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Episode 536: Yoshi Facts Matter to Me

by James Jones, Greg Leahy, Jon Lindemann, and Guillaume Veillette - August 27, 2017, 5:34 pm EDT
Total comments: 14

The most important fact is that Yoshi are water-soluble.

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Two days from the 15th anniversary of its US release, RFN hosted a live RetroActive for Super Mario Sunshine. Most of us toiled away at cleaning up Isle Delfino long enough to disrupt Bowser's bath, and we found that 15 years on we've got a lot to say. The game's place in history, its style, its controls, and even the horrific residents of Isle Delfino who deserve only fire are all hot topics of conversation. We don't just give our thoughts though, because nearly two hours of the show is devoted to listener call-ins. Among the guests is our esteemed former host, Dr. Jonathan Metts, who found time to call us from a drag race and defend his "perfect" review.

A big thank you to everyone who participated in this Retroactive! As always, it was a lot of fun. Except for the Chucksters.

This episode was edited by James Jones and Guillaume Veillette. The "Men of Leisure" theme song was produced exclusively for Radio Free Nintendo by Perry Burkum. Hear more at Perry's SoundCloud. The Radio Free Nintendo logo was produced by Connor Strickland. See more of his work at his website.

The music in this episode is A Secret Course and Staff Roll both from Super Mario Sunshine. They were selected by James. All rights reserved by Nintendo Co. Ltd.

Talkback

EnnerAugust 28, 2017

Stellar job, gents and ladies.


I remember Sunshine fondly overall, but I traded it in at an EB Games after getting all 120 Shines and feeling exhausted and unhappy after getting the final Blue Coin. I still love the Delfino Island setting, and I hope Nintendo revisits it in another platforming game someday.

KDR_11kAugust 28, 2017

I hated Sunshine overall. My favorite part was the hub plaza, so many secrets and it develops over time as you get more shines and new areas and nozzles unlock.


I think a big problem for the camera is just that the levels include many narrow indoor sections, while 64's levels are wide open the Sunshine levels often have walls closer to Mario than the camera's natural distance so it got hard to see anything. Also doesn't help that secret levels go in the opposite direction, blocks are huuuuge and to jump one block up you already need a backflip or similar.

KobeskillzAugust 28, 2017

I do agree the game needed more play testing. The biggest gripe with this game is the fact that you can’t reverse the horizontal camera control! How fudging stupid. They give you complete camera control but no camera options. Ugh.

The controls are butter but the camera is a huge obstacle.

TheBigKAugust 29, 2017

Screw you guys, Sunshine is the best 3D Mario game. I don't understand the control and camera complaints, I've never had any issues. In fact, I think that Mario controls better here than every other 3D Mario. The controls are so fluid yet tight when they need to be. Hell, during that secret mission in Delphino Plaza where you have to steer the lily pad down the poison river and collect the red coins, if I didn't get them all in one go, I just jump onto the ledge outside the river and run straight back to the start and get on another lily pad. That's how easy and precise this game controls. The only thing I didn't like about this game is the blue coin collectathon. Other than that, perfect game.

Quote from: TheBigK

Screw you guys, Sunshine is the best 3D Mario game. I don't understand the control and camera complaints, I've never had any issues. In fact, I think that Mario controls better here than every other 3D Mario. The controls are so fluid yet tight when they need to be. Hell, during that secret mission in Delphino Plaza where you have to steer the lily pad down the poison river and collect the red coins, if I didn't get them all in one go, I just jump onto the ledge outside the river and run straight back to the start and get on another lily pad. That's how easy and precise this game controls. The only thing I didn't like about this game is the blue coin collectathon. Other than that, perfect game.

Pardon me if I sounded negative, I do think Mario's controls are incredible, and at the time it came out I thought the camera was incredible. it's simultaneously the inverted nature and the fact that there's almost no automation to the camera that makes it tricky. it's VERY easy to get it caught in an object or simply not have time to manage it in a high pressure situation. there's a surprising number of situations where flicking in and out of over the shoulder FLUDD aiming view became the preferred method of getting my barings quick in comparison to actually futzing around with the C stick.

Yoshi, on the other hand, drops a few of Mario's movement options for the flutter jump, which has serious issues with essentially locking Yoshi's current inertia rather than giving you more control of the jump like it does in Yoshi's Island or Yoshi's Story. his movenent speed is ever so slightly faster than what mario can run at, but not faster than even spamming belly flops, much less the slip & slide. it's just enough to throw off percise movement, especially given that yoshi doesn't do the same sort of sliding turn around that Mario does in preparation of doing a side jump. Because of the size of the model, he gets stuck on geometry or doesn't stand right on things like small ledges next to walls. it's also very easy to accidentally activate flutter jump prematurely. the whole affair makes everything a slight bit looser while riding Yoshi. This is why I referred to him as a 'buttery mess'.

I'm pretty sure i mentioned during my segment that I had clipped through the plaza no less than 5 times during my playthrough. once or twice was on purpose, granted, but the collision in this game is occasionally odd, particularly whenever you try to ground pound and there's SOME sort of roof above mario's head or you're merely nearby the corner of geometry.

I also feel like there's something to be said about the poison river Shine forcing the player to use tactics like walking across a very tiny wall in order to have a second shot at this red coins shine without being ejected back to the plaza or being forced to eat a death.

I'm not here to refute what is clearly your favorite 3D Mario game.

I'm here to say that maybe you're going about this with rose tinted glasses. Super Mario Sunshine is not a perfect game.

