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[#Phonepunk#]

got the 100 no problem, only killed the 1 sitting in the corner. getting hit and using the i-frames helped, once i was flashing i just ran around halfway inside of him, u only need to get them started spinning.

at any rate there were plenty of coins to get w/o them. i didn't even get to ceiling grapple. my final coin was in the toxic maze spawned in the little room w the green box and a bunch of bats.

it's wild tho, u got to journey all over the place to get them. good times

 

[hariseldon]

So I somehow threw Bowser into... something.. and unlocked the top floor of the castle. Nice. That whole level leading up to the 2nd Bowser fight is fucking amazing btw - some absolute beast-mode platforming in there. Nintendo are fucking gods.

 

[Moses85]

Man, Sunshine’s handheld mode is a pain in the ass.

So frustrating... and I am not the worst Gamer.

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

So I somehow threw Bowser into... something.. and unlocked the top floor of the castle. Nice. That whole level leading up to the 2nd Bowser fight is fucking amazing btw - some absolute beast-mode platforming in there. Nintendo are fucking gods.

The Bowser levels in 64 are fantastic - by far my favorite part of the game. Just pure platforming.

 

[hariseldon]

I know I keep going on about it but honestly I’m so glad I got the Switch. So much fun to be had, it has really rejuvenated gaming for me. Discovering so many old classics (and properly putting the effort into them) has been an absolute joy, in addition to the modern stone cold classics. What an utterly ridiculous little machine.

 

[#Phonepunk#]

i am fully in love with Super Mario 64. i been dropping in and out of levels, racking up 100 coin stars, looking up all the secret stars i've overlooked. just totally in love with everything about this, just playing and existing in this world. i love that dark blue room at the top with the clock and the sunlight streaming in through the window. i love Shifting Sand Land, the cool 3d pyramid maze crawling with goombas and the way you are flying around the pyramid, above the quicksand and dust tornadoes. i love the way Mario controls in this more than any other game of his. ah this game really is the perfect Mario game. it is like all the themes and elements of previous Mario games represented with precision perfect level design. the platforming is classic yet immersive and with an open-world sense of freedom. every level is a theme park, custom-built for your acrobatic experiments. plus the music, i know this is one of the more limited soundtracks, but there is so much pure joy in every song. this game is Super Mario Sublime.

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

But u still can't ride Yoshi

 

[Lionel Richie]

So longed gay Bowser with all the stars for what feels like the 120th time. Will absolutely never get tired of this game because movement is just so damn good. Take Rainbow Ride, where like I mentioned earlier you can long jump to the platform on the other side for a shortcut. Doing that, you can also hit a fly guy and spin your way to the swinging thing ahead. I simply don't know many games that allow you that kind of movement, it feels like hitting a combo in a DMC/Platinum game. No wonder this game is so beloved by the speedrunning community, you definitely feel like a speedrunner when you pull off some maneuvers. It's sleek, stylish and still unmatched. On their first attempt, no less. There are some complaints about the camera and the graphics do look old, but it's just unbelievable. For a game that so many people collectively cherish a memory about being amazed seeing it for the first time, it certainly is amazing enough to still be golden beyond that. You didn't have to be THERE to get it, it's still good today.

Mario 64 is a game made by aliens.

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

Okay, got my 120 stars in Galaxy, so I'm satisfied now. Phew. Gonna skip Sunshine for the time being - that's enough Mario for a while.

Anyway, game's still amazing, etc. etc. But holy hell do we need Galaxy 2. It's practically going to be a new game to me, because I blew through it doing the bare minimum the first time around, and all I remember is that the overworld is just a map and there was a level with a big ramp where you have Yoshi. That's it. But a lot of people like it better than Galaxy 1.

 

[Nico_D]

I have been playing 64 and watching my son play Galaxy and tbh, I like Sunshine's approach to more mission-based levels a lot more - instead of the typical "get to the star". They were so varied in SMS - some better, some worse but at least I was occassionally surprised of what each level wants me to do.

 

[bender]

I think I hate Tiny Huge Island.

p.s. Still hatless.

 

[hariseldon]

I think I hate Tiny Huge Island.

p.s. Still hatless.

Actually I had a quick look last night and that island is really clever. The gimmick is fantastic - still I need to clear Dire Dire Docks first, the chests star is doing my head in because of the awful swimming controls.

