Super Mario Sunshine

The year was 2002. I was 17 years old and going through a lot of issues at home. People at school talked a lot of how amazing the games on the Gamecube was - Super Smash Bros Melee, Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, Metroid Prime, F-Zero GX. I even recall it initially selling with Luigi Mansion and Pikmin. Among the top games came Super Mario Sunshine. So I gave the game a shot. And I hated it. I loved it at first, but that quickly shrunk as "the fun factor" diminished. Let me explain.

The game shows off a cool-looking island and an interesting plot. Some evil-paint Mario frames him for polluting the island and removing its shine. It is your job to clean it up, through various challenges, and retrieve the shines (stars). You get an awesome device that helps you hover in the air. In addition to collecting gold and red coins, you can also retrieve blue coins. Sounds fun at first until you realize that the blue coins... just get you more shines. Oh and the stages still reset after each shine like in Mario 64. However, you can't collect just any shine on each stage. You have to complete each shine in the order they are presented.

Things only get more depressing. The camera doesn't seem to want to stay still. I looked online hoping for a lock-to-Mario option. I couldn't find it. The option is to reset the camera facing the direction Mario is facing or disable movement with an over-the-shoulder lock. Another thing I couldn't stand for much longer was the music. Like everything else the music was different, interesting, and innovative... for 5 minutes. Then it got annoying and repetitive.

If I have to be honest, I collected 18 shines before I rage-quit. I was already mad attempting the Pachinko Mini-Game and the Sand Bird. Trying to collect all the red coins at the Theme Park was the final strike. I understand them breaking up the world into sections so they could add a different event. I think I would have enjoyed it better if I could have just wandered around collecting each item without breaking into some alternate dimension puzzle/challenge. At least now I know why people say it was the least enjoyable Mario game.