Though Super Mario 64 was arguably the greatest Nintendo 64 title ever produced--some would even go so far as to say that Nintendo made their 64-bit console for Mario 64, and not the other way around--it did have one glaring flaw that wasn't painfully obvious at first. It seemed at the time to be far too good to ever allow a worthy sequel to follow in its massive footsteps. You see, Shigeru Miyamoto, much like other game developers, takes at least a few years to produce brilliant follow-ups to his truly original ideas. Though Miyamoto did promise to eventually make a sequel to Mario 64, he put the idea on the back burner. The Nintendo 64 came and went, and with it, hope for a cartridge-based Mario 64 follow-up. With the inevitable arrival of Nintendo's Gamecube hardware though, came the announcement of what everyone had been waiting for: Luigi's Mansion--or not. And despite Luigi's Mansion being an excellent, yet short adventure title, it just wasn't what most people immediately thought of when they thought about "Super Mario 64 2."

  Instead of simply leaving it at that though, Shigeru Miyamoto and producer Takashi Tezuka decided to take the Super Mario 64 concept all the way back to the drawing board, refining the original's 3D gameplay along the way. During the initial development stages, Miyamoto and Tezuka tried to decide where a Mario 64 sequel would take place. Newcomer Yoshiaki Koizumi, who filled the director's role for the first time during this project's development, suggested that they give Mario a brand-new weapon. I mean, if Luigi got a vacuum cleaner in his Gamecube debut, Mario should at least get a decent nod to his seniority. So, Koizumi suggested that they give Mario a water pistol. Seemingly inspired by those little water-drinking bird trinkets that sit on many a desk, Mario's water cannon named "FLUDD" was born. And what better time and place for Mario to utilize his new toy than on a balmy, tropical island in the middle of summer, during a much-deserved vacation alongside his beloved Princess Peach? And what exactly would Mario need with such a device? Simple; he would use it to remove the paint and crayon graffiti shapes scrawled throughout the lush island's locales.

  The initial feeling that will more than likely overcome you is that Sunshine is basically an upgraded Mario 64, even though the last thing you'll think of while playing it is the word "basic" itself. Instead, the feeling that I walked away with was a sense of awe. Not since Super Mario 64, and I mean this quite literally, have I played such a well-developed platformer. While Luigi's Mansion was a new take on seamless adventuring and Pikmin a brilliantly-executed, if not morbidly efficient and strategic affair, Super Mario Sunshine takes every single thing about Super Mario 64--with the notable exception of the penguins--and makes it all ten times as elaborate, impressive or challenging.

  The spectacular tropical locations are rendered with great attention to detail, with little more than a hint of cartoonish pizzazz to keep the player secure in the knowledge that this is still very much a Mario game, albeit a very nice looking one. The tropical locales wouldn't be half as stunning, however, without the addition of the finest rendered water this side of an Xbox technical demonstration. The water splashes, ripples, muffles sounds, gathers in puddles great and small, distorts the player's viewpoint, evaporates when exposed to overheated objects and even drips off of poor Mario's coveralls. Shigeru Miyamoto has never been one to talk about frivilous topics like in-game visuals, but even he considered Mario Sunshine's emulation of the unique properties of water to be first among the game's greatest technological feats. Truly incredible, when you consider that the gameplay itself took centerstage during the development process and the graphics were more than likely treated as little more than an afterthought.

  So, you're probably wondering, "Why so much praise for a game that sounds like nothing more than a rehash of a seven year-old Nintendo 64 title?" Well, it's not quite that cut and dry. Sunshine project director Yoshiaki Koizumi's deceptively simple addition of a backpack-like water cannon for Mario to wear and utilize changes everything. For those of you who have played through every Mario game made thus far, the thought of not having traditional power-ups locked away in airborne blocks is simply absurd. However, with the addition of an actual move set in Mario 64 that involved more than the previously-established run-and-jump, the developers sought to move away from the repetitive trappings of previous games in favor of a game where the player would have to be able to perform every known move to fully complete the game. And though many will argue that Mario 64 included some unnecessary moves, such as the pole sweeping kick, the same cannot be said of Mario Sunshine. Every move you'll learn and eventually master in Mario Sunshine is vital to your success and mastery of the game. Much like Mario World was to Mario Bros. 3 before it, so too is Mario Sunshine to its 64-bit predecessor; more varied objectives, a sharper level of difficulty, larger levels and smarter bosses await.