 

[#Phonepunk#]

just did the 100 coin challenge for Tall Tall Mountain. i ended up going down the slide at the top, and kept dying because i was trying to get all the coins. it's ok though, because when you die, you get kicked back to the castle, but if you jump back into the painting, you start off at the slide again. by the way, the slide has 2 extra men that are easy to get right at the start. so i ended up seeing my lives go up the more i died lol.

but it worked out well. eventually i nailed a run collecting nearly every coin, and at the exit, you can jump down from where the star is to end up at the start of the course. from there it was just a matter of going through the level regularly and taking out enemies.

 

[hariseldon]

Dire dire docks is simply unplayable due to the utterly fucking terrible underwater controls that are made even worse by the fucking current. Which utter clown signed off on that?

 

[Ten_Fold]

I have to say I’m pretty disappointed in this collection.
my pros are: Sunshine looks and plays great, not the biggest fan of this game.
Galaxy is amazing easily my favorite of this collection.

cons: SM64 the game needed more than just making it more clean. The game isn’t even wide screen. They could’ve at least updated the game to look at least as good as sunshine. This is by far the worse of the 3 imo.

The overall package is just bad. I love Nintendo, they are my favorite company, but when crash/Spyro remade their games you can tell they put some effort in. This just feels like someone who isn’t even a game dev could do in their spare time. Yeah I brought it but I can’t deny it’s a cheap cash grab. Overall I gotta give this a 6/10. Hopefully they don’t do Zelda nearly as bad.

 

[#Phonepunk#]

Just beat Mario 64 and I love that ending. 110 stars at the moment, mostly have Tik Tok and Rainbow Ride left.

 

[Intoxicate]

Just beat Mario 64 and I love that ending. 110 stars at the moment, mostly have Tik Tok and Rainbow Ride left.

Those two worlds felt like taking me as long as the other worlds together

 

[Zuzu]

I got this a few days ago. Super Mario Galaxy looks amazing - it nearly looks like a game that was released this generation!

 

[Chastten]

The fuck? The swimming controls in Mario 64 are perfect.

It's Galaxy that has terrible swimming controls

*edit*

Or well, they're not terrible per se, but they took me forever to get used to

 

[hariseldon]

Picked up In The Deep Freeze in Snowman’s land out of sequence - really fun little puzzle in a tiny song contained area.

 

[Touch fuzZy. get BizZay]

121 stars yay! What a pain to do all that work for 1 star, but Galaxy is maxed now!

But the Mario doesn't stop there. I just spent hours playing Mario 35! I've never won Tetris 99 before despite playing it tons, but since it's Mario I actually managed to win a few times in Mario 35. I guess I've been training at Mario for the last couple of weeks.

 

[Thurible]

100% completed every game (well kinda, for galaxy I only got 120 stars as I recall the 121st star requires a second 100% playthrough with Luigi).

Might try mario 35 later but am probably going to work on my backlog of other games.

 

[Touch fuzZy. get BizZay]

well mario 35 frikken rules

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

got the 100 no problem

at any rate there were plenty of coins to get w/o them. i didn't even get to ceiling grapple. my final coin was in the toxic maze spawned in the little room w the green box and a bunch of bats.

it's wild tho, u got to journey all over the place to get them. good times

Coin collecting was perfect in SM64, you could get 100 in basically every mission (speedrunners even managed to get 100 coins in Dire Dire Docks’ first star, which isn’t supposed to be possible, lol).

Why they decided to change that in Sunshine and make collecting those 100 coins such a pain in all but essentially one stage (Pinna Park) is anyone’s guess, but add that to the list of reasons why I hate that game with a passion.

I think I hate Tiny Huge Island.

Actually I had a quick look last night and that island is really clever. The gimmick is fantastic - still I need to clear Dire Dire Docks first, the chests star is doing my head in because of the awful swimming controls.

It’s not the swimming controls (I had an easier time swimming in SM64 than in any of the other two games by far), it’s that the final chest has a perceptibly different and very awkward hitbox, and the whirlpool behind it doesn’t make it any easier.

I used to hate Tiny Huge Island, but for some reason replaying it on Switch has opened my eyes. It’s a devil of a level - probably lost more lives there than any other level before TTC and RR - but it’s very clever. It’s also pretty obscure the first time.

 

[carlosrox]

Jesus Fuck.

WWYD if you saw this after Mario 3?!







Even though Mario doesn't control the best in this game Galaxy 1 is still the single best Mario game pound for pound. 2 had amazing levels and music but the presentation was way worse.

