Shine get!

A lot of people didn’t care for Mario Sunshine when it hit back in 2002.  The Retronauts crew has tried working it into a grand symmetry of Mario games by comparing it to the first three NES entries in the Mario series.  Mario 64 is the groundbreaking game that launched the 3D platforming genre in the same way that the original Mario for NES was the game that cemented the rules for the 2D platformer.  Mario Sunshine fits into the same spot as Mario 2, a game that takes the mechanics of the first game and goes off in an experimental direction with a completely different setting.  And Galaxy would be the return to form similar to Mario 3 that takes the mechanics of the first game and compacts it into multiple bite-sized chunks of fun.

I think that there’s something to that comparison, even if it is a bit arbitrary.  I also don’t care about it or feel the need to justify Mario Sunshine.  Put plainly, Mario Sunshine is a damned fun game that I think a worthy successor to Super Mario 64.

Mario Sunshine split the fandom along strict love it/hate it lines with the introduction of a water cannon that could be used in several ways:

  1. Cleaning up paint that has been spread around levels by Bowser Jr., the game’s big bad.  Cleaning up paint could also reveal hidden areas and items.
  2. Hovering in the air for a few seconds.
  3. Blasting high into the air to get to hard-to-reach elevated areas in a level.

Most of the complaints I’ve seen leveled at Mario Sunshine complained that the water cannon mechanics made the platforming too easy by providing a larger margin of error than Mario 64, and those critics would be correct if Sunshine’s water cannon was introduced into Mario 64’s design aesthetic.  The problem with that line of criticism is that Mario Sunshine is a game designed from the ground up with the water cannon in mind, and that makes all the difference in the world.

I think the big problem is that people went into Super Mario Sunshine expecting a rehash of Mario 64 with better graphics.  Instead we were handed a remix of Mario 64 with better graphics and a gamechanging tweak in the game’s mechanics.  I, for one, enjoyed running around spraying paint monsters.  I thought that hovering added a nice extra dimension to the platforming.  I enjoyed using the rocketblast rather than trying to get the hang of another ungainly flight mechanic like the wing cap upgrade from Mario 64.

In short, I thoroughly enjoyed Mario Sunshine because of its changes and not despite them.  I may be in the minority in that opinion, but I stand by it.