KobeskillzAugust 29, 2017

Quote from: TheBigK

Screw you guys, Sunshine is the best 3D Mario game. I don't understand the control and camera complaints, I've never had any issues. In fact, I think that Mario controls better here than every other 3D Mario. The controls are so fluid yet tight when they need to be. Hell, during that secret mission in Delphino Plaza where you have to steer the lily pad down the poison river and collect the red coins, if I didn't get them all in one go, I just jump onto the ledge outside the river and run straight back to the start and get on another lily pad. That's how easy and precise this game controls. The only thing I didn't like about this game is the blue coin collectathon. Other than that, perfect game.

I'm with you on the controls. The camera betrays the controls though. But the controls themselves are tight and responsive. John musta been using a 3DS dpad ala Mario 3.

wcmullinsAugust 30, 2017

I hate that I couldn't make it to the live retro-active due to work. However I really enjoyed the episode. I remember really liking sunshine, but becoming frustrated at it at the same time. When I started college I replayed both the N64 game and the gamecube game in like 2007. I was like oh yea Super Mario 64 holds up a lot better. A few months back I did all the stars for 64 with the help of a guide. I would never consider doing that for sunshine unless it was remade/retooled.

KobeskillzAugust 30, 2017

Saying that reviewers were bias is insulting. I'm sure all of you have reviewed a game in that time and look back now and can re review with the Benefit of time and perspective.

In 2002 this game was legit great. Hasn't aged as well as other Mario games but to discredit it when most of you were praising it back then is off putting.

yeah, Kobe. I actually didn't hear that bit during the live show because I muted everything while James was trying to get me into the call, and I would have called Bullshit hardcore.

Eh, maybe it wasn't all reviews, and I should have said instead that it's my impression from reading IGN back in those days. Them being divided into Sony, Nintendo and MS channels lead to some pretty nutty hyperbole, and each hyped release had to be bigger and better than the competitor's last.


Back in the magazine and early internet days of video game reviews...there ABSOLUTELY was an issue with games that weren't as good as they got credit for based on a company or Game Title Pedigree.  And additionally, Nintendo was one of those companies that benefited most from that trend, because they aren't on an annual or bi-annual release schedule for their most beloved franchises, often taking half a decade to come up with the next iteration.  3D Mario and Zelda games both benefited from this at that time, because as the saying goes, "absence makes the heart grow fonder".  Rockstar and Squaresoft other companies who I recall seeing head-scratching review scores for games that weren't as good as their scores implied.


**I understand quality of game is subjective, let's try to have this discussion without picking apart that point.**


Cmon guys, we have to be able to hold more than one thought that can both be true at the same time.  You can say that this issue existed WHILE believing Sunshine deserved the praise it got at the time.  They're not mutually exclusive thoughts.

YoshidiousGreg Leahy, Staff AlumnusAugust 31, 2017

Quote from: lolmonade

Cmon guys, we have to be able to hold more than one thought that can both be true at the same time.  You can say that this issue existed WHILE believing Sunshine deserved the praise it got at the time.  They're not mutually exclusive thoughts.

This sums up my thoughts on this topic very well.

My response to Guillaume's comment referred to the general culture of game reviews that existed around the turn of the century, not specifically to Sunshine's reviews (the only one I've read recently was Jonny's, and I didn't even read very many of them back then because I imported the game before most were even written). If I did go back and sample a bunch of contemporaneous Sunshine reviews, it wouldn't surprise me to see quite a bit of the hyperbole and company cheerleading that Guillaume identified, but that's not the same thing as saying the game didn't merit positive reviews upon its release (at least from my perspective).

KeyBillySeptember 22, 2017

Sunshine is a game that I appreciate more over time.  I was surprised to hear people complain about the controls, since they were so finely tuned.  It could be that the camera made them seem worse, since there was a periodic need to babysit whatever it was doing.  If you play the game more, it is easy to forget that, because you know what the scripted camera movements will be and subconsciously work with them.  There was only that one notorious area that seemed broken to me.

One of my favorite parts of the game was the main hub, which had a lot of verticality and room to play with the controls.  From the beginning, you see some areas that you can't get to, which invites you to figure out the parkour-like acrobatics.  There are many areas that you can get to out of sequence once you get the controls down.  I think part of the issue is that the group was playing it to get Shines for the retroactive, rather than just fooling around and having fun.  I don't mean that as a critique, since I would probably do the same thing.  An issue with that approach is that the game naturally teaches you all the moves through discovery rather than the cliche Mario 1-1 or Mega Man X intro.  BOTW takes a similar approach in some ways, and people might similarly trash it in a retroactive.

pokepal148Spencer Johnson, Contributing WriterSeptember 27, 2017

Quote from: DonkeyBilly

Sunshine is a game that I appreciate more over time.  I was surprised to hear people complain about the controls, since they were so finely tuned.  It could be that the camera made them seem worse, since there was a periodic need to babysit whatever it was doing.  If you play the game more, it is easy to forget that, because you know what the scripted camera movements will be and subconsciously work with them.  There was only that one notorious area that seemed broken to me.

Mario 64 DS basically gave you the best of both worlds. I went back to my 100% run and I was shocked by how much they not only drew from Sunshine's camera system (The C-stick is replaced by the the touchscreen) but also how much they refined it. People say that the N64 version of Mario 64 controls better than the DS version but I actually consider the opposite to be true because of how much better the Camera is in the DS version and a lot of that seems to have come from Sunshine, a game I had a lot of issues with because of it's camera.

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