Mario 64 and Sunshine felt like departures from the older games with the different cast and setting while Galaxy feels like old school Mario mixed with new. And 3D World even closer to the classic games in terms of gameplay and pace.

Odyssey went too far the other way but was still awesome. Hell, every Mario game is a masterpiece. They all have strengths and weaknesses.

For me Galaxy 1 was the perfect blend of it all.


Galaxy 1 and 3D World are the best.


Where my true Galaxy sequel?

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

Where my true Galaxy sequel?

I mean, it's in the title.

 

[Lionel Richie]

So I wasn't ready to say goodbye to Mario 64 just yet and started fucking around the castle. So I got the Yoshi triple jump and after nearly 25 years playing this game I learned that you take no fall damage from it. I mean this must be such an obvious thing, yet I had absolutely no idea or blacked that out of my mind.

 

[carlosrox]

1

I mean, it's in the title.

Nah. The presentation took a huge step down.

 

[Shaqazooloo]

About 30 shines into SMS, and I have a question: Every single time I exit a level the hub world camera focuses in on the Noki Bay entrance (the statue with the light shining down), as if it thinks I need to know about it. I have finished all the shines in that level, and it still doesn't go away. It's really annoying.

Is this a known bug, and can I do anything about it?

(Haven't played SMS in many years, so I don't remember if it was always like this.)

The Noki Bay camera focus is the default focus after all the lesser events have been completed. Pretty sure it never goes away.

 

[Cutty Flam]

The Noki Bay camera focus is the default focus after all the lesser events have been completed. Pretty sure it never goes away.

One time I spent like an entire hour and a half at Noki Bay looking for my final blue coin. The 120th blue coin. That time was wasted and completely in vain. I never found that final blue coin, Shaq. True story

 

[#Phonepunk#]

only one star left for me in 64. You guessed it... Rainbow Ride 100 coins! Just thinking of that blue coin wall jump makes me nervous.

getting all the stars has been extremely fun and once I looked up some examples it was not that tough. TikTok Clock actually wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. Just do that one with the clock stopped.

 

[-Arcadia-]

Looking at the original Super Mario All-Stars, I’m kind of glad they took the route they did here. One game misses the target so hard, it’s never even talked about. The second is the definitive version. The last is kind of a toss-up between the NES and SNES version, with controversy.

In contrast, it’s been a delight to see Sunshine preserved and enhanced so perfectly, and my brief time with 64 revealed something similar that, while a game of its time, gorgeously popped with color and clean IQ. I haven’t tried Galaxy yet, but I would presume it’s much the same.

You can ding this special anniversary product for maybe not being special enough in some ways (I would have loved an art section), but I don’t think the methods employed here are the wrong ones at all.

 

[-Arcadia-]

by the way, the slide has 2 extra men that are easy to get right at the start

We’re all playing Super Mario 64 as a platformer, but this man is in the future, playing it as a dating simulator.

 

[#Phonepunk#]

Got all 120 wow what a ride. Highly recommended that you do all the challenges. What a game!

 

[bender]

Tiny-Huge Island defies physics by sucking and blowing at the same time. Finally completed all the Stars. Let us never talk about it again.

 

[carlosrox]

Got all 120 wow what a ride.

Which?

 

[Touch fuzZy. get BizZay]

Okay so you wanna win in Mario 35 u gotta balance coins and the timer right.

You mass up coins by getting all the hidden 1-up mushrooms and just grabbing coins of course. You need lots to get power ups in crazy situations like 3 Bowsers at once.

As for the timer, you crank 15 seconds onto the timer by catching the top of the flag at the end of a level or grabbing fireflowers when you already have a fireflower. So always grab the powerups even when you are powered up. But that ain't enough. I kept coming 2nd and 3rd cause I was running out of time, keeping the time up is the key. What you gotta do is stop using fireballs on groups of weak enemies and stomp them all instead, without touching on the ground in between stomps. you get increased bonus time for each goomba you stomp without hitting the ground, so when you see a group of 5 goombas that's your chance to really squeeze some time out of them.

I've only won like 6 times but I kept placing top 5 and dying because the timer ran out. I really think those extra stomps are the key to victory.

Which?

64 I believe. Congrats Phonepunk.

 

[Kokoloko85]

I just bought this and man Nintendo doesnt give a shit about its fans or Mario. Of course just the money.

