Celebrating 18 Years of Super Mario Sunshine

I remember visiting Isle Delfino 18 years ago. Being 14 years old when the game released, I was excited to try out the newest Mario game. The game first released to the Japanese market before hitting the states.

Super Mario Sunshine was a very different take on the series. It was a breath of fresh air; Nintendo had decided to go in a very different direction that I don’t think many fans were expecting. A tropical island themed Mario adventure was definitely out of left field back then.

In Mario Sunshine, you arrive to Isle Delfino with the typical cast of characters (Mario, Peach, Toad, etc) only to find that someone has been putting up graffiti all over the island. The villian doing all of this damage is none other than Shadow Mario. You work to clean up the mess that he has made and put an end to his shenanigans once and for all with the help of your trusty water powered F.L.U.D.D. device.

Super Mario sunshine sold more than 5 million copies and became one of the best selling games on the GameCube. To this day, the game is still highly competitive in the speed-running community, with players grinding it out to best each other’s scores regularly. It is arguably one of the most beloved GameCube titles, and for many, their favorite Mario game ever made.

Nintendo took a big risk with Sunshine; it was very different than previous entries in the Mario franchise. Admittedly, Nintendo had hoped the game would sell better than it did, but that may be due to the GameCube itself not being as heavily adopted at the time as they were expecting.

Mario Sunshine was a necessary title in opening the door for Nintendo to expand past the typical Mario formula they had grown accustomed to. Some of the stage mechanics seen in Sunshine were later similarly used in Super Mario Galaxy I and II.

And so here we are 18 years later, with talk that Nintendo might be remastering Super Mario Sunshine on the Switch. I think we all could use a little trip back to Isle Delfino for a much needed Mario vacation. If this tropical remaster is in fact true, we should be hearing about it in a Nintendo Direct any day now. Do you think we’ll be seeing Sunshine on the Switch? Let us know in the comments below.