My Experience Getting 100% in Super Mario Sunshine For the First Time
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.
Mario Kart DS was a very important game in my childhood. It was the go-to game for most play sessions with my friends back in middle school, and it was so easy to pick up and play. This game devoured a lot of my free time when I first got a DS, and of course as a result, there’s plenty of nostalgia value to it. But how does the game hold up now, with the series going in all sorts of directions and gimmicks that make them district different?
Rhythm games will always be a top 3 genre for me. It’s so satisfying to play, so empowering to get full combos, and of course, so cool to listen to new music too, built from the ground up for one specific game. Now what’s better than your traditional rhythm game? A rhythm game that breaks the mold; turns the traditional to the untraditional. Games like Rhythm Heaven, Beat Saber, Parappa the Rapper, and of course, Rift of the NecroDancer. Rift of the NecroDancer takes its identity from their previous game, Crypt of the NecroDancer, and flips it on its head. Take the monster patterns, change the free form movement into a 3-key game, and you get a rhythm game unlike anything I’ve played.