When Super Mario Odyssey was announced, easily one of the most satisfying tidbits of info for a lot of people involved the notion that this game would go after the same type of gameplay as Super Mario 64 and Sunshine. That said, I’m going to be honest: I did not believe Nintendo on this. Given how my previous post revolves around how Nintendo’s marketing is at a different place than the actual design of their games, this is probably understandable.
So with that doubt in my mind, I figured that I would play Odyssey upon release, but along with that I would also play Super Mario Sunshine, technically the last of the 3D marios according to the infographic provided by Nintendo.
The result is that I played both games at roughly the same time (though not for the same amount of time, more on that later), and overall rather than developing grounds for comparing both of them it became more of a history lesson on Nintendo’s approach to sequels at very different times in gaming. So with that in mind, let’s dig into what made these games what they are.
Of note is that this is one I’ve been working on for some time, and as a result I have a lot of thoughts. I’ll do my best to filter a lot of these, but I will still warn that this will be a long post.
Super Mario Sunshine
To give some background, Super Mario Sunshine came out roughly 15 years ago, being released in August 2002 for the Nintendo Gamecube. At the time, it was a rather big year for Nintendo, the first year of the Nintendo Gamecube, and it had to prove at all costs that it still had the guts to compete despite falling short behind the success of the Playstation 2. Not to mention having a new kid on the block, Microsoft with the Xbox, enter the industry.
Unlike previous consoles, the Gamecube was the first to launch without a Mario game, instead giving that spot to Luigi’s Mansion, a title that was excellent in itself and a phenomenal exhibition of the tools in the Gamecube Controller. However, as it lacked the platforming of a real 3D Mario, fans were nonetheless eagerly looking forward to an actual Mario game, and within a year we got it in Sunshine, despite the game being noted as weird at the time due to certain mechanics and aesthetics.
The main offset in this was the fact that a Mario game was being touted not so much about being strictly Mario, but about having a water hose strapped to you in order to clean up gunk in an island. This made reception tepid for a short while, much like cel-shaded Link in Wind Waker made that game a black sheep of the series up until people played it and realized the richness inside. In the case of Sunshine, the game became one of the many strong titles in a console replete with rich gaming experiences and, fast-forward to 2017, is a rather popular game in its community for speedrunning. It’s a game whose life has definitely lasted.
When playing it myself, however, I had to detach myself from the nostalgia of playing it when I was 12 and from the excitement of speedruns given I do not have the skills to perform the same wondrous feats. In this context, the game was a bit less great than I was expecting a re-visit of it to be.
The main thing that hits anyone immediately is how story-heavy this game is, which is particularly strange for a Mario game. Where most Mario games will simply have the “peach kidnapped, go save her” story, this game tries to build layers of mystery for the first portion of the game. There’s an avoidance of using Bowser and instead we have intrigue, law and order take place as Mario is framed for defiling the cleanliness of Delfino Island. And then a short bit later the game becomes once more about rescuing Peach, and so on. From the moment she gets kidnapped, the game pretty much forgets to have cut-scenes, but it does not forget the theatrical flair.
Every level falls in line with this cinematic approach. Entering levels isn’t like Mario 64 where you just go in, you have a mission and you complete it. Instead, levels establish some sort of issue that exists in the specific area you visit. Take Noki Bay for example: you enter to discover a poisoned lake, and a Noki inhabitant tells you he has a theory that it’s because of a monty mole shooting gunk from up on a ledge. The level then becomes about reaching that enemy and defeating them, which grants you a Shine Sprite, the main collectible, then tosses you back out to Delfino. Should you choose to come back to the same level, another mission awaits. This represents the main cycle of Sunshine.
As this progresses, the hub world unlocks more and more content via Shadow Mario, your doppelganger, appearing with upgrades on Delfino once you’ve collected a specific, untold number of Shines. Reaching Shadow Mario and spraying enough water nets you the upgrade, which then unlocks more areas, mainly specific levels. Then you continue on your merry way collecting Shines in each area.
Naturally, there’s also collectibles that are more prevalent throughout. You CAN find Shines occasionally from solving untold problems, like cleaning up a bell in Delfino, but more prevalent than these special Shines are the blue coins. Collecting ten of these can net you a Shine from a Raccoon (Tanuki?) in Delfino, and there’s tons in each level and in the hub as well. These coins define the difficulty of completing this game 100%, as it takes serious memory and thoroughness to collect all of them.