I love the games but for its Anniversary they could of given Sunshine the WindWaker HD treatment and more....

What a joke

 

[-Arcadia-]

The first secret level in Noki Noki Bay is absolutely amazing. I adore them to begin with, but that was just next level. It’s like a Super Monkey Ball level of precision, mastery, and challenge, but with the wonderful 3D Mario moveset.

Serious props for mandating (?) the angled wall jump throughout the level, and even multiple chains of them, above pits.

I still feel the same way I did in Summer 2002. A full game of these would be the most fun thing ever, and a perfect holdover inbetween bigger Mario games.

 

[Lionel Richie]

Man, going from 64 to Sunshine is not as smooth than I was expecting, it sure takes some time to get acclimated with those controls even if you played the game before. Game looks stunning though, I absolutely love the art style and it has aged like fine wine.

 

[Vawn]

I just 120 star'd Mario 64 for the first time since the original N64 release.

Man, the back half of that game does not hold up nearly as well as the first. Many of the last few stars were frustrating for all the wrong reasons.

Mario is incredibly slippery. This isn't an issue for the start of the game. But when you're trying to get stars on stages where you can easily fall to your death, it's annoying.

And fighting the camera gets worse later on. So many parts almost require blind leaps of faith. And even when you can see, it is very difficult to judge how far you are from a ledge, making it easy to jump clear over the platform you're trying to land on.

I should have just left the last few 100 coin stars from the clock tower, rainbow road, etc alone, but it would have driven me crazy to leave the game before 100%ing it.

I played SMG and got 120 stars too. That game still holds up well. There were a few difficult stars, but they were fair and difficult by design.

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

I just 120 star'd Mario 64 for the first time since the original N64 release.

Man, the back half of that game does not hold up nearly as well as the first. Many of the last few stars were frustrating for all the wrong reasons.

Mario is incredibly slippery. This isn't an issue for the start of the game. But when you're trying to get stars on stages where you can easily fall to your death, it's annoying.

And fighting the camera gets worse later on. So many parts almost require blind leaps of faith. And even when you can see, it is very difficult to judge how far you are from a ledge, making it easy to jump clear over the platform you're trying to land on.

I should have just left the last few 100 coin stars from the clock tower, rainbow road, etc alone, but it would have driven me crazy to leave the game before 100%ing it.

I played SMG and got 120 stars too. That game still holds up well. There were a few difficult stars, but they were fair and difficult by design.

Completely agree.

 

[Touch fuzZy. get BizZay]

Man, going from 64 to Sunshine is not as smooth than I was expecting, it sure takes some time to get acclimated with those controls even if you played the game before. Game looks stunning though, I absolutely love the art style and it has aged like fine wine.

Yeah I was troubled for the first few hours and wondered if the controls felt off because because the pro controller can't pull off FLUDD's moves the way the gamecube controller does. But after those first few hours I was fine. I only had one problem that involved very precise spraying in the casino and everything else was golden. Early on you might want to switch to third person camera aiming a lot (press in right analog like a button I think.)

I just 120 star'd Mario 64 for the first time since the original N64 release.

Man, the back half of that game does not hold up nearly as well as the first. Many of the last few stars were frustrating for all the wrong reasons.

Mario is incredibly slippery. This isn't an issue for the start of the game. But when you're trying to get stars on stages where you can easily fall to your death, it's annoying.

And fighting the camera gets worse later on. So many parts almost require blind leaps of faith. And even when you can see, it is very difficult to judge how far you are from a ledge, making it easy to jump clear over the platform you're trying to land on.

I should have just left the last few 100 coin stars from the clock tower, rainbow road, etc alone, but it would have driven me crazy to leave the game before 100%ing it.

I feel the same. At the start the camera gave me trouble but I adapted to its limitations and had a blast. Things were fine until late game when the camera really screws you. I've got so many deaths from getting every star in rainbow road and clock tower that were all death by camera. Full respect to 64 because it's a masterpiece that was made in the 90's before games really even had cameras, but I can't pretend my enjoyment didn't take a massive dip.

 

[Lionel Richie]

Yeah I was troubled for the first few hours and wondered if the controls felt off because because the pro controller can't pull off FLUDD's moves the way the gamecube controller does. But after those first few hours I was fine. I only had one problem that involved very precise spraying in the casino and everything else was golden. Early on you might want to switch to third person camera aiming a lot (press in right analog like a button I think.)

