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Super Mario Sunshine
Publisher: Nintendo
System: Gamecube
Players: 1
ESRB Rating: Everyone
Price: $29.99
Rating: 7.5 of 10

Review by Brutilus

Everyone's favorite Italian plumber is back in the latest installment of the wacky misadventures of the Mushroom Kingdom. Mario and Peach have decided to take a vacation to Isle Delfino where the sun is always shining and the air smells like warm rootbeer. (apologies to Weird Al...) They arrive after a pleasant flight only to discover that the island has been horrifically vandalized and poor Mario is the prime suspect!

The citizens insist that Mario must clean up the island while he tries to find the real culprit! Super Mario Sunshine is quite a treat to play. It takes after Mario 64 in terms of gameplay, but the graphics have been kicked up several notches. The sound has been improved as well, but Mario really doesn't get to say a whole lot.

Mario gets a new accessory in this lastest episode of his misadventures, FLUDD, a bizarre water squirting backpack with upgradeable nozzles and an annoying mechanical voice. With FLUDD's assistance, Mario can wash away graffiti and enemies, hover over obstacles, blast off into the sky, or zoom along the ground.

With the inclusion of FLUDD Nintendo has cut off all ties to Mario's fire flower and mushroom upgrade past. Now his array of fantastic jumping abilities, kicks, dives, and slides help him get around all of the local nasties. They have included at least 50% more moves than he had in Mario 64 and you need to master them all to get around this little island.

There is one holdover from older Mario games... Yoshi! He appears failry early on in the game. There appear to be several varietes of Yoshi, each with a different power, but I haven't seen them all, yet. All of the varieties have that famous Yoshi tongue, which is very amusingly animated.

As in Mario 64, each level has multiple missions for you to complete, there are even tasks in Isle Delfino's plaza to complete. These missions range from climbing a mountain and defeating a boss character to surviving the ridiculous jumping puzzle of doom. The obscenely hard jumping puzzles have the feel of the original Mario games, but are several notches more insane in 3-D. You also don't get to use FLUDD to help you out in any of them. (Not being able to hover when you screw up a jump REALLY sucks!)

As for plot development, they put in and attempt to plod through it with a fair degree of success. I was almost as entertained by the cut-scenes and character interaction as by the gameplay. Mario's lack of dialog isn't a real hang up in terms of plot line encounters, all of the other characters have plenty to say. Peach actually has to form complete sentences!

Thankfully, I have yet to hear anyone say, "Thank you Mario, but our princess is in another castle" yet.

All in all, Super Mario Sunshine is a great title that has a little something for everyone. Sitting down with some friends the night I got it we were laughing ourselves senseless at some of the mindless torture we could inflict on Mario and some of the absurdities of the game.

Super Mario Sunshine is available for your Gamecube at Amazon.com.

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