Last thing about structure I want to mention is the nature of the missions you get. The most common ones simply instruct you to go from one place to another, with gunk all over the place, and a Shine waiting for you at the end usually with a mini-boss guarding it. Here is where Sunshine maintains the classic Mario feel as these levels tend to have you focus on a platforming segment of the level and as a result gives more linearity to what is otherwise an open level.
Along with these shines you have the ones where you have to catch up to Shadow Mario (tests of platforming speed and versatility), Boss battles, Red coin collection challenges, “Secret” levels and miscellaneous missions that adhere to the design of the level. Those last two are where the game shines the most for me. The secret levels take away your hose, FLUDD, and let you really test your platforming skills. And then the miscellaneous ones include some really interesting challenges, such as carrying a giant watermelon through a beach infested with ducks that will fling you up, or navigating an area filled with lava without FLUDD. There is clear ingenuity in this, and it’s probably the segments of Sunshine that feel the least dated and the most honest to what Mario is all about.
Now that I’ve talked about structure, let’s talk more about the main mechanic of this game, FLUDD. To really talk about it though, we need to first talk about how Nintendo solves game design question with hardware design. Within each generation, Nintendo tends to focus less on graphical capacity or sheer horsepower and puts more investment into how people control games. How it solves this issue determines how several of its games will control during that generation. For the Gamecube, a look at the controller tells you where the focus moved: accessibility and precision. Face buttons were re-designed to be sized proportional to how often each one is used, the c-buttons were retooled into a joystick for more precise camera controls, the analog stick was designed to be softer on the user’s finger, and new at the time was the notion of pressure-sensitive triggers, which would allow for specific actions to be more precise.
These control decisions are the ones that informed the design of both the Poltergust from Luigi’s Mansion and the FLUDD from Sunshine. It’s a logical progression from a 3D game focused on optimizing movement to a 3D game focusing on giving precision to where the player looks and how the player shoots. Which is why we would not see the classic fire flower in 3D marios for a long time, as it makes more sense with the tools of the time to give the player projectiles that can be precisely aimed, like a water hose, than ones that move around chaotically and would be difficult to depend on.
The sad thing is that this leads to one of the least “Mario” mechanics, in my opinion, and one that takes getting used to: FLUDD’s spraying. Normally, it is not an issue particularly since the game is designed around it, but I do believe it can clash with the game pretty harshly. For one, the only real way to properly aim it in a 3D environment is to completely press the trigger, which changes the analog stick from controlling mario to aiming FLUDD. For better aim, you need to go into an over-the-shoulder camera, which also keeps Mario static.
This leads to two situations: the need to platform to a specific location, then stop to aim and shoot, then move again; or, the need to develop enough control and awareness of where mario faces at all times to the point where you can shoot accurately or spray water precisely without having to stop to aim. The latter one is the optimal situation that makes speedruns so fun to watch as it is a delightful show of skill and precision. The former one, however, is the most likely to happen in a casual playthrough and it brings a stop to what is otherwise a very fast and agile mario. It gets even slower if the strange situation of running out of water occurs, which although rare really brings a halt to the action of the game. Fortunately the world itself is full of water at every corner.
I will, however, applaud the design flexibility around the FLUDD, where upon thinking of a hose that mario would carry they also figured out different ways in which Mario would interact with the world via the simple notion of shooting water. This gave us the hover nozzle, probably one of the most versatile tools in a mario platformer, and the less useful (but still mechanically creative) rocket and turbo nozzles. I do wish these last two provided more utility, however, as the fact you can only equip one between these three usually means the hover nozzle is the only one used.
Super Mario Odyssey
Thankfully, there is not a lot of exposition that needs to be done for Odyssey due to it just releasing; perhaps just for its context. Where the Gamecube had to prove Nintendo’s next step in 3D and hardcore gaming, which it attempted by tightening precision in controls and making experiences more cinematic, the Switch set out to reclaim an audience that grew up from the Wii and went elsewhere when the Wii U came about. Where in 2002 the only other option for strong content was the Playstation 2 while the Gamecube and Xbox proved themselves, we now live in an age where companies have to realize that at any point in time a player has thousands of options of what to play.
This is what brings about the need for the Switch and for open-world designs. For the Switch, in the sense that you need a way to bridge a hardcore market and a mobile market in a simple way that is accessible to the consumer, and for open-world games in that you are able to create platforms and worlds that can exist as grand, triple-A experiences while also being replete with short, quick bursts of reinforcement cycles.
