Friday, January 27, 2017

Vacationing to Isle Delfino (Super Mario Sunshine)


With Super Mario Odyssey being announced including the fact it’s going to be similar to 64 and Sunshine, I’ve been inspired to crack out the old Nintendo GameCube, my copy of Super Mario Sunshine and begin a new playthrough of this awesome game.


What is Super Mario Sunshine? Well…


Princess Toadstool (Peach), Toadworth and Super Mario himself take a trip to the Isle Delfino, a tropical resort where the local Pianta people live, for a well earned vacation. Everything seems like paradise, from the food, to the scenery, until Princess Peach notices a Mario like shadow silhouette running amok in the background of the Welcome to Isle Delfino Presentation being viewed on their plane trip. Though she puts her doubts aside and they arrive at Delfino Airstrip only to find the place covered in a mass of mysterious paint. Toadsworth sends Mario off to seek assistant and just general information on what is really going on. Luigi isn't the only one to get his own quest helping device, Mario meets a strange, talking, cleaning device named F.L.U.D.D. (The Flash Liquidizer Ultra Dousing Device created by Professor E. Gadd, who had links to all the Mario and Luigi games at the time.), our plumber hero, with F.L.U.D.D. strapped to his back, then proceeds to clean up the Airstrip only to get blamed for the mess in the first place! 


Mario is arrested by the local police, accused of being the perpetrator destroying Isle Delfino and sending the Shine Sprits (The source of the sunlight and power in Isle Delfino) away and then sentenced to clean up the island.

The Journey begins as Mario must journey across Isle Delfino, cleaning up the mysterious Shadow Mario’s nasty paintwork with the aid of F.L.U.D.D. while collecting the 120 Shine Sprites to return Isle Delfino back to its original beautiful self.


Super Mario Sunshine was released back in 2002 for the Nintendo GameCube and began development in 2000, not to be confused with Super Mario 128 (Also known as Super Mario 64 2) also announced back in 2000, which ended up being incorporated into future games such as Super Mario Galaxy and Pikmin. Regardless Super Mario Sunshine truly felt like a sequel to Super Mario 64, with its 3D, open world and sandbox like feel with controls, such as wall jumping and 3D analog control carrying over to Super Mario Sunshine.


The game feels like Super Mario 64 but has enough unique gameplay to stand on it's own as a pretty great Mario game. The Red Plumber gains new moves with F.L.U.D.D., adding a plethora of new platform gaming options with F.L.U.D.D.’s interchangeable upgrades and abilities such as the Squirt Nozzle to solve puzzles and clean up Isle Delfino, the Hover Nozzle to Hover across platforms, the Rocket Nozzle to reach new heights and, my favorite, the Turbo Nozzle which allows Mario to become the fastest plumber alive, bust through gates and even run on water, even Sonic the Hedgehog couldn’t do that. (No offense to Sonic, he’s a pretty cool dude/Hedgehog.) As well as adding new controls Super Mario Sunshine allowed, for the most part, a completely self controlled camera. (Of course you automatically reposition it by pressing the L trigger.) Mario controls a lot more freely in this game and you can also pull off some pretty crazy maneuvers, some ending in poor Mario bumping his head. Here’s a little ZAK Tip, try spraying some water by pressing the R trigger and doing a belly flop by running foward and pressing b, do all this at the same time and you’ll end up belly sliding at sonic speed! Just try not to hit anything, or fall off the level!

I can’t quite express the amount of excitement I had and still have towards this game. Super Mario 64 introduced me to Video Games and ever since I’ve been a huge Mario fan. I can’t remember in great detail the events leading up to me getting this game, I assume I bugged my Parents enough to get them to buy it though my Mum and Dad had just as much fun with this game as I have. Super Mario Sunshine has given me many hours of awesome, fun platforming with this new playthrough proving to be just as exciting and fun as the times I played this as a kid. You know what? I haven’t even mentioned yet about how beautiful this game is for its time. There’s a whole lot of water in this game and it looks absolutely beautiful, Nintendo always seems to be the best when it comes to water graphics for some reason. To match the wonderful graphics this game’s soundtrack is pure Mario bliss.

