I bought this game over a decade ago and it quickly became my favorite of all time. FLUDD working in tandem with Mario's large set of moves make for a game with an incredibly high skill ceiling and an incredibly low skill floor. Many may lament the loss of the long jump from 64 at first but will eventually get used to the spin jump as a superior option offering the distance of a long jump, plus the height of a triple jump, and a slowed descent. That's really the name of the game with Sunshine. Take what 64 did, and refine it. Mario controls razor tight in Sunshine allowing for the player to perform Spin Jumps and Side-Somersaults on a dime making for a stellar playing experience. There are some cons to this package though. No game is perfect and Sunshine is certainly no exception. For one, the game's development was a bit rushed to meet the demand at the time for Mario on the GameCube. As a result, parts of the game feel like they aren't as polished as they could be. Nothing that could ruin the game, but stuff that could annoy the player if it gets in their way too much like some of the odd collision with the rotating X shaped platforms in the secret stages being some of the more noticeable offenders. The progression structure isn't great either. Instead of basing your progression through the game on your quantity of Shine Sprites, you're instead tasked with finding Shadow Mario in Episode 7 of every stage, and defeating him. This not only contributes to people's hatred for the notorious blue coins, but it also creates some repetition in the missions which was bad enough as is since you'll be fighting some bosses multiple times, as well as doing a lot of regular and timed red coin missions. A Shadow Mario fight on the same episode every stage on top of that just makes it so the player knows what to expect for just about every stage by the middle of the game. About the blue coins now, they aren't nearly as bad as some may lead you to believe, but getting all of them will certainly be a challenge for players new to the game. I recommend spraying absolutely everything, exploring the entire level, and speaking to as many NPCs as you can since they actually can give you hints as to where some of the kore obscure blue coins are. There's one in the seventh stage in the game that people like to complain about involving standing in a specific spot and spraying a specific direction, but there's a character that tells you about that exact blue coin in the stage itself. Don't worry about being bored of talking to NPCs either. The person who wrote the dialogue for Sunshine was the same guy who wrote the dislogue in the original Animal Crossing, Makoto Wada. As a result, each of the NPCs have something either humorous or helpful to tell you. Each NPC also has their own sub plot that progresses each episode alongside the main story like a character in Stage 2 who comes up with new excuses to not work his job, or a couple of dancers in stage 5 who get progressively more tired and frustrated as they keep dancing for these tourists who won't leave. I urge new players to speak to the locals not only for hints, but just to hear what they have to say as it's very obvious that lots of effort went into the dialogue and it'd be a shame for something so full of heart to be overlooked. With all that said though it should be noted that there are 240 blue coins meaning 1/5th of the game's content is in those blue coins. The game itself doesn't have an episode by episode counter for blue coins so I recommend keeping all of your blue coins and only turning them in when you have all 240 so you can use your total collected as a global counter. That's really it in terms of complaints with the game though outside of errors in the cutscenes like Mario being in the background of some cutscenes when he isn't supposed to be and some weird texture errors like a smeared roof texture in the Plaza. Sunshine is an excellent video game and I'd say that it's the definition of "flawed masterpiece." It's a quirky game that offers the player lots of power to move at a breakneck pace and get insane air travel making excellent use of each level's verticality. Super Mario Sunshine is a game you won't want to miss.
Length of ownership: 1 year or longer
yes: I recommend this product