Good point about the aiming, I'm having a lot of difficulties with exactly that. I did wonder about playing with a different controller, but I guess Sunshine just takes a while until you get used to. Don't remember who said it in this thread that Sunshine feels like it wasn't a Mario game when it began development and JFC that is so spot on. Everything is just ever so slightly off. I still greatly enjoy it, but it's definitely a "whole is greater than the sum of its part" scenario.

 

[Touch fuzZy. get BizZay]

Good point about the aiming, I'm having a lot of difficulties with exactly that. I did wonder about playing with a different controller, but I guess Sunshine just takes a while until you get used to. Don't remember who said it in this thread that Sunshine feels like it wasn't a Mario game when it began development and JFC that is so spot on. Everything is just ever so slightly off. I still greatly enjoy it, but it's definitely a "whole is greater than the sum of its part" scenario.

You probably onto all of this already but for anyone else starting sunshine, those early monsters u wanna shoot specifically in their mouth. Easy to do with camera aiming after you take out the little dirty slime guys first. You also can just do a zangief circle pile driver motion to do a spin jump while spraying water so that you spray it in every direction to clear up mud and hit tiny slimes. You don't even need to jump, you can spin on the ground and spray all around you.

I actually really like the control in sunshine, I feel like it's empoweringly easy to hover high above the world an land perfectly on a tight rope, or to do ridiculous side flips into wall jumps into hover nozzle or dives to reach out of reach places, but I didn't re-disover that old feeling of power platforming again until I had played for a few hours.


BTW Anyone who hasn't checked out Mario 35 should jump in, it's awesome! And I'm not just saying that because unlike Tetris 99 I can actually win at this, lol

 

[-Arcadia-]

Good point about the aiming, I'm having a lot of difficulties with exactly that. I did wonder about playing with a different controller, but I guess Sunshine just takes a while until you get used to. Don't remember who said it in this thread that Sunshine feels like it wasn't a Mario game when it began development and JFC that is so spot on. Everything is just ever so slightly off. I still greatly enjoy it, but it's definitely a "whole is greater than the sum of its part" scenario.

To my memory, it wasn’t. Koizumi was inspired by the GameCube controller triggers to create a game with a water gun, and cleaning up goop. The Mario part came later as the product actualized. That might have all been very early on, but the point does remain that it was concepted as the former first, and everything grew out of that.

I remember a lot of talk at the time than Mario Sunshine was a spin-off that became much more of a main game, and Mario 128/another Mario was the ‘real’ game. How much of that is hopeful fan conjecture, I don’t know, but it seems likely.

I don’t regret a single thing, though. This game disappointed me quite a bit as the sequel to Super Mario 64, but nonetheless, I’ve always had a soft spot for it. Playing it this time, without the SM64 2 expectations has only reaffirmed that. I’m glad this exists, I’m glad Nintendo took the chances, and I’m glad Nintendo made the mistakes. I don’t think Sunshine could exist otherwise. It’s another SMB2 — a complete weirdo, that’s a wonderful game in its own right, that only adds to the legacy.

 

[Touch fuzZy. get BizZay]

To my memory, it wasn’t. Koizumi was inspired by the GameCube controller triggers to create a game with a water gun, and cleaning up goop. The Mario part came later as the product actualized. That might have all been very early on, but the point does remain that it was concepted as the former first, and everything grew out of that.

I remember a lot of talk at the time than Mario Sunshine was a spin-off that became much more of a main game, and Mario 128/another Mario was the ‘real’ game. How much of that is hopeful fan conjecture, I don’t know, but it seems likely.

I don’t regret a single thing, though. This game disappointed me quite a bit as the sequel to Super Mario 64, but nonetheless, I’ve always had a soft spot for it. Playing it this time, without the SM64 2 expectations has only reaffirmed that. I’m glad this exists, I’m glad Nintendo took the chances, and I’m glad Nintendo made the mistakes. I don’t think Sunshine could exist otherwise. It’s another SMB2 — a complete weirdo, that’s a wonderful game in its own right, that only adds to the legacy.

Yeah it's a peculiar thing, the strengths and weaknesses of FLUDD. I'm a proponent but at the same, there's obviously downsides. If FLUDD is so good, why does it feel so exciting and rewarding to have it removed for the secret levels that focus on pure platforming challenges, for example? I think some part of why I enjoyed sunshine so much going back to it is that I'm playing 2 other Mario games at the same time without FLUDD, so it's not like I'm losing the ability to play Mario with his more classic 3D moveset like backflips and long jumps, I've got 2 games where I can do that bundled in.