Normally, I take this cynically, as it often-times affects me as a gamer. I am known for constantly rejecting Breath of the Wild as a masterpiece because of this: it feels like a game that is very explicitly trying to engineer shorter reinforcement cycles without really making up for the experience of a large dungeon segment from a traditional Zelda, and in that sense it winds up coming short of what, to me, a “Zelda” experience is. It’s a situation of modern design needs killing a gaming experience that may have been stale but was definitely not broken nor undesired.
Thankfully, Odyssey to me feels like a more cohesive experience in that it adheres to the needs of the design while at the same time not sacrificing what makes Mario fun for me and several others who grew up with the earlier 3D titles. And it’s fascinating to look at how long Nintendo struggled with this notion too: first, they re-make the 2D mario on the DS in order to nail the shorter, level-focused experience that would make Mario mobile; then, they figure that worked and try to push it to consoles by making the console mario games follow similar linearity and patterns; and then finally they try to have their cake and eat it too by giving us “3D” levels while retaining those same elements of short levels. This last bit was what Super Mario 3D World tried to give us, and while it was an excellent platforming experience it still did not meet the expectations of freedom that Mario 64 had established.
With Odyssey comes the realization from Breath of the Wild that it actually IS possible to have short cycles while still allowing for larger, more free worlds to exist. Which is weird since they did it before but… in any case, point is, Nintendo got the message: open worlds are popular and you can actually “mobile”-ize them without sacrificing the scope of the world. That’s how we get a 3D Mario game that feels truly gigantic like most strong console titles while still having an easy of play and an ease of addiction of a good portable/mobile game. The game is made so well that it is entirely possible to play for a couple minutes, get one or two moons, and then stop.
Which is pretty much the first thing that slaps you in the face regarding how this compared to Sunshine. Where Sunshine was made in a time where people saw the next logical step of games as being closer to movies (and during which people could only experience that by sitting in front of a TV for an extended period of time), Odyssey is made in a time where the logical and necessary approach of games is to engage quickly and continuously maintain that engagement. Which is how you get a difference from Sunshine having an extended cut-scene with story, performances and twists to Odyssey skipping the rise of conflict entirely and just landing to the point that sets up where you are and what needs to happen.
It’s also how you get completely different tutorial experiences. By all intents and purposes, both of these games can be pretty hand-holdy, and we all know it’s because the need for having these games be accessible to everyone. But it’s nonetheless amusing to see Sunshine take me to a small tutorial video of how to use FLUDD where Odyssey instead just tells you what buttons to press to start and then just puts signs throughout that trigger tiny picture-in-picture gifs of the movement mechanics. Then again, with Odyssey the tutorial thing would never work anyway since any time you capture an enemy it’s an entirely different control set.
Before I talk more about Cappy, the FLUDD of this game, I want to talk about the structure of golden paths. Golden path refers to the point A to point B that the player is expected to go through to complete the main “quest” of the game. Basically, if I were to just go from beginning to end where the game tells me. Like Sunshine, this game offers specific missions upon entering that focus the player on specific platforming challenges and quests which develop knowledge of the world and the mechanics. Unlike Sunshine, however, the golden path is much easier to follow and allows for more organic deviations.
For an example of what I mean: In Sunshine, worlds open up based on how many shines you have. You have a situation where the game directs you from Bianco Hills to Ricco Harbor, then after a shine or two Gelato Beach is the next one to open up, then Pinna Park where the story climaxes and then directs you to the end-game. But then that’s it. Every now and then the overworld plays a clip of where you might want to go next, but otherwise it’s up to the player to structure where they go first. What’s more, the game doesn’t telegraph that you need the seventh shine in each world in order to reach the end-game promised in that very early cutscene in Pinna Park.
Meanwhile, Odyssey’s golden path is extremely well-defined. Even without the Assist Mode for new players, which shows arrows of where to go next, it is always very easy in Odyssey to know where the game wants you to go next. Not just because of flagpoles and shiny spots visible from everywhere, but even the level design in most stages having the Odyssey begin at a low point from where you can see the logical conclusion of the level at a higher spot. Diversions and branching in that path is of course possible and encouraged by the design, given so many moons and interesting locations exist by the edges of that golden path. But regardless of those, the game does not let you go until you complete the main story, at which point you are on your own.
