Super Mario Sunshine

Testimonials

“That was my first ever video game and I was amazed by everything. I must have been like five or six. You jump around, as you do with Mario. He had this water jet-pack, backpack type thing. The big mechanic behind that game, the theme anyways, was squirting this paint, mud stuff with water and cleaning up this coastal Pacific city that they were vacationing in because Bowser was making it muddy with this weird paintbrush. There were these paint based monsters and you kinda washed them away with water. And obviously you had to save the princess. The paint monsters are, for the most part, faceless and nameless. But this game utilized Bowser’s son as the main villain. He was running around in a fake Mario costume making everyone think that Mario was covering the town in paint or dirt and stuff.”

“I think just the fact of me playing it when I was so young makes it nostalgic. When I got this game I had this friend and for some reason I think I was being super nice at the time and I was like “Yeah, anytime you’re over you can play the game first when we’re taking turns!” And so he would obviously come over and play the game first and his rules on when we would switch kept shifting and I would never get to play! That’s a pretty core memory I have with the game is watching him play while I waited for my turn. It takes me back and reminds me of what to look for in friends, I guess.”

“I replayed it somewhat recently as an adult and I enjoyed seeing how I remembered it versus how it actually was. That was nostalgic on its own. It takes me back to a time where things were simpler, for lack of a better way to put it.”

“The whole atmosphere was memorable just because it was different from the usual Mario games. It was this weird island resort type place with these new characters created just for this game. That sort of atmosphere was memorable. Since I was so young I got stuck on a lot of stuff so everything at some point became memorable because I got past it. They got creative with the enemies, there is a giant squid enemy that always comes to mind, there’s a giant plant enemy that comes to mind. The squid enemy is a lot bigger than your character which makes it more intimidating. The intimidation factor is what makes the enemy memorable. It looked like a squid with an arrow shaped head, but it had 8 legs like an octopus. There’s also this enemy that was a giant robot Bowser and you had to ride a rollercoaster in this amusement park level and shoot rockets at it. It was pretty hard! It was far beyond the bounds of jumping on enemies like you usually do in Mario. There were sections where you would lose the water backpack thing. The reason that is so memorable is that it lets you float, so if you jump somewhere and miss you can save yourself. So those sections are memorable because they’re more difficult. There would be levels with secret elements that made them more mysterious and memorable.”