To make this game even better it also marks the return of Yoshi!


Yes Yoshi returns as a playable character! After chasing Shadow Mario to recover his egg, as well as finding the type of fruit required for him to hatch, Mario can ride on top of Yoshi for some awesome Yoshi/Mario action.


Yoshi is a tad different this time compared to Super Mario World and Yoshi’s Island. He contains a juice meter you have to refill every so often by consuming the fruit scattered across the island. Yoshi also can spray fruit juice at enemies (Yeah Yoshi, you never told me you could do that before…) as well as use his traditional tongue to gobble up enemies. Also Yoshi really hates water in this game apparently, do not walk Yoshi into any form of water that isn’t shallow, you’ll have to go looking for him again.


I’m currently 50 Shine Sprites into my playthrough at the moment so I have just about half of the Shine Sprites. I have all the main worlds unlocked, just not completed. I can’t quite choose what level is my favorite but I have to say Sirena Beach (Aka Hotel Delfino) is pretty awesome, especially the level called “Mysterious Hotel Delfino” where you search the hotel for a pineapple to free yoshi. As a kid I’d say I loved Pinna Park the most.

Truth be told I never used to be that great at this game back in the day, yeah I loved it deeply but I had difficulties with some of the levels, such as the ones where Shadow Mario steals F.L.U.D.D. leaving you on your own to navigate the level. I must have of improved over time because I’m almost breezing through some of the levels I had problems on before. Don’t get me wrong it’s still difficult but I’ve gotten better to the point I can actually BEAT some of these levels now. Another confession I have to make is I’ve never collected all the Shine Sprites or beaten the game before, will this be the run I finally complete this game? You bet your bottom plunger it will be! Super Mario Sunshine, regardless of me not beating the game completely, is a fun, challenging, colorful and plain old awesome game for any 3D Platform Mario fan.

A lot of you probably own this game already (Hey maybe this will inspire you to start playing again.) but for those who have never gotten a hold of this game I tried to find some places you can still buy this game. For starters you can get it at GameStop for 34.99 which will give you the game, not sure about the Box. Or you can look through this list on Amazon for a copy. Though I must warn you these are not coming from Amazon itself and are coming from affiliate stores within Amazon so I’m not exactly sure how safe and reliable they are. I haven’t attempted to buy from any of these companies. Though if you do happen to see JJ Games on the list give them a go, I’ve purchased from them in the past and they’ve been very reliable as well as cheap.

Overall Super Mario Sunshine is an awesome game full of awesome challenging platform levels, a unique cast of loveable characters (Especially Petey Piranha), thrilling movie-esque cutscenes, beautiful GameCube graphics and with 120 Shine Sprites to collect you should totally play this game in anticipation for Super Mario Odyssey, which seems to be another Sandbox/Open World Mario game in the same sense as Sunshine and 64. The Nintendo GameCube holds some of my all time favorite games so I’ll be discussing more about the GameCube itself and its games in future blogs! Of course I’ll keep you guys updated on my Super Mario Sunshine progress in the future. I’ll be discussing more 3D platforming Mario games and Mario games in general leading up to the Holiday release of Super Mario Odyssey so be sure to check me out on Facebook to keep track of when I post as well as on on Instagram. Also check out my Youtube Channel where I post all sorts of videos from Short Films, Travel, Knitting, Vlogs and more! I recently started up a Tumblr as well so you can check it out at zakentertainment.tumblr.com it's a great place to keep track and interact with me. I'm also on Twitter, Snapchat as ZAKManK, and of course Ravelry! I post here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 11:00 AM CST (GMT - 6) with a wide range of awesome entertainment topics!

Keep your lives entertaining!

ZAK Entertainment

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