To a lot of us, that Sunshine sense of freedom is what we wanted, what we relished from the 64 and Sunshine era of platforming, also a hallmark from games like Banjo Kazooie and Spyro the Dragon and the like. And it is clear that in this year in particular developers have wanted to respond to that nostalgic desire. In that sense I find it personally refreshing and invigorating that Odyssey managed to capture that same feeling while at the same time not sacrificing the ability for newer players to be guided and given easier alternatives. I even tested assist mode, and overall applaud how well it simplifies the gameplay without removing the reward or challenge in ways the Wii and Wii U platformers would have.
Now, while that alone makes this game a success for me, let me be a bit more cynical and talk about how the issues of 3D mario continue to crop up. I talked extensively about how FLUDD is a product of the hardware of the era and how it defined the way in which that game was approached. Cappy works in the same function here, to the point that hats as a whole became the unifying theme of the game (much like water was in Sunshine.)
Unlike FLUDD, however, Cappy is less attached to the hardware of the game. Well, a bit less. The game DOES suggest heavily that it should be played a specific way, namely with the joy con detached in order to benefit from motion controls. In that sense, Cappy is a result of that desire for integrating movement in a Mario game in a more intuitive way that takes advantage of the Switch’s motion controls, and in a more captivating way than just waggling in order to spin jump.
However, when you put aside that fact and move into the realm of how the Switch encourages multiple controller set-ups, the situation becomes a bit less elegant, at least in my opinion. For one, you have the situation where despite all having gyroscopes and motion, not all controllers will have the precision of movement required for a lot of cappy’s arsenal of movement. It’s much more of a pain with a pro controller to accurately perform spins, upward throws and the like with Cappy. To the point where most people just avoid motion controls with this controller set-up, despite it being impossible to completely turn them off.
Which leads to the next problem I have. The solution of just ignoring these motion control movement options leads to things like players forgetting specific actions exist (such as using motion to perform a specific action with a captured enemy) which in turn complicates the process of getting certain moons until the “ooooh” moment where the player realizes that this one action you have literally never needed before actually exists. Not only that, but it also completely eliminates good design instincts, particularly the homing ability of Cappy. But let’s back up a bit to talk about that one.
With 3D Mario games, Nintendo has always needed to provide a way to deal with enemies that is not just jumping. The reason for this, obviously, is that jumping on an enemy in a 3D space is significantly more difficult than jumping on one in a 2D environment. This is why Super Mario 64 gave us the elegant solution of a melee attack that would help players intuitively dispatch simple enemies such as goombas.
From then on this option has constantly existed. Galaxy gave players spin jumps, Sunshine required us to use FLUDD to dispatch enemies, and so on. This game, for all intents and purposes gave us Cappy as a way to deal with enemies. This is usually enough, but problems do arise:
First, As a projectile in a 3D environment there are constant possibilities, particularly for more casual players, of throwing Cappy in undesired directions. If you want to see this issue truly manifest itself, consider the Volleyball mini-game in Seaside Kingdom that gives people so much trouble to the point a lot of people activate two-player mode just to deal with it. Elsewhere in the game, you have inaccurate throws that make you fall, that have you get hit by an enemy you thought you’d capture, and more. Technically, the game DID add a way to address this, through the motion control alternatives. But as I mentioned, the fact so many players avoid them or forget them due to the nature of the Switch control versatility directly harms the elegance of this solution. (Note: this also doesn’t solve issues of platforming on a hat thrown in the wrong direction.)
Along with that, there’s the fact that the same motion can function to both attack and capture can lead to unintended results. For example, wanting to break something or attack something and then inadvertently capturing something in the vicinity. And then there’s the Goomba problem where they constantly run at you, but unlike other enemies that do they cannot be hit with Cappy, only captured. So the process of eliminating a Goomba without jump becomes a process of capturing them, cancelling the capture and THEN killing them, which can be more painfully annoying if other goombas in the vicinity (which most likely there will be due to stacking needs) are also following you.
Naturally, while all these issues exist, it’s still worth noting they do not break the game, much like FLUDD’s nature doesn’t destroy Sunshine either. Most of this is of course thanks to the fact that Mario’s movement is consistently strong, versatile and fun. On this note, I do want to also mention Odyssey Mario’s momentum starts significantly slower than that of Sunshine Mario. This bothered me heavily while playing both games within the same window of time, and did bother me considerably when playing Odyssey for the first time. However, I do acknowledge that while it can feel clunky and slow to respond, the same could be said for moments in Sunshine where the unexpected speed or responsiveness of a movement led to a fall or running off a ledge. I also found that both games suffered heavily from inconsistencies regarding Mario grabbing ledges, particularly of moving platforms.
