annoying fast and make more precise jumps, which is nice, but I'd rather just have confidence in my jumps. I never do in Sunshine. I like a lot of the more basic shines that don't make you do really precise platforming and shit, but that doesn't forgive stuff like the chuckster. Overall, it's still Mario and it's FINE. But not great.