I’ve always had a complex relationship with Super Mario Sunshine. Growing up, I wasn't the biggest fan of it. I thought the shines were too hard and too out of the norm for a Mario game, I thought the controls aged badly, and I thought the blue coins were more of a nuisance than a nice feature that involved puzzle solving and exploration. That opinion had since shifted once 3D All Stars came out. Giving it another go around, I found the game to be an acquired taste. It’s not everyone's cup of tea, but as soon as you got the hang of the controls, knowing what to expect ahead of time, and respect how different of a game it is, then Sunshine started to really shine though to me. Now, I wanted to put myself to the test. Not once have I 100% completed Super Mario Sunshine, so I figured, why not? Let’s 100% Super Mario Sunshine.
In order to 100% Sunshine, you must obtain all 120 shine sprites across 7 levels, and a plethora of side levels as well. Getting all 120 shine sprites include exploration, collecting coins of various colors, uncovering secrets with your water jet pack FLUDD, and other requirements that you wouldn't know about unless you looked it up. Each of the 7 main worlds has 8 missions, 30 blue coins, and a shine that you unlock after obtaining 100 coins.
Starting with the main missions, they were okay. There’s a ton of variety within these missions, which allows for plenty of fun to be had, not knowing what’s to come or what to expect, but the variety comes at a cost of quality, in my opinion. You have some really fun missions, like combing around the Sirena Beach hotel like a maze, taking in the sights of Pianta Village’s fluff festival, and even zipping across bungee cords in Bianco Hills. But every good thing needs to be matched with the bad, and boy are there plenty of bad missions. The watermelon festival, the pachinko machine, the chuckster secret mission, the lily pad mission, and the list continues. Of course this is all a subjective list, so my worst missions can be someone's favorite. However, these are the missions everyone talks about when discussing the bad of Mario Sunshine, and for good reason.
Super Mario Sunshine has a physics problem. The game is so jank to control, you’ll be fighting against both sticks on the controller to try to do what you want Mario to do. Starting out, Mario feels so loose, it makes the precision necessary in the later levels feel impossible. Even FLUDD has his fair share of issues when it comes to the different nozzles. Everything is so loosey-goosey that the game can be frustrating at times, especially for 100%... but the more you play with it, the easier it becomes, and the easier it becomes, the more you learn that this game was meant to be crazy loose. As mentioned earlier, this game is an acquired taste. At first, it’s a mess, but the more you explore and unlock more and more abilities, the more this game feels SATISFYING to play. Sure Mario can’t long jump, but his dive is one of the best ones to use. His spin jump makes daunting leaps a breeze. Combine all of this with FLUDD, and you have a game that’s just oozing with movement potential. Sure, the controls can get in the way with some of the more precise missions. The missions listed earlier are great examples of the game lowkey sabotaging you into finishing them. But the more you use them (and you will be running around a LOT going for 100%), the more it feels second nature.
Now while you’re out and about exploring these wonderful and iconic levels, you’ll spot some collectibles known as blue coins. These are different from normal coins, as they can be spent on entire shine sprites; 10 blue coins per one shine sprite. With there being 240 to collect, these will be the main time sink for 100%. They seem fine on the surface as collectibles, but once you start going for them, you'll quickly see why I’ve never wanted to 100% Mario Sunshine. Firstly, 240 is a LOT of coins, and there’s no way to track which ones you’ve collected. All the game tells you is how many you’ve gotten in one world, which is handy because each world has 30, with the expectation of Delfino Plaza’s 20, and Corona Mountain’s 10. This may seem like it’s all that you need, but what makes it MORE tricky, is that there are mission specific blue coins! Not every blue coin can be grabbed in every level’s missions. This is where the inconvenience starts, because without a guide, you’re going to have a HARD time tracking these things down. It doesn't help either when some blue coins need to meet certain requirements first before you can get them (needing Yoshi specific moves, needing nozzles, etc.). Sometimes the blue coins can be fun and gratifying to get, but more often than not, blue coins just drag this game down so much. Sure guides are there for a reason, but it’s more of a hassle than anything.
One thing I do appreciate about this game’s 100% requirements, is that while you're hunting for blue coins, you might come across some odd ball shines. These are some of my favorite shines in the game. These shines aren't tied to any missions, blue coins, secret levels, nothing like that. They usually involve something completely different than what you’ve been doing. One involves spraying the sun with FLUDD, while another involves racing on bloopers in a specific amount of time, a nice call back to Mario 64’s secret castle slide. I really like it when games break the traditional gameplay they’ve presented during your playthrough, only to shift things out of nowhere for a brief moment. It makes them memorable, and I wouldn't be talking about these shines if they were just normal missions, or were tied to collectibles.
Overall, without going over every shine sprite individually, I gotta ask myself “was 100%-ing Mario Sunshine worth it?” My answer would be yes, it was worth it. I’ll be honest, I was considering dropping this game after finishing the main missions. I think I’d go as far as saying that I played this game wrong. You’re meant to explore these dense levels, finding blue coins, hidden shines, all of these things along the way. I simply b-lined it through each mission, and once I couldn't do anything else, then I went back to get the blue coins and secret shines. This mindset might’ve been why I never went back for 100% in the past. I simply did not want to go through the grind at the end of the game. If I had gone at my own pace, the pace the game wants me to set on my own, then I think my thoughts on the tedious parts of the game may have changed. I still had fun with this game, don’t get me wrong, but knowing what else I had coming up was daunting. Because of all of this, I do have a newfound appreciation for Super Mario Sunshine. It’s clunky, massive, and even glitchy at times, but if a third playthrough of the game is what it took for me to realize that I really like this game, then I’m very grateful to have done this 100% playthrough for the first time.