Wow, Super Mario Sunshine is bad.

[Rickstilwell1]

I enjoyed the game mostly, but there were a lot of hard sections in it. I find SMB2j much easier than it but I have become quite familiar with its levels and now accept it as my Mario 2 so it's not a good comparison. What frustrated me was the fact that you needed a much higher percentage of Shines in order to get to Bowser. In SM64, you only needed like 70 stars or so out of 120. In Sunshine, you needed over 100 or something before the game even let you into the final area.

Getting to the last boss was most of the challenge at the end. Fighting the boss was more pathetic than jumping on Iggy three times in Super Mario World.

But I sure loved the majority of Super Mario Sunshine including its art and music.

[Nebagram]

In SM64, you only needed like 70 stars or so out of 120. In Sunshine, you needed over 100 or something before the game even let you into the final area.

Eh, not quite. You only needed the seventh shine from each area (the Shadow Mario ones) to unlock the final battle with Bowser.

[Aussie2B]

I finally played NSMB Wii not too long ago, but I wasn't really impressed. It's essentially "more Mario." If you want "more Mario," there it is, but I'd rather play something original.

Except it fails at even that because the controls are completely unlike a classic Mario. It's all slippery and loose rather than the rigid tightness of the older games. So to me it's like playing a completely different kind of platformer in a derivative Mario shell.

Not that there isn't some fun to be had, but meh at the excessive hype that the NSMB games get.

[Zing]

NSMB DS was much worse in that regard. The Wii game felt much less "floaty".

[Rickstilwell1]

Eh, not quite. You only needed the seventh shine from each area (the Shadow Mario ones) to unlock the final battle with Bowser.

What? I did all that hard work for nothing? grrrrrr. Well at least I beat it with a specially high percentage compared to those who knew this fact ahead of time. Still, I would have been a bit more relaxed about playing it had I known you could just skip to the 7th shine after getting just a couple in each level.

[JSoup]

I remember not caring for Sunshine much. It was a pretty game and all, but I just didn't enjoy it much beyond that. I remember thinking that it was Mario 64: Hard Mode.

[Jorpho]

I need a place to vent about Sunshine. Holy balls this game is excruciating. The camera just has the most extraordinary propensity to wander off and gabber with an adjacent wall. And the jumping! It seems the key to success is the awkward reverse-somersault jump, as opposed to the elegant crouching jump from SM64 and Galaxy. It's like the designers wanted to take sadistic revenge on anyone who thought SM64 was too easy. I'm only 21 stars in, and I'm not sure how much of this I can take!

I will admit it is vaguely satisfying to finally conquer something that appeared wholly unconquerable the first time you looked at it, as tends to happen in the fludd-free zones, but this satisfaction does not nearly compensate for the rage and fury encountered in dying over and over and over again.

I don't think we'll be seeing a re-release of this anytime soon, as the camera is just so fundamentally broken.

[Tupin]

Super Mario Sunshine is awesome.

I also beat it when I was eight years old. And got around 90 stars. Have beaten it a bunch since.

If it helps, it is universally agreed upon to be the most difficult 3D Mario game, and one of the most difficult in the series. I don't count the levels in the Galaxy series/3D Land/3D World that were designed to be unfairly difficult, either. Mario Sunshine didn't boast about its difficulty, and that made it good.

Stages/stars that stuck out as being difficult:
The lily pad ride with the dissolving lily pads and the poison water
The Sand Bird
Any episode in Pianta Village (late game, have fun with this one!)
The episode of Gelato Beach with the watermelon festival
The episode in Pinna Park where you shoot down the Bowser Balloons
HI I'M A CHUCKSTER (any of the no-FLUDD levels)

Actually, Sunshine is one of the games rumored to be geting a re-release on the New 3DS. So yeah...

[ZeroCool]

I need a place to vent about Sunshine. Holy balls this game is excruciating. The camera just has the most extraordinary propensity to wander off and gabber with an adjacent wall. And the jumping! It seems the key to success is the awkward reverse-somersault jump, as opposed to the elegant crouching jump from SM64 and Galaxy. It's like the designers wanted to take sadistic revenge on anyone who thought SM64 was too easy. I'm only 21 stars in, and I'm not sure how much of this I can take!

I will admit it is vaguely satisfying to finally conquer something that appeared wholly unconquerable the first time you looked at it, as tends to happen in the fludd-free zones, but this satisfaction does not nearly compensate for the rage and fury encountered in dying over and over and over again.

I don't think we'll be seeing a re-release of this anytime soon, as the camera is just so fundamentally broken.

My feelings exactly. How did they leave the camera being so broken as it is? I tried playing this again last week and now I know why I stopped playing. The camera got me really frustrated. Im most likely going to go back because hopefully it gets better, but its going to be awhile though

[JSoup]

It tried too hard to be Mario 64 and mimic everything it did with gusto.
Amazing revolutionary graphics? That, but lens flare that shit up!
Fluid camera that allows for semi-seamless adjustment? That, but let's also program it to always stick to random points! Wouldn't want the player to miss all our lens flare!
Generally well balanced controls that allow for all sorts of never before maneuverability? That, but let's also make the character heavier, the controllers slicker and build in ridiculous jumping sections to show it all off! That's also allow the player to see more of our neat-o-torpedo camera work and LENS FLARE!

Musics good, though.

[Jorpho]

The term is "lens flare", and I don't think it means what you think it means. I actually have no particular gripe about the graphics – in fact, some of the water effects are somewhat admirable – except of course it often seems the only way to proceed is to zoom the camera as far out as possible.

I read this ode to the joys of Super Mario Galaxy recently and it occurs to me that it's practically a list of everything Super Mario Sunshine got wrong.

[RP2A03]

I really don't understand all the hate this game seems to get. I had a blast with this game, especially the FLUDD free levels. The only thing that I found to be really bad about the game was the blue coins. You're not going to find them all without either using a guide, or by spraying every square inch of everything in the game.

[JSoup]

The term is "lens flare", and I don't think it means what you think it means.

It's not a term, but I did misspell it and it means exactly what I think it means. The brightness level of the graphics is literally a lens flare trick they came up with so everything shines regardless of where you're at. Let me dig up the blog post from a decade ago, it explained in detail how it works.

[Tupin]

Isn't called sunSHINE for nothing. But damn if it doesn't have memorable levels. Difficulty is part of the reason why.

[Metalwario64]

It's not a term, but I did misspell it and it means exactly what I think it means. The brightness level of the graphics is literally a lens flare trick they came up with so everything shines regardless of where you're at. Let me dig up the blog post from a decade ago, it explained in detail how it works.

From my limited dabbling into 3d modelling, I'm pretty sure the shine of all of the models is from high specular levels.

[Aussie2B]

Once you get a certain number of Shines you gain access to a pair of sunglasses that dims the screen. Personally I think it's really cool how the game gets brighter and brighter as you collect more Shines, and it actually looks too dim to me when you first start.

[Tanooki]

I either forgot that or never realized it just playing it out the one time I did to get the finish. I never enjoyed it much like I did with Mario64, not that I'd dare to max the stars on that one either.

[BetaWolf47]

It's okay, but it just needed polish. It felt too unbalanced... everything is either too difficult or too easy for all of the wrong reasons. The general "Reach this point to collect a star" level is too easy because Fludd's hover technique can help you easily land on any platform. Other levels are too hard because of how the camera is, or if the physics wig out in a different area that Fludd can't assist you. It's definitely the worst 3D Mario game by far.

Galaxy got everything perfect after that. I can never say enough good about that game.

[Leo_A]

not that I'd dare to max the stars on that one either.

How come? It's not particularly difficult, you should give it a go someday.

[Tanooki]

I got a little over 100, and I just got fed up trying to get the rest back in the 90s when it came out. Certain ones and I don't even remember which anymore I just couldn't get my hands to cooperate with how the game moves and the camera went in certain situations as I could never get certain angles down well. I never did master the wall kick perfectly as I do recall the camera would move or some crap and I'd end up sliding, and I'm fairly certain I never got that nasty star on top of the ghost house which had some creative jumping involved so you didn't slide off to the ground. Personally sometimes I think I have a problem judging distance in a fake 3D space, not so much a problem in reality and not much either in the 3DS with the slider all the way up either since that fakes a 3D space more properly.

I grew up playing the 2D stuff, and I detest forced collection junk as I like to play the stages and knock them off to move the story along, so I've never been huge on replaying the same junk 5+ times over to get more stars so it unlocks a door to go further. I've never grabbed more than probably 60-70% of the stars/shines/coins needed to clear any game from Sunshine forward for a Mario game as I don't enjoy it as I just want to play the stages like the old days.