Ever since details about Mario Sunshine started trickling out, I tried to shield myself from it as much as possible. When I first played the game two days ago, all I knew was that Mario is wearing a water spraying jetpack.

The game starts out treating players to a FMV of Mario, Peach, and company flying towards the island of Dolphic, which happens to be a shape of a Dolphin. The dialogue is in English and subtitled in Japanese. Once they arrive there, it is scorching hot. After realizing something is wrong, Toadstool tells Mario to check things out. You maneuver Mario to a water jetpack called Flood. After testing out the jet pack, the inhabitants of Dolphic come swarming by and capture you. Apparently, someone that looks like Mario has been polluting the island, and Mario has been framed and punished to clean it up. You are released to clean up things the following day, and this it the point where the game starts. You begin in Dolphino Isle, a town that functions like a hub to all of the levels, similar to the castle in Mario 64. Instead of collecting stars in each level, you collect Shines. As you collect more Shines, you open up more levels. However, unlike Mario 64, Shines are not available for "get" all at once in each level. Instead, levels are divided into 8 stories, which open up after your finish each one. Most stories involve some kind of boss or puzzle while one story always involves finding an entrance where you warp into another world made up of rotating or disappearing platforms. Here, you are stripped of your jetpack, and you have to use your basic Mario maneuvers to reach the finish line where a shine awaits you. These stages can be tedious and difficult, but they are fun. Just think of Super Monkey Ball. Remember collecting red coins? One story of every level involves collecting red coins. Sometimes you collect them the old fashioned way, sometimes you might have to grab those coins while surfing on an octopus. Like Mario 64, the way the game is set up is so that people of all ages can play. Usually, stories 7 and 8 become incredibly difficult, but players can proceed with the game even without completing those stories. However, to finish the game thoroughly - meaning getting all the Shines - is incredibly difficult. There are secret Shines in each level (rumored to be 2). One of them involves collecting 100 coins and the other one is a puzzle or task.

So how does the game play? To be honest, seeing Mario with this strange cool looking contraption really gave me the doubts at first. I knew the game was going to be good, but was it going to be Mario? But after playing for around 8 hours and getting around 30 shines, I can tell you that Mario is back. If you played Mario 64, you will probably feel right at home after 5 minutes of playing. Sure Mario has his new jetpack, but he still does the same moves before, run, jump, stomp, hip drop, and more. For example, he can not only just hang on to ledges, but also move along ledges. The long jump is probably the only move that did not make it to Sunshine. And wait till you see what he can do with his jetpack when hanging on a tightrope.

Many people are claiming that there really are no spectacular graphics. Visually, the game does not stack up against a game like Pikmin, but this game is bright, colorful, and vivid. Once you start playing, you really will not complain about the graphics, as they do more than enough to build a solid gaming experience. What I would like to mention though is the attention to detail. The Miyamoto touch is sprinkled throughout the game. Mario gets dirty walking around in the paint, and as another example, when you are standing in water, and you switch to the camera view behind Mario and look up under from the water, the screen reflects so that it's like looking through water.

Sound. It is 100% Mario goodness. The underground tunes are back, and how about an a capella-esque rendition of the Mario tune. Inhabitants and Toadstools talk like Professor Gadd in Luigi's Mansion or characters from Animal Crossing.

If you cannot wait until the US release, you may want to consider the import, as it is quite import-friendly. The menus are in Japanese, but the few cinematic sequences are all in English. Collecting all the shines might be difficult with no knowledge of Japanese, as you will not be able to understand all the hints, but it is by no means impossible. If you succeeded in collecting 120 stars in the import version of Super Mario 64, you should probably have no problem.

Though I cannot yet say it is the best of the series, Mario Sunshine is still about the old Mario formula - exploring, coin collecting, puzzles, jumping, climbing, bosses and more. Little things will remind you of Mario 64. For example, does looking up at the sky and entering a level ring a bell? It also encompasses everything you wished Mario 64 was to be. Instead of using C buttons and having camera angle problems, you can use the C-stick to freely pan around you view, and zoom in and out. You get to ride on Yoshi this time around and spit its tongue at different angles. In short, it's Mario 64 with everything you wanted, and much much more. And yes, Mario is baaaack!!!