Carl told me he almost lost interest in Luigi's Mansion after all the negative stuff I said about it and then went on to love it. This made me wonder, I had loved playing through Luigi's Mansion yet I kept moaning about what was bad about it. These days I'm pretty much moaning about every game. I've played far too many classics and sat through far too much third party rubbish. I am a picky gamer.

I'm going to spend most of this review being negative about Mario Sunshine, because after all everyone knows that it's great. It's the best game out this year, it's fun, addictive and just what the Gamecube needed in a long drought of games. 

Mario Sunshine is what Mario 64 would have been like if Shigeru Miyamoto had less involvement. After an hour's play I said Mario Sunshine felt like a group of Mario fans had made it, and now I see that this is the game's weakness rather than a good thing. It's like Shigeru Miyamoto got a team together to make a new Mario game and they assembled it with a check list. Big worlds, check. Classic audio, check. Yoshi, check. But they've missed that something special that only the mind of Shigeru Miyamoto can bring to a game, you don't know what it is but you know it's there. The mirror room in Mario 64, the fishing game in Zelda: OoT, flying above the clouds in Mario Bros. 3. It's everything that makes his games better than the rest.

Mario Sunshine was everything I expected and I wasn't disappointed at all. But right now I'm satisfied, which isn't quite right for a Mario game. It feels like something's missing... there is no room of mirrors or flying above the clouds, just Mario 64 with better graphics, bigger worlds and some new game play elements. 'Sunshine doesn't even feel like much of an evolution of Mario 64, just exactly what you'd expect.

Now, onto the praise. The bosses are brilliantly done, they're huge and require some thought to work out how exactly you kill them. The shines are in the hundreds and varied. The plot is beyond anything from any other Mario game. The sound consists brilliant old school tunes. Mario Sunshine is one of the most fun games I've ever played.

The game seems to be made purposely much harder than Mario 64. In the platform filled courses scattered throughout the game, you're made to navigate insanely difficult spinning cubes and disappearing platforms, if you fall off you die. When you ride the octopuses across the water at break-neck speed, if you hit anything you will die instantly. The shines are much harder to get than Mario 64's stars too, it could take up to 30 minutes just to get one, where as in Mario 64 you could have got about 4 in that time.

Yoshi was hyped up but doesn't really meet my expectations. In Super Mario World Yoshi was extremely useful and fun to ride, but in 'Sunshine he's almost completely useless. Seeming as you need to re-fill your water pump every world in the game contains water, but if Yoshi falls into any water he dies instantly, limiting Yoshi to where he can go. He can jump higher than Mario but he cant hover very far, making Mario's water pump more useful to use. To add injury to insult you're also taxed to using Yoshi, if you don't feed him often his juice meter will go completely down and Yoshi will evaporate into small paint particles. Yoshi's only use is for getting rid of special paint that can only be removed by the juice he spits out, you can ride him just for the cool Mario World style music too.

One thing's for certain about Mario Sunshine; no-one will be disappointed. The game is a joy to play, the shines are varied and challenging and you can completely immerse yourself in Mario's world.

Each world has 30 blue coins which can be traded in for a Shine once you have 10 of them. Finding a blue coin ranges from easy to throw-the-joypad-at-the-wall difficult. Like most Miyamoto titles before it, usually if you can think of it then you can do it. For instance, if you decide to spray a fire with your water pump then most likely a blue coin will jump out, but this becomes stupid when you have to spray the ceiling or floor in random places to reveal a blue coin. It feels like the blue coins have been added to the game just to make it longer, but I'm definitely not complaining.

The music and sound are wonderful, but I suppose we'll have to wait and see if it'll stand the test of time. All the classic themes are back like the koopa theme and the Mario theme along with some new classics in the making such as the main town theme, which is just brilliantly Mario. The sound has a retro touch to it too, with pipe noises, 1-up tunes and even the sound from Mario World when you hit someone with a shell. 

The worlds are well designed but honestly not too far ahead of Mario 64. Instead of having every Shine in the level at once the world changes to accommodate the one Shine you have chosen from the story list, which takes away alot of the barriers restricting them from putting big town crushing bosses in the game. Although there's alot more happening in the worlds than in Mario 64, they're not actually much bigger than Mario 64's worlds and they're not as varied due to the Island setting.

Mario Sunshine is the best platform game in years, but I can honestly say I didn't enjoy it as much as Mario 64. Even today I could go back to Mario 64 and say that it's the better game, but only marginally. If you're expecting the best game this year you're certainly not going to be disappointed, but by Nintendo's extremely high standards Sunshine has something missing... something very special that puts Mario games ahead of the competition... Yes, Shigeru Miyamoto's influence. Playing through Mario Sunshine seriously makes me consider campaigning for Mr. Miyamoto to be demoted. The closest he got to directing a game in recent years is half-directing Pikmin, and in my opinion Pikmin was not as realized as it could have been.

Overall
Andy Robinson: Mario Sunshine is the evolution of Mario 64 and I thoroughly enjoyed playing it. Once I've finished getting this review on the site, I'm going to open up a new file and play through it again. No-one will be disappointed.

Review written by Andy Robinson

<< Go Back to Miyamoto Shrine

Missed an Update? Click here!     Bored? Hit the Forums!