Mario Shines Bright in this Must-Have Platformer!

First off I would like to say that this is the most fun I've had in a Mario game since Super Mario World on SNES. SMS is a must buy game (along with some others) for the GC. Sure, from the commercial you might think that it looks sort of stupid. Mario with a squirt gun? But once you buy it, your thoughts will quickly change.

My GC has been collecting dust ever since I beat "Super Monkey Ball" and gotten almost all the trophies in "Super Smash Bros. Melee" (All my GC games have "Super" at the beginning of their names :)), so I needed to get another game. I thought, "Man, there's a month to go until SMS comes out. What can hold me until then?" I was sort of leaning towards buying Eternal Darkness, but then I thought, "Why don't I just save my money towards SMS instead?" So after a month of waiting and beating Super Monkey Ball again, I went to my local Software Etc. store and bought it on the day after it came out. Man, there were A LOT of people there. So after waiting 10 minutes in line, I bought it. I bought the third to last one there. I also had 16 bucks extra, so I bought another GC controller.

As soon as I popped the tiny disc into the machine I noticed how great the graphics were. They were simply GORGEOUS. The graphics in Super Mario are the best I've seen in a GC game. Something else I noticed was when I was on a cliff or a high rooftop. When you're that high, you can see the WHOLE level. It is so spectacular and beautiful. I could tell that the developers at Nintendo took advantage of the 6 years (from the time Mario 64 came out) to come up with a great game. Since Sunshine takes place on an Island, there's water and MAN DOES THE WATER LOOK GREAT. The physics are great. The waves really crash onto the shore, and there are really waves out in the sea. I mean, I've played most games where the water is calm¡KON THE OCEAN and Sunshine has real looking water that I haven't seen before.

STORYLINE: 4/5

To me, this is a great and original storyline, unlike the last games in the series. What? Princess Peach was kidnapped by Bowser AGAIN? Taking a break from fighting baddies, Mario, Peach, Toadsworth, and Toad go on vacation to Isle Delfino but his happiness is cut short because a villain who looks EXACTLY like him is painting the whole town in graffiti so now you have to clean everything up or you go to jail. Who's the perpetrator? Toad? Toadsworth? PRINCESS PEACH? You'll find out...

Like Luigi's Mansion, once you start the game, you¡¦re assigned to a device. In Mario's case, the device is called FLUUD. This device goes on your back. You can hover with it, spray enemies (and graffiti) with it. There are special nozzles that you can unlock as you earn Shines also.

Shines are the Stars of Mario 64. As you go to levels, you have an objective that you have to do and once you do it, you earn a Shine Sprite to help you unlock other levels. When the graffiti appears, all the Shines leave so it's your job to find them all and until you find them all, Isle Delfino remains in darkness. With each Shine you find, a small amount of Sunshine appears on the island.

It seems like the controls were made exclusively for the GC controller. The moves of Mario fit perfectly with the shape of the controller. To spray water, all you do is press the R button (it's the same to Hover). Press R all the way down to stay in one place to aim and shoot the water. The X button when pressed, switches nozzles. If you press Y, the camera goes directly behind Mario in a first-person view. This is good to see the whole area when you're on a high cliff or catwalk. The A button is used to Jump and to do most everything else like Triple Jumps and stuff. The B button is for picking things up and sliding. The C stick is used to control the camera so that you can turn it right and left are zoom out and in.

The camera angles (like in Mario 64) suck simply put. Every time you go around a corner you have to manually adjust the camera. Every time you go underwater, adjust the camera. Fighting a big boss? Adjust the camera. When you first begin the game, you hate it but as you play it more and more, you get used to it. It still bothers me sometimes though, like when I¡¦m in a high place and there are monsters at each side of me and I have to spray them with my water pack. It¡¦s really annoying a frustrating. Another thing that's frustrating is some of the puzzles.

The sound in Sunshine is superb! When Mario wades through the water, real water sounds make it realistic as can be. The music that plays is wonderful. In Delfino Plaza (the Peach Castle of Sunshine; The Homebase), there's a slight French sound which is mixed with delightful organ and guitar tunes. All the levels have a very unique sort of sound. What¡¦s cool is that it's ALL TROPICAL. Which brings me to my next let down: NO SNOW, LAVA, OR DESERT LEVELS! There are voices in the game, too, but to tell you the truth, they get sort of annoying after a while. They're cheesy especially Peach's.

Yoshi returns in Sunshine! Yes, my favorite Mario character (besides Mario himself) is Sunshine. You see, you find eggs and above the eggs are bubbles that show a fruit. So you have to go find a fruit and give it to the egg and it hatches into a Yoshi. The Yoshi's also have a special liquid that they shoot: juice! Whether it be Coconut juice or Pineapple Juice, they're as effective as water against enemies. Plus, Yoshi jumps higher that Mario so it's much better to get to higher places and to get around faster. Yoshi is cool.

As you go through the game, you'll discover 3 kinds of coins: red, blue, and yellow. Yellow restores health, Red (when you collect 8 of them in a level) gives you a Shine Sprite, and Blue helps you buy Sprites (when you go to a special store, you can buy Sprites with Blue coins) and plus it restores three health.

The replay value in this game is HUGE. There is SO much to explore. According to Electric Gaming Monthly, there are 120 Shines to get and 120 Blue coins (when you trade the blue coins in, it equals 120 Shines so if you didn't discover any coins, you will probably have about a 100 anyway). 10 blue coins buy you a Shine.

In each level, there are a lot of different goals so there's a lot of variety except for the Red Coin Collection Shine Challenge and the "Secret of" goals where the bad guy steals FLUUD and you have to maneuver through obstacles to get to a Shine and your FLUUD pack.

Miyamoto (the creator of Zelda, Mario, and Donkey Kong) did a great job with this game. He's probably a Billionaire by now...

This review is like my Diablo 2 review, I was so excited about the game that I sounded like the manual to it instead of the review, but who cares. This game is great and should be enjoyed by many. Even if you aren't a hardcore gamer like Rocky and me, you will love this game. Even if you haven't played any classic Mario games, you will love this game. If you're a hardcore Mario fan, like me, YOU WILL WORSHIP THIS GAME. Thanks for reading my review and so long.

JiggyJay