

In some ways, Super Mario Sunshine could be considered a kind of bridge game between those eras. What was missing were more games that really tried to tap into the pure pleasures of the platforming genre and evolve those core concepts for the 21st century. We would eventually get more of those kinds of platformers, but in the early 2000s, there was still this idea that the best thing a 3D platforming game could be is more than “just” a 3D platforming game. Developers were looking to completely alter the 3D platforming genre by combining it with other types of games.
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Granted, none of those genre transitions and experiments were quite as drastic as when Rare and Microsoft turned the Banjo Kazooie series into a vehicle-building/platforming/racing hybrid with Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, but you get the point.

Elsewhere, franchises like Ratchet and Clank and Jak and Daxter strongly suggested platformers were better off going in a more action-oriented direction. Sega and Konami were struggling to figure out what the 3D futures of games like Sonic and Frogger looked like. Developers knew they needed to figure out what the future of the genre was, but there didn’t seem to be much of a consensus regarding what that future looked like.įor instance, Rare tried to turn the Conker series into a South Park-esque mature ( or immature) adventure. It’s just that the genre went from being a popular powerhouse to an increasing niche concept that often suffered from diminishing returns. It doesn’t mean those games weren’t fun or that their franchises didn’t have strong fan followings. Games like Spyro, Crash Bandicoot, and Ty the Tasmanian Tiger left something to be desired by the middle of the sixth generation of home console gaming. The glory days of the original Playstation and the Nintendo 64 were in the rearview mirror. What about the title made it the successful gem it is today, and why wasn’t it the immediate and clear future of the genre and franchise?ģD platforming was becoming a well-worn genre in the early-to-mid-2000s. Super Mario Sunshine was too unique for its own good, coming at a time when the 3D platformer was hitting its twilight. However, over the years, more gamers have come around to its excellence.
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In fact, Sunshine is one of the few major entries in the Super Mario franchise that some fans simply still don’t know how to feel about. Shigeru Miyamoto and his team crafted an immersive platforming experience that was criticized at the time and is still divisive to this day. Instead, they got a game that was even more daring and challenging. In other words, many gamers simply wanted to explore the Mushroom Kingdom with more graphical power and a refined camera engine that was still working out its kinks during the previous console generation. When Super Mario Sunshine was released for the Nintendo GameCube about 20 years ago, it’s safe to say that fans of the most famous fictional plumber in the world were expecting it to be an almost direct follow-up to the legendary Super Mario 64.
