Mario’s Biggest Flop  

Rolling Stone:

When Koizumi first got his hands on the new GameCube controller, the sense of resistance he encountered when pressing the sensitive analog trigger reminded him of playing with water pistols as a kid. He wondered: what would it look like if he took the 3D exploration gameplay from Super Mario 64, and gave Mario a water pistol to interact with the world?

I thought this was profound, and basically is the definition of an “a-ha moment”.

Anyway. With Odyssey finally out, I’ve been hearing lots of people talk about how much of a let down Sunshine was. I was 10 years old at the time, so I may be looking back at it through rose tinted glasses, but I really don’t think the game was as bad as everyone said it was.

Super Mario Sunshine deserves a place alongside 64, Galaxy, and Odyssey.