Super Mario Sunshine (Coin Collector's Edition)

[Adam Smasher]

A few threads ago, there was some contention about whether Super Mario Sunshine was good, great, or mediocre. I decided to dust it off and play it for a while, and, man, this is a frustrating game. The level design is really uninspired. So many of the challenges revolve around collecting coins! Here is my evidence:

There are a total of 120 Shine Sprites in the game.

24 Shine Sprites are from collecting Blue Coins

22 Shine Sprites are from collecting Red Coins

8 Shine Sprites are from collecting Yellow Coins

7 Shine Sprites are from chasing shadow Mario, still not very hard or fun.

3 Shine Sprites are from racing Il Piantissimo

That leaves you a total of 56 Sprites involved with exploring, problem solving, and generally doing things other than running around like an idiot. So, what say you, forum? Good, great, or mediocre?

[Ansem]

I played this game.

It was rather amusing

I would say mediocre

[Florete]

Sunshine has always been my favorite Super Mario game. The astonishing amount of Blue Coins was fairly disappointing, but I loved the rest of it. To me, it was great.

[Nightmare]

It used to be really frustrating to me because I was a kid and didn't have the necessary skill to beat certain levels. But now that I look back, it's a great game. I love the music, and the atmosphere is incredible. Those extra stages with the floating platforms and such (where that remix of the SMB level theme was played) were some insane bouts of platforming, and I love them exactly because of that.

[Ein]

I love the game. Still do but the coin collection was rather excessive. I can't remember if SM64 was similar in the coin collection aspect.

[Ragnell]

It was a good game. I got completely obsessed with it a couple years ago, and I just about completed it, but I haven't played it since. I liked how the levels were very wide open, and you could find your own way to the eventual goal instead of being led right to it like in Galaxy (don't get me wrong, I love Galaxy). The game was also very unique; the settings were very interesting, and the story of the game, while mostly boring, was definitely different from the norm. The whole water pack thing was weird too, though mostly in a good way.

But I have to admit, some of the levels were pretty boring (I gave up getting the blue coins with the boats inside the volcano). I wish there was more to do in the plaza, but I guess it was normal for a Mario game.

[Ein]

The lava boat coins aren't THAT difficult to get...

[Liz]

I think it was a decent game, personally. not the best Mario title out there, but high up there. Actually, if you remove all of those coin-collecting stars, it was a very enjoyable game.

I don't think i've actually ever fully completed the game, since the coin-collection gets so tedious that I just stop playing the game and play something else instead. but the stars that don't involve coins are pretty cool.

and, the game has my favorite non-Bowser boss battle of all Super Mario history. You have to admit, playing dentist for the toxic eel was pretty cool!

[Adam Smasher]

Don't get me wrong, this wasn't a bad game. The eel dentistry and roller coaster levels are the most fun in the game. And the "secret" areas were great, in part because you can't use FLUDD. (Aside, FLUDD is a slightly less annoying version of Navi the Fairy) I just get ticked off when in Bianco Hills, I work so hard to get the motor nozzle and then the next shine is "red coins of the lake." I figure, OK I'll finally get to use this motor nozzle to do something, but...nope Instead I have to walk on tightropes and with every mistake I make it's "congratulations, you get to start over from the ground"

Mario 64 also had a lot of coin collecting. You had to get 8 red coins in each stage plus 100 yellow coins in each stage. I remember the water levels were hard because there were only about 101-105 coins per stage so you had very little margin for error. But it was kind of fun in M64 because if you couldn't figure out how to get the star associated with the level you could just pick up red coins and get a star that way. Sunshine was much more linear in this respect.

Going back even further to Yoshi's Island (aka Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island) there were 20 red coins in each stage, but they were disguised as normal yellow coins. Strictly speaking, you didn't need to collect them unless you wanted to get 100% on each level. Needless to say, towards the end of the game, I had a lot of scores in the 30s and 40s.

I suppose all this coin collecting business started in Super Mario World where each stage had 5 dragon coins. If you got them all, you got a 1up. (Some had 6 or 7 for a 2up or 3up, I believe) I never really cared about it because I eventually became so good at the game that I could start a new game and have 80 lives by vanilla dome just by using tricks like bouncing on koopas and using the cape trick for getting 5 1ups in the bonus rooms. Now that's old-school cheating!

Anyway, end of history lesson.