My first day of E3 was spent mostly at Nintendo’s booth playing all the hot games finally making their way to the GameCube and Game Boy Advance. The first game I got my hands on was Metroid Prime, however since Marcus already wrote up a great story on that game, I figured I’d go in depth on Super Mario Sunshine, which just so happens to be the second game I played at the show.
The E3 demo of Super Mario Sunshine is split up into 6 different areas to explore. They are all fun to play, but a few focus on boss battles while the others differ in terrain. Mario has translated well to the GameCube from the N64. Retaining the 3D control scheme, Miyamoto and team have altered some of the controls to make it even more playable with the GameCube controller. The “R” trigger fires Mario’s water cannon. In default mode this will spray water out of the nozzle at the top of the water pack. The function can change by pressing another button (I believe it’s “X”, but I could be wrong), which then allows Mario to hover and fly around by dispensing water toward the ground. The “L” button is to look around and the “A” button allows him to jump. His triple jump move from Mario 64 is back and works just as well as it did before. New to this game is the cyclone attack. By rotating the control stick and pressing the “A” button Mario will be able to soar to new heights by spinning around into the air. This move will hurt enemies around him as well as clean him off if he has been soiled by the sludge that is slowly taking over the vacation resort. The “B” button is context sensitive, but in most cases allows Mario to listen to what the villagers have to say to him. The control scheme is extremely intuitive and you’ll soon have Mario performing all sorts of feats.
The first level I played featured the fence that we had seen in screenshots several months back. As in Super Mario World there are gates on the fences that you can swing around on to get to the other side. The object in this stage, and indeed in most of the stages presented at the show, was to clean up the brown sludge slowly seeping its way across the land. For some reason the villagers believe Mario is to blame for this tragedy and order him to remedy the problem immediately. Upon successfully cleaning up a level you will be rewarded with a “Shine” Star. It’s unclear at this point if you will be collecting stars like in Mario 64 to reach new levels, but it seems quite likely. One of my favorite stages is the boss battle with the centipede from Super Mario World. This guy is huge and takes up more than one screen (both in height and length). He’s running around all over the beach causing havoc among the visitors. It’s up to Mario to put a stop to him, but unfortunately it’s not so easy stopping a creature 50 times his size. Located around the beach are small seedlings that, when watered, will pop up out of the ground, morphing the sand around it. By timing this right you can cause the centipede to run right into the new land mass, thus causing him to roll over onto his back (and skidding about 30 feet before coming to a halt). Mario can then jump on the centipede’s stomach and do a butt stomp (executed by jumping and the pressing “L” in the air). Three times and the centipede will be killed and Mario is rewarded with another Shine star.
The graphics in Super Mario Sunshine are extremely impressive. Sure, the texture quality of the walls and some of the backgrounds aren’t of the highest quality, but everything else is. The water is simply amazing looking and the reflections seen in the water and on a mirror floor simply must be seen in motion to be believed. Even the water squirted out on the ground can form a small puddle, thus reflecting everything around it. There are tons of special effects and small nuances that make this game a visual powerhouse. By clearing sludge out of some areas the land will return to its original position, often causing huge changes in land structures, which is very cool and a bit reminiscent of Super Ghouls & Ghosts. Overall I can’t see anyone being disappointed with the visuals in Mario.
Super Mario Sunshine is sure to be another AAA title released by Nintendo. It’s great to finally have a sequel to Mario 64 after all these years. Yesterday Miyamoto revealed that Mario will be able to obtain new nozzles for his backpack, yielding even more new play mechanics. This game is sure to sell a ton of GameCubes and is well worth the long wait.
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