 

[-Arcadia-]

On the side, I think it’s worth noting that the ‘failure’ of Sunshine is what leads what I understand to be a large part of the Mario team, as well as Koizumi, to join Nintendo’s brand new Tokyo team, where they reinvent themselves spectacularly, and forge a brand new identity with an incredibly fun Donkey Kong game, only to be handed back the keys to Mario, wherein they rumoredly took the project so seriously, they agreed to shut the studio down if they failed.

Sunshine gave us perhaps the most talented Nintendo developer of all, amazing Mario game after amazing Mario game, and the probably the most cherished Nintendo game ever in Galaxy.

In that lens, it is one of the most historically significant Nintendo games ever.

 

[-Arcadia-]

Yeah it's a peculiar thing, the strengths and weaknesses of FLUDD. I'm a proponent but at the same, there's obviously downsides. If FLUDD is so good, why does it feel so exciting and rewarding to have it removed for the secret levels that focus on pure platforming challenges, for example? I think some part of why I enjoyed sunshine so much going back to it is that I'm playing 2 other Mario games at the same time without FLUDD, so it's not like I'm losing the ability to play Mario with his more classic 3D moveset like backflips and long jumps, I've got 2 games where I can do that bundled in.

FLUDD feels like a classic Nintendo idea that only got 80% of the way there. It lacks... something to really make it amazing in that vein. There’s so many good ideas running through this game (pushing the leaf will never not be brilliant), so I don’t really know what that something is. I just feel its absence, likely due to being rushed.

I get the feeling a lot of Nintendo mechanics would be like that, if you peeked in partway through development. Not entirely baked yet, but still a ton of fun.

I know what you mean, btw. That really is the moment that lays it bare, even back then. That something isn’t quite right. I don’t know how to reconcile that with the feeling that the FLUDD moveset is also brilliant, boundary-pushing fun for Mario. It’s Shrodinger’s mechanic.

I guess it just goes back to that partially baked thing. Whereas Mario’s 3D moveset is definitely baked, and refined over two different games.

 

[Lionel Richie]

I actually really like the control in sunshine, I feel like it's empoweringly easy to hover high above the world an land perfectly on a tight rope, or to do ridiculous side flips into wall jumps into hover nozzle or dives to reach out of reach places, but I didn't re-disover that old feeling of power platforming again until I had played for a few hours.

I think it's an absolutely genius alternative to the double jump, because it feels much more OP without being braindead either. Sunshine hits hard in the places where it does it.

To my memory, it wasn’t. Koizumi was inspired by the GameCube controller triggers to create a game with a water gun, and cleaning up goop. The Mario part came later as the product actualized. That might have all been very early on, but the point does remain that it was concepted as the former first, and everything grew out of that.

I remember a lot of talk at the time than Mario Sunshine was a spin-off that became much more of a main game, and Mario 128/another Mario was the ‘real’ game. How much of that is hopeful fan conjecture, I don’t know, but it seems likely.

I don’t regret a single thing, though. This game disappointed me quite a bit as the sequel to Super Mario 64, but nonetheless, I’ve always had a soft spot for it. Playing it this time, without the SM64 2 expectations has only reaffirmed that. I’m glad this exists, I’m glad Nintendo took the chances, and I’m glad Nintendo made the mistakes. I don’t think Sunshine could exist otherwise. It’s another SMB2 — a complete weirdo, that’s a wonderful game in its own right, that only adds to the legacy.

Love your takes on this game and I totally agree with you, I may sound harsh on Sunshine but it comes from a place of love. It's an experimental game that somehow manages to feel relaxed. Ultimately, I can't help but compare it with Wind Waker. Also a tropical game, but WW looks like a much more significant departure from the previous titles. And yet it isn't, it's very formulaic by comparison and it doesn't quite land a lot of the core stuff, like sailing does get boring and the triforce quest at the end is atrocious. Sunshine feels like a natural sequel to 64, but it isn't. It's all over the place like a collection of mini games. It also doesn't land of stuff, but it does introduce what would be the pillar of future 3D Mario games in the abstract platforming challenges.

In the end, I feel like WW is a much more wholesome experience and it's more enjoyable overall. Sunshine has higher highs and lower lows. Its scattershot approach did lead to a much more important step in the Mario series than the safer approach of WW did for Zelda.