Why isn't this Sunshine so bright?
The long awaited, much anticipated new Mario game in the long running series was finally released for the GameCube. Many hailed Super Mario Sunshine as another instant classic. However, there were also a fair number who felt let down. Here is an attempt to once and for all explain how while Sunshine may be a very good game, why I'm still disappointed.
In short, if you have played Mario 64, you know what to expect. Mario 64 is a classic, but Sunshine is just too similar for my tastes. Similar in both gameplay/control and in level/puzzle design. Maybe if it brought something new to the series, anything at all, it might of impressed me more. Re-adding Yoshi is about it. I just feel that Sunshine is almost more of a 'downgrade' from Mario 64 then an improvement. FLUDD is nice, but you get it at the expense of losing the fun wing caps. Every level has the same beach/island theme, so it's hard to tell them apart. Gone is an ice world, a haunted house world, or any real difference in levels. While the levels do have more going on in each of them, there are also far fewer levels. They just stuck more SHINES in every level (this game's version of Stars). There are also too many SHINES gotten from "boss" like battles. I had the most fun getting SHINES where you had to jump, hover, climb your way to the SHINE. But these were few and far between.
My reasoning behind my disappointment goes like this. Mario is Nintendo's flagship title and as such should be something special. So it comes time to make "Sunshine". They couldn't come up with a revolutionary idea like they did for the jump from 2D to 3D (but who could?). So then what? A whole new game? Well they decided to go with what worked for them in Mario 64. I could live with this. However, you would think they would do something to make a six-year-old game fresh again. Sadly, they didn't. Maybe this isn't Mario's fault directly, but after the success of Mario 64 everyone and their brother were trying to replicate that game. Even the Mario 64 rip-off Banjo-Kazooie added something new to the formula. So after all that time, the "Mario 64" style game just seems outdated. The genre watered down by so many pretenders over the years. You would of thought the creator of this 3D platform genre could distance itself from all these pretenders, but it doesn't. There have even been a few that were better efforts then Sunshine (Conker for example). Microsoft could of pulled this Sunshine out of their place the sun don't shine. Well, maybe not.
That all said, the game can be extremly fun at times. Sunshine is a well done Mario 64 "rip-off", and it has the 3D platform genre down to a science. Sunshine is ALL about your jumping skills. Using this to explore new areas and to reach new heights is the best part of this game. There are also some cool moments with some unique ways to earn SHINES. The 'overworld' has much more to it then being just a means to get from level to level. I was initially afraid the whole 'clean-up the paint' theme would be overdone, but instead it's only used here and there and when it is used, it is done to good effect. While Blue Coins are a painful "collect 'em all" item, they do add an element of hidden secrets that was lacking in Mario 64. There are also what I will call "mini-stages" that are quite cool. These are a sort of retro Mario experience that is all about your jumping skills. No FLUDD in these stages. To go along with this the one big improvement over Mario 64 is that the difficulty of Sunshine is definitely higher. The game does get harder, and better, as you get farther into it.
In the end I still feel let down by Sunshine. It's not that it is a bad game. Far from it. It is one of the better platform games you will ever play. It just doesn't live up to what I expect from a Mario game. Mario 64 was a revolutionary game, and while I knew Sunshine couldn't duplicate this giant leap from 2-D to 3-D, I thought Nintendo would come up with something to make it a unique and fun experience. Here we have the much more powerful GC where they could realize everything that Mario 64 started. Instead all we got was FLUDD. I really, really miss the usage of power-ups. Sunshine could of been a much better game if it toned down the island resort theme, added more wandering enemies, and added a bunch of useful power-ups.
If this game came out 4 years ago before all these Mario 64 rip-offs, I might of felt better about it. Six years was too long to wait for this. While Crash or Sonic could be proud of this game, I just feel it's not up to Mario's or Nintendo's high standards, and hence why I'm disappointed in this vacation. Yet every GC owner should own this top-notch game (and not because it's practically this or nothing).