It’s interesting to see what sprang from Sunshine.

Level design is perfectly varied, and every location is a feast for the eyes. Playing the game today, I’m equally entranced by how much Nintendo squeezed out of its hardware. I’m a sucker for water in video games, and nothing had shimmering waves like Sunshine. GameCube might have been a tiny box, but that thing packed a punch. I spent weeks plowing through Sunshine, with my sister in tow. I was about to be a Junior in high school, and between bits and pieces of summer reading, I was absorbed in Mario’s newest adventure. It was late summer, and in the Bay Area, that’s when the heat (well, our version of it, anyway) comes in full force. Sitting down with Sunshine again, I’m immediately transported back to August of 2002, when the game first came out. So, essentially, Sunshine had its work cut out for it, and as a result, some people feel like the game didn’t deliver the goods. Mario 64 also opened a Pandora’s box of me-too 3D platformers, (some of them weren’t half bad, of course) which further stacked the deck against Sunshine.

After six years of waiting, players were expecting Sunshine to rock their world as that revolutionary title did, so it was to be expected that some folks were going to walk away disappointed. I think part of Sunshine‘s unfair reputation came as a result of following in the shoes of Super Mario 64. Tight controls, beautiful visuals, and a killer soundtrack– if this is a black sheep, Nintendo could do a heck of a lot worse. Well, sort of, until Mario is framed and has to clear his name! Set on the tropical Isle Delfino, Sunshine set a new precedent for graphical achievement, and its gameplay introduced a fun new twist with the introduction of Mario’s sentient water pump, FLUDD. After years of adventures in the Mushroom Kingdom, Nintendo finally gave Mario the vacation he deserved. Maybe I’m just a little jaded, but this installment remains one of my favorite Mario games, and one that I think deserves more respect than it gets. Every time I boot up Super Mario Sunshine, I guffaw when I think of how people refer to it as the black sheep of 3D Mario games.

Super mario sunshine island people