Is Super Mario Sunshine Still Worth Playing?
Tags: Videogames, Review, Games, Analysis, Gaming

We’ve arrived at the final part of the review: the one in which I cover the game’s Structure. For Super Mario Sunshine, I feel that that term mostly applies to level design, game progression, and (unusually for a Mario game) cutscenes. I’ll be honest: I feel that this is the worst part of the Sunshine experience. The game’s other foibles — the camera, the limited controls — pale in comparison to some of the crimes against fun that I’ll cover in this section. So, without further ado, let’s get into it, starting with level design.

I don’t know what it is about Super Mario Sunshine. The game is colorful and happy, with cheery music and lighthearted writing. But it also makes me angry. I get madder, faster, playing Sunshine than any other Mario game. Why? Well, I think part of it has to do with the level design. Take Ricco Harbor, for instance. The first shine, Gooper Blooper Breaks Out, has you platforming across the harbor before finally fighting a boss. The problem is that the platforming isn’t the easiest, especially if you’re still unused to F.L.U.D.D., and one misstep means plunging into the ocean, at which point you have to swim all the way back to the beginning. That’s incredibly frustrating, as you can imagine, and the same kind of thing keeps happening throughout the Sunshine experience. Sirena Beach has you fighting the game’s hardest boss in a battle that can take more than ten minutes. The problem is, it’s not a test of skill, but rather of patience, since camping in the surf at the edge of the map guarantees that you’ll be safe enough. One false move, though, and you’re juggled around from enemy to enemy — Mario has no invincibility frames, like this was on the NES — before dying and having to start all over again. Or, again, Ricco Harbor — the second Blooper mission has you rocketing around the harbor collecting red coins, but running into any obstacle means death, and you can’t slow down enough to guarantee your safety. The worst part is that the biggest challenge in that mission is actually jumping back onto the dock to collect the Shine, something that led, for me, to many, many deaths and endless frustration. The game is full of so many missions like that that sometimes it feels like it doesn’t want you to enjoy it.

But the normal missions aren’t the half of it! Every world has at least one “secret” mission, all of which are required to complete the game. You have to platform through a cut-and-paste world of toy blocks and generic baddies, but there are no checkpoints and few 1-ups, and any slip lands you in a bottomless pit. Some of these levels are incredibly difficult; The Hotel Lobby’s Secret, for example, took me two and a half hours of attempts to complete. Partly, this is because Mario’s moveset is very limited without F.L.U.D.D.; he has no way to extend jumps and no way to hang in the air even a bit longer than gravity would allow. That means that the experience is very unforgiving. It’s okay for video game levels to be hard, of course. I really enjoyed the Darker Side in Super Mario Odyssey, even if it did take me dozens upon dozens of attempts. But the secret levels aren’t hard in a way that feels fair, and when I beat them, I didn’t feel like I had achieved something worth achieving, just that I had beaten a game that hated me. The fact that Game Overs are a thing in Sunshine meant that I periodically had to go all the way back through Delfino Plaza and the level the Secret was hidden in to try again, which only added to my rage.

And often, when a Shine isn’t frustratingly difficult to collect, it’s just incredibly cryptic. For example, The Boss of Tricky Ruins in Noki Bay had me wandering the level for upwards of half an hour, searching for the one pathway that would lead me to the place I was trying to go, with near to no guidance as to what, exactly, I was even looking for. Mysterious Hotel Delfino in Sirena Beach forces players to search a hotel top to bottom, trying to find the secret way to grab a pineapple and thus unlock Yoshi and a Shine, with almost no information given to help. There were quite a few missions along those lines, where I didn’t know exactly what I had to do. I’m not saying that everything in a video game has to be exactly clear, but I’d like to at least know what the puzzle is that I’m trying to solve. Before you call me a filthy casual, know that I found that Super Mario 64, an older, worse-designed game, was generally clearer in its directions than Sunshine. Sure, the little hints weren’t always enough, but at least they told you where, generally, you were supposed to be searching.

This crypticness could extend to progression as well. You’re never told what is actually required to beat the game, so I, this time a filthy casual through and through, had to Google it. All you have to do is beat the first seven missions of each level. Bonus stages in Delfino Plaza, like the infamous pachinko machine? Waste of time. Blue coin hunts? No need. And, unlike in Super Mario 64, where you could get any 70 stars you wanted, including secret stars, or Super Mario Galaxy, which had the same system, or Super Mario Odyssey, which required you to get 124 moons out of 999(!), you have to get those 49 Shines to unlock the final level. No other Shines need be collected if all you want to do is see the end credits, and, in fact, trying to get them is a complete waste of time. This leaves you with no alternative ways to progress. I hated those accursed secret levels so much that I would gladly have done the pachinko machine or whatever else instead of them, but I didn’t have that option. Why are there even optional Shines if they don’t count towards progressing through the game? And why are you encouraged to get them all, every single one, if the reward is (spoiler alert) incredibly lame? It’s mystifying, almost as mystifying as those stupid Noki Ruins.

I’ve spent long enough now kvetching about the game’s design that I think it’s time to move on to dialogue and voice acting. The fact that I needed to include a section for this shows just how unusual Super Mario Sunshine is. The game has fully-voiced cutscenes, and honestly…they’re just weird. It’s unsettling to hear Bowser Jr. speaking in complete sentences, or to have Mario be constantly lectured by his sidekick, F.L.U.D.D. Ironically, even though Sunshine usually has too little guidance, F.L.U.D.D. always talked too much, so much so that I found myself laughing out loud when asked if I wanted to hear its explanations again. Besides that one little issue, though, there’s really nothing wrong with the cutscenes. It’s just that they feel like they don’t belong. Mario has never had fully-voice-acted cutscenes since, and I feel like that’s because Nintendo agreed with my take. Breath of the Wild is strange for the same reason; after so many years of Nintendo’s shoestring VA budget, having more effort put is almost unsettling.

I guess that’s about it for Structure. This game drove me bonkers, to be completely honest, and that was always because some of the game design decisions made were completely mystifying. Still, though, things mostly work as expected. You play the levels, beat them, and then go on to a final boss fight; pretty standard for a Mario game. The problems I found were more of a result of my expectations for the Mario series than of the game’s actual quality. So what was the verdict? Well…read on.