There is a book at the bottom of the ocean. A book that Mario will never get to read. He can stare at the book through the cracks in a door, but he will forever be unable to reach it. He can do so much, Super Mario, but access to this particular book is beyond him.
It's maddening! It's also thrilling. And it's also Noki Bay's red coin hunt in Super Mario Sunshine. This is a game that is better than most people recall, I suspect - although the real problem is that most people don't recall it very often in the first place. Whenever I think of Mario Sunshine, I don't think of FLUDD, or even the fact, once pointed out in an Edge Time Extend, that Mario genuinely does a spot of plumbing on this outing. I think of the book, resting behind a closed door at the bottom of a deep ocean that is itself stuck inside a bottle. Twice trapped, never to be freed. Quite a fate.
Games need more closed doors. Or rather, they need more doors that look like you should be able to open them. I am speaking of something fairly specific here - not the doors-as-set-dressing that politely line the corridors in so many first-person shooters. Those are doors you would never think to open. With Noki Bay's door, however, once you find it, you can't think of anything else. It's so tantalising! And not just because you can swing the camera around and get a glimpse of the room that lies beyond it, the room where an old book lies waiting on the sand. It's tantalising because this is what Nintendo does. Ever since the very first Zelda, the trick has been to tease you with something you can see but can't get to, and then challenge you with getting to it anyway.
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