Given the length, I believe I’ll cut the Odyssey talk here with a final thought on the capture mechanic. Where I found the hover nozzle to be a genius addition to a separate mechanic, I believe that the capturing mechanic is truly a great idea and an excellent build-up to the notion of throwing a hat. It simplifies Mario’s arsenal from forgettable power-ups by instead attributing power-ups and skills to enemies which can lead to very creative moments, and creatures such as the Pokio which could honestly have been their own game entirely. I also strongly respect the way in which captures give personality to each area by virtue of its inhabitants, and how it avoids trivializing roaming enemies by making them keys to solving the environment. Just as importantly, it gives the game a ton of charm and diversity that makes playing the game a complete joy, particularly for me with moments like the final kingdom which escalates several of the game’s transformations into a brilliant gauntlet of platforming challenge.
Final Thoughts
When I first had the idea for this post, my desire was to compare these two games in how well they were a sequel to Mario 64 and which represented the optimal 3D Mario. Naturally, my Sunshine nostalgia was strong and much like I blast Breath of the Wild to boast about Xenoblade Chronicles X, the marketing and areas shown of Odyssey before release made me expect Sunshine to stand tall for me to do the same there.
However, Odyssey surprised me completely in how much it did well, and replaying Sunshine surprised me in just how much rougher it felt after 15 years of playing other games after it. Ultimately, I do still think both are excellent games, and while I did not finish this run of Sunshine as a result of really wanting to play more Odyssey, I would still strongly recommend for people to play through Sunshine and see what the future of Mario was in the early 2000s. And that’s really what this post and this experience wound up being all about: seeing through the lens of Mario how much a company and an industry evolves over time and how the different trends of gaming are dictating the design of the very figure that helped revive it over thirty years ago.
Stray Notes:
- The music in both games is consistently excellent. Some areas in Odyssey I will admit are completely forgettable in terms of music, but things like Steam Gardens and the Pauline song are serious earworms. As for Sunshine, I will attribute nostalgia as the reason Ricco Harbor’s song is constantly in my brain.
- I mentioned the level design of Odyssey’s kingdoms guides the player well by having you start at a low point and move towards a higher one to “complete” the level. To its credit, Sunshine also follows in that principle rather well, though the notion of Shines being episodic and kicking you out upon completion make it a less effective guide than the verticality of Odyssey kingdoms.
- Odyssey’s decision to forego lives if fantastic, and just as admirable is the notion of assist mode placing you in a bubble and back where you fell from. One of the harshest things about replaying Sunshine was easily the fact that learning a difficult platforming “secret” level could be interrupted by game over screens that would kick you out back to the hub. To their credit, they did pepper these stages with lives that you can get in each attempt. Still, letting go of game overs and lives does this genre a massive service.
- Since I didn’t talk much about moon types in Odyssey: there’s a lot of moons but the patterns are just as obvious. Just like FLUDD-less shines were some of my favorite, I really like levels where you had to put your cap away and platform without it. I also rather enjoyed moons found with art in other kingdoms.
- In a post-Splatoon world it’s interesting to wonder what Sunshine would have been like in a world of gyroscope aiming. For what it’s worth, I’d be really interested in a revisit to the FLUDD mechanics with that in mind, despite the fact I do not expect Nintendo to do so.
- Credit where credit is due: I mentioned before my sadness that the 1-Up mushroom sound would be a huge loss due to being such an iconic sound. However, in this game the sound for capturing enemies goes to show how excellent at design Nintendo can be when they can make such elegant associations happen with their sound direction.
- One thing I will dislike openly about Odyssey that Sunshine knocked out of the park: User Interface. Overall, there’s no massive missteps, but what bothers me most is the distinct lack of character. Particularly compared to a game like Sunshine where the UI oozes with personality, down to the health meter. It bothers me how much Odyssey’s meter just remind me of the Breath of the Wild stamina meter. Sure, it’s simple and effective, but I just expect so much more personality from Mario, and with worlds having so much of it it’s easy for the sterile UI to stand out in comparison.