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You people are all crazy! Why all the reviews?

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 12 / 34
Date: August 08, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I read about 10 reviews and they all say "I can't wait to play the game." Why don't you review the game AFTER YOU'VE PLAYED IT... not before!

Another Super Mario 64 ... YAWN!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 8 / 165
Date: July 19, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Come on people! There are so many better, smarter, cooler titles out there now! If Nintendo had any class at all they would have left Mario alone back in 1996 with Super Mario RPG. In my opinion, this was Mario's prime! He had both Super Mario 2 and Super Mario RPG to go out with. They would have successfully used Mario for eleven years but no, Nintendo has to keep juicing the poor, old man until they completely run his name down to the ground with cash-in titles like Mario Tennis and Mario Golf, which had no depth or long-term value! He spent half of his career doing the same thing! (Saving the stupid, ditsy Princess Toadstool) The gaming industry has grown so much since Mario first came out, move on already! They even managed to juice one of their best, most innovative side-game series! (Mario Party) I mean come on, Mario Party 4! Just think about what it is! It's the fourth sequel of a side-series for a charater that is now over 18 years old and even that series didn't help make Mario grow into a real character that you can really care about or relate to!
Now back to Mario Sunshine. Anyone who has a brain would realize that it's just Mario 64 with better graphics and a few minor gameplay changes! In my opinion, Nintendo should have broken a law by now with all the platform games they've made for Nintendo Sixty-bore, I mean four only! Mario 64, Zelda 64, Zelda: Majora's Mask, Banjo 1 and 2, DK64, Conker all play the same when you get down to it, but I know no matter what say it's still gonna sell like hotcakes. I just had to get this off my chest after seeing this ... on the top seller list!
In my opinion, only when people stop buying Nintendo's boring, unoriginal, graphically-updated rehashes of the same games you've played already is when Nintendo will truly get back on the ball and truly start to delivering new, different titles that are truly worthwhile like they used to back in the Golden Age of Nintendo! (The reign of Super Nintendo of course)

EXTREMELY DIFFICULT

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 17
Date: September 04, 2002
Author: Amazon User

... Anyway, as far as the game goes, I'm a 23 year old gamer and I have NEVER come across a game so difficult. I love Nintendo. I love Mario games. But this game ... I realize games need to be challenging but this is so challenging, it [takes] the fun right out of it. Play this game, and I guarantee that you'll break at least one of your controllers in frustration.

Challenging in all the wrong ways

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 10 / 18
Date: January 18, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is definately the worst game in the Mario series. Just to let you know where I'm coming from, I am one of the few who seemed to hate Mario 64. If you liked that game you would probably love Sunshine since it is basically the exact same game. Sunshine only differs by having slightly better graphics and a *new* innovation of having Mario wear a difficult-to-control water pack on his back (hey didn't we see that in Luigi's Mansion?)

The horrible camera movements of M64 are back. Think Nintendo would decide to use a more sophisticated camera like those found in various games in the 6 years since M64 was released? You'd be wrong! The camera is just as bad, the only improvement is an insult to the player: when something is blocking Mario you see his shadow instead of nothing. That's it! And the shadow is nearly as useless as not seeing Mario at all since you don't get to see his environment when this occurs. Why not have the interfering objects become totally or partially transparent in those situations like in dozens of other games?

In M64 it was difficult to get Mario to do a basic, ordinary jump. The developers decided to give him a variety of jumps that never come in handy and were probably inserted to look "cool". I can't stand it when Mario pulls one of those annoying backflips. What benefit does this ever serve? And the triple jump that results in an extra long jump: USELESS. And why does he do that uncontrolable flip jump when I push right or left while he's standing? WHAT THE HELL DO I HAVE TO DO TO GET A NORMAL FRIGGING JUMP OUT OF HIM? On a related note, Mario still does those stupid bellysides that he did in M64 and they continue to serve the same purpose: to interfere with gameplay and annoy the player. Note to Nintendo: A character that's difficult to control does not result in fun gameplay. I am not against complexity in controlling a character, Metroid Prime has lots of moves, but in that game the character and controls work with you, in Sunshine they work against you.

One superficial thing that really made M64 such a bad experience for me was the vocal reactions Mario would make. Disney should sue because his voice is identical to Mickey Mouse. Vocal quality aside, the "yippies!" and other comments he makes are overdone and often said when they just don't make any sense. Though I will admit that he is less annoying in this game than M64.

The graphics are barely better than the N64 version. Since the gameplay of Sunshine is nearly identical to Mario 64 in every way (including the buggy camera) I believe that Sunshine was built directly from the old Mario 64 engine and intended for the N64, then tweaked for a Gamecube release.

I cut Nintendo a break on Mario 64 since it was one of their first 3D games and showed off their new technology of console 3D platformers. Sunshine does not show off any technological feats so it has no excuse for being this, well, bad! There were so many fun concepts from the 2D games that I figured were abandoned in M64 for technological reasons (like throwing fireballs) but 6 years later you'd think some of the fun things that made the Mario series so good would reappear, but this game is nothing but a rehash of Mario 64.

I hate to say it, but this game just isn't any fun to play at all. The challenge comes from fighting with the camera and the control of your character's unpredictable jumps, games that base their challenge on those kinds of things aren't fun: they're frustrating. I bought the game in the fall and I haven't played it in months.

Mario Sunshine: Why is this game engineered so badly?

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 8 / 23
Date: September 20, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I have never seen a professionally designed and marketed game that was released with so many graphical errors. The camera has difficulty focusing on Mario and changes vantage points seemingly at random. The 3D renderer has so many clipping errors that I would be embarrased to have coded the program. When the viewpoint is rotated, the user gets to see through walls, then the walls flicker, then the camera moves on its own accord, then Mario is on the wrong side of the wall, and all you can see is a shadow. Sometimes the camera view shrinks to a blue "portal" for no apparent reason and then expands back to normal view.

As if the graphical errors were not bad enough, the game has a really inefficient "save" mechanism. Basically, the user cannot save Mario's position right before a difficult challenge. All saving does is record Mario's inventory. If the user botches a challenge, he/she must retake the entire level. This is componded by the fact that the "boss" and "puzzle" challenges take about 15 minutes to get to.

The game has virtually no artificial intelligence. NPC figures basically don't move. They just stand in place and giggle (which of course, makes for a unrealistic, contrived setting, since in real life, people usually don't stand on corners waving all day!) The coders also took the lazy way out by having NPC characters "mutter" and then have the "spoken" words print on the screen. This is lazy because they should have done real spoken voices and coded those instead of the incoherent mumbling we get from this game.

Finally, Mario doesn't have the ability to walk in a straight line. Pushing the game pad forward results in Mario meandering in a weird "S" pattern. This means that on narrow walkways, the user must "tap" Mario forward in tiny increments instead of having him walk normally.

The musical interludes are too simplistic. There is very little variety in the music.

All in all, this game appears to have been rushed to market. It is a game that rides on the coat tails of better engineered Mario products. This game is a disaster of bad design and bad testing. In my humble opinion, anyone who buys this game is paying top dollar for a "beta" product.

Blah

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 12
Date: March 06, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I simply did not like Mario Sunshine. I expected a lot out the game, but it just hasn't met up to my standards.

Mario Sunshine has odd controls. I am particularly referring to the fact that Mario "skids" from the very beginning. Rather than stopping on a dime like in Mario 64, he skids a few feet actually before making a reverse turn. I thought the physics behind this was unexplainable and it really annoyed me as the game went along.

Well that's just a little nitpick. But that aside, this game is pretty [poor]. What a horrible story with a flamboyant name. Oh no! Mario's vacation is ruined! What will he do? He'll get rid of dirt by spraying it with water with a suggsetive looking gizmo he just *found* lying around. More mindless action; weird weird characters in the game. Very weird. A legendary sandbird. I almost laughed at the corniness. Baby bowser. What happned to the OTHER 7 koopa kids? The voice acting is awful to say the least. I simply didn't see the point in playing the game.

What ever happened to the awesome power ups like in the old games? Feathers that made you fly, racoon costumes that let you turn into statues, mushrooms that made you grow, and fireflowers!... We haven't seen Mario use fireflowers in ages. Those were classic! What about those fun levels that we remember from Mario 3 and Mario World? Nintendo, when will you bring us a decent 3-D Mario with the classic fun powers and worlds instead of all these abstract adventures with weird characters and mindless plots? And how about having Mario and Luigi in the same game as everyone has been asking? In fact, why are you denying fans what they have been clamoring for for a good deal of time? No more of this abstract nonsense; good old fashioned powerups; classic characters and classic worlds. Nintendo took everything that was classic from Mario in Mario Sunshine which is a reason why it shouldn't get a good rating.

This game is all razzle and no dazzle.

This game BLOWS!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 41
Date: June 01, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is the worst game that I have ever played. I love Mario games but I thought that this game was horrible. Mario goes around cleaning graffiti. THATS IT! Mario is a hero, not a Janitor!

It's Mario, just not the same old Mario

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 8 / 11
Date: January 05, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I'll admit it, I conquerred this game about six months ago. I got bored within a couple of days. The first look, it was fun. But they took away the most interesting part of the game, jumping on enemies and crushing them. Sure, you can kind of do this, but it's not part of the game like it is in the past. I had to conquer it, just one of those things, and it was tedious to do it. But I conqerred it.

Jump to today, I needed to play Mario again. So I went back to the N64 version of the game. I had forgotten how much fun the N64 Mario was, what happened? The game is easier, storyline straight forward, and you can get through it pretty fast, and still have fun playing it. If your looking for the N64 Mario, your going to be depressed. You might as well rent this game, see if you like playing it after 3 days. Then see if you want to buy it. That's my suggestion. Or, do what I did, dust off the old N64, give it life, and kick back to a truley great game of N64 Mario.

Another Super Mario 64 ... YAWN!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 97
Date: July 25, 2002
Author: Amazon User

There are so many better, smarter, cooler titles out there now! If Nintendo had any class at all they would have left Mario alone back in 1996 with Super Mario RPG. In my opinion, this was Mario's prime! He had both Super Mario 2 and Super Mario RPG to go out with. They would have successfully used Mario for eleven years but no, Nintendo has to keep juicing the poor, old man with cash-in titles like Mario Tennis and Mario Golf, which had no depth or long-term value! He spent half of his career doing the same thing! (Saving the ditsy Princess Toadstool) The gaming industry has grown so much since Mario first came out, move on already! They even managed to juice one of their best, most innovative side-game series! (Mario Party) I mean come on, Mario Party 4! It's the fourth sequel of a side-series for a character that is now over 18 years old and even that series didn't help make Mario grow into a real character that you can really care about or relate to!
Now back to Mario Sunshine. It's just Mario 64 with better graphics and a few minor gameplay changes! In my opinion, Mario 64, Zelda 64, Zelda: Majora's Mask, Banjo 1 and 2, DK64, Conker all play the same when you get down to it, but I know no matter what I say it's still gonna sell like hotcakes. I just had to get this off my chest after seeing this on the top seller list!
In my opinion, only when people stop buying Nintendo's boring, unoriginal, graphically-updated rehashes of the same games you've played already is when Nintendo will truly get back on the ball and truly start to delivering new, different titles that are truly worthwhile like they used to back in the Golden Age of Nintendo! (The reign of Super Nintendo of course)

Worst. Game. Ever.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 11
Date: April 05, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Folks, if you're looking for an entertaining Mario game with tight controls and an excellent camera to follow the action, this is not it. This game will frustrate you to the point where you are breaking controllers and making your pets run for cover.

The direction is poor, the story is lame, the control is horrible and the camera....OH THE CAMERA!!! It gets stuck behind walls, pipes, boats or whatever other obstacle you are trying to navigate. It makes an otherwise passable game completely unplayable. I usually never put down a game until I have conquered it's every secret. Not this game. I even came back a couple of times to see if I could regain my patience with it. Nope. Not worth your time. Run from this game. Run, I say.

Let us all hope that Nintendo delivers us a game that delivers on the previous standard of excellence that came with the name Mario on it. Then, maybe, I can get the taste of this one out of my mouth.

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