Super Mario 3D All-Stars is around the corner, and it’s our worst nightmare. Not because of the six-month limited release (but still, what’s up with that), nor the lack of Super Mario Galaxy 2 (okay, but where is it!). It’s our worst nightmare because the question it quietly poses - “do these games hold up?” - is one we’re not ready to answer. Many, myself included, played them as wide-eyed, impressionable children, and they irreversibly shaped our understanding of what games could be. I mean, for the love of God, it’s Mario. Mario is video games, with the triptych of console-defining experiences that is Super Mario 3D All-Stars serving as proof. At least, we think so. We hope we're not wrong.
My position going into Super Mario 3D All-Stars is somewhat unique. I grew up with these games, yes, but I’ve also replayed them all within the last year: Super Mario Sunshine and Super Mario Galaxy in their original, official formats, and Super Mario 64 via the unofficial (see: illegal) PC port that dropped a few months ago. Having reckoned with the trilogy recently enough that it’s still fresh, my thoughts are: it’s perfect. Perfect inasmuch as the games, with their individual strengths and weaknesses, are thoroughly complementary, filling in each other’s blind spots through radically different manifestations of the same core design philosophy. Together, they are a sonata. Super Mario 3D All-Stars is the concert hall.
Super Mario 64
Super Mario 64 was, strictly speaking, before my time. I was barely six months old when it released in North America on September 29th, 1996, and I wouldn’t get to play it until several years later, in 2001. When I did, it was by accident. My cousins had recently acquired a secondhand Nintendo 64, and one day, during a family visit, I toddled aimlessly into their living room and saw Mario doing backflips on the TV.
It’s worth noting that, though the N64 era largely preceded my interest in video games (and my interest in not wearing diapers), I came by my fascination with Super Mario 64 honestly: at age five, I was given a Game Boy Advance as a birthday gift, and the first games I played on it were those in the Super Mario Advance series, not knowing they were ports of the plumber’s most formative NES and SNES games. So when I saw this hyper-expanded, three-dimