23 Years Later, Mario Needs to Look to Its Most Creative Game For Inspiration
Mario needs a new job.
It’s wild to think that in eight years of the Nintendo Switch we’ve only had one brand-new 3D Mario game. Sure we’ve had remasters, a flurry of spinoffs, and new 2D Mario games like Wonder — but 3D fans have been left feeling a bit peckish. Super Mario Odyssey is undoubtedly one of the Switch’s best games, but in some ways, recent games like Astro Bot and Split Fiction feel more innovative for platformers. Mario games are unanimously great, they’re always well-designed and strong in terms of sheer gameplay, but if Mario wants to be truly innovative again, Nintendo needs to look at the series’ most divisive entry — Super Mario Sunshine.
Released on the Nintendo GameCube in 2002, Sunshine has what might be the most jaw-dropping opening of any Mario game. In the midst of a tropical vacation on Delfino Isle with Princess Peach, Mario suddenly finds himself accused of painting graffiti across the island, and he’s thrown in jail. Yes, Mario is literally thrown in jail.
Turns out, a Mario doppelgänger has been going around covering the gorgeous island in a muddy goop. So with the help of a talking water backpack called the F.L.U.D.D., Mario is given community service to clean up the island.
Sunshine is the only game where Mario goes to jail.
While it’s obviously hilarious that Mario spends all of Sunshine doing community service for a crime he didn’t do, it’s also that exact reason that makes the game stand out so much. The big advantage Sunshine has over other games is a uniting theme — everything is built around that core story and the location of Delfino Island.
This is a Mario game that genuinely feels like an adventure as you travel to the various parts of Delfino — from a towering roller coasters of Pinna Park to the quaint seaside Pianta Village. Aesthetically and thematically everything in Sunshine ties together, and the game makes brilliant use of the tropical theme with inventive platforming and enemy designs. And it vitally also plays into the core game design, as Mario’s standard platforming gets a water-based twist. With the FLUDD you can shoot water to clean off damaging goop, hover in the air with jet streams, and rocket straight up with a water explosion.
Every inch of Mario Sunshine is developed around the idea of the FLUDD and consuming water.
The FLUDD has limited capacity but can be refilled in any body of water, from the sea to fountains. That means that while platforming you’re trying to balance your water supply and strategically make your way through levels while refilling. The implementation of the FLUDD makes Sunshine feel drastically different from any other Mario game, even if the foundation of the gameplay is still the same.
Not everyone loved Sunshine’s approach, the water-based gameplay does take a bit to wrap your head around — especially when you’re trying to break it from your expectations of what a Mario game feels like. The camera can also be your greatest enemy at times. But despite all that, the unifying theme of Sunshine is something every other Mario game has lacked since.
Other Mario games veer more toward feeling amalgamations of different levels that smartly use a core mechanic, rather than having you explore a singular location that feels fleshed out. Cappy in Super Mario Odyssey is a brilliant mechanic that lets you possess a wide array of items and creatures — but the game takes you to a wide array of locales that all feel disjointed. The same goes for Super Mario Galaxy’s approach to traveling different planets — with each one simply feeling like a different Mario level. These games, despite playing and feeling fantastic, still feel like they inherently stick to the “Mario formula.” But Sunshine didn’t do that, it didn’t want to be just another Mario game but with island levels.
All of the areas in Mario Sunshine feel connected and like smaller pieces of a whole — unlike the drastically different levels of other games.
The FLUDD isn’t just a gimmick that allows for creative level design, it integrally changes the design of everything and how you play it. When you play Sunshine, you’re thinking a different way, constantly looping in how you can use the FLUDD and Mario’s agility to progress — not wondering what the next gimmick will be. By comparison, Sunshine feels far more vibrant than most Mario games, because Nintendo really doubles down on the tropical theme in every aspect of the game.
That’s exactly what Nintendo should do moving into the Switch 2 generation, and whenever we finally see another 3D Mario. The platforming genre used to be completely dominated by Mario, but there’s finally competition that’s starting to sprout it’s head. Astro Bot literally uses PlayStation history to construct its levels, and Split Fiction is an entire experience built around the idea of a revolving door of gimmicks. These games feel fresh in ways that Mario hasn’t for quite a while, at least in the 3D space.
The Switch 2 is Nintendo’s chance to come out swinging, and establish once again that it can break the norms that everyone else tries to follow. It’s never been more important for Nintendo to remind players that there’s no one else doing what they do, and a bold, drastically different Mario is the perfect way to make that statement.