  The worlds themselves--of which there are seven, each with eight unique scenarios to play through, as well as ten Shines to find--are incredibly well-designed and laid out with a very meticulous thought and care. Most involve simple point A to point B fetch quests, such as making it to the other side of the level whilst collecting various trinkets, while others require you to defeat a boss character or play a mini-game. However, what I believe to be the true heart and soul of this installment in the Mario series are the love-'em-or-hate-'em "nostalgia levels", where a remixed version of the Super Mario Bros. theme of old plays vibrantly in the background. These levels are specifically structured to murder novice Mario players in seconds, by not only taking away the assistance of the FLUDD pack, but also by requiring players to navigate a complex series of both spinning and stationary blocks and platforms via jumps, slides and flips to reach a well-earned Shine at the end. Fall off of the platforms at any time, and you not only have to start again, but you find the biting words "TOO BAD!" staring right back at you. Even those who consider themselves to be masters of all things gaming will undoubtedly find themselves pulling their hair and throwing controllers in outrage, all while being beaten to the bloody pathetic pulp that they are.

  It's for this reason that I cannot whole-heartedly recommend Mario Sunshine to the usual "gamers of all ages." Those who can't stand to leave a game incomplete will be frustrated by Sunshine's frequent and unforgiving abuse of their free-time. However, it is for this reason that I can easily recommend Mario Sunshine to the very elite players among us--you know who you are. Sure, you'll probably feel like forcefully liberating the silicon innards of your favorite Gamecube controller a few times, but the pure, unrelenting challenge of the game and the feeling of accomplishment you get from scoring an elusive Shine or beating one of the many insane nostalgia levels will leave most true gamers begging for more. For the rest of you, don't be upset when the latest Mario installment confirms beyond all doubt your utter lack of skills, because Miyamoto loves you too--just not as much as he loves the rest of us. And with a grand total of 120 Shines to find, you'll be feeling the love for a long, long time. I mean, any game that makes it more difficult to actually get to the boss than to defeat the boss is more than okay in my book.

  Of course, many of the gamers I know have expressed more than a simple distaste for the manually-controlled in-game camera, but I wish appeal to your non-jaded side for just a moment. Take what you've known after playing Mario Sunshine for twenty hours or more, and then imagine being forced to play through the entire game with the camera permenantly and unalterably pasted to Mario's hind-quarters. This peculiar arrangement would do no less than break the control scheme, ruin the three-dimensional nature of the level design and cripple any attempt at letting the player choose their own view. Remember children, with the advancement of polygonal characters and environments comes a change in how we view the gaming experience overall. And for those of you who have nothing better to do than fill up Usenet topics with nonsensicle drek about how fixed cameras are better than free ones, just take a brief moment to shudder at the memory of many an isometric game. Fixed viewpoints are not the answer to 3D design; they never have been and they never, ever will be. I perish at the thought that modern games should--and possibly could--be stuck with force-feeding novice players fixed viewpoints that would not only dictate their progress, but hinder the freedom sought by innovative game designers like Miyamoto and his intellectual equals.

  While Sunshine's levels may be fewer in number--with only seven to Mario 64's fifteen--they are definitely much larger, and you can see for what seems like a mile or two away at all times. I do have a tiny nitpick concerning the fact that every last level is tropical, but once the game comes together as a whole, there is simply no other way that this could have been done. No matter what any critic ever says to you, no matter how many articles you read, there's only one way to be sure. You must play it to the end to appreciate how well it all works. And make no mistake about it; if you've ever had any inkling, any concept of how a truly great video game should play, this is most definitely it. No amount of nostalgia will ever replace compelling gameplay, but the correct mix of both improvement and innovation, along with the warm familiarity that the Mario nostalgia brings to the table, makes for one of the most thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining Mario games since Super Mario World. And it's for this reason that I consider Mario Sunshine to be the absolute pinnicle of 3D platforming on any console, at least until the next contender one-ups the concept with another innovative infusion. Brilliantly-conceived games are few and far between these days, and even more rare are the sequels that truly outshine their predecessors. It's just a damn shame that it took just short of the six-year mark for Miyamoto and his cohords to improve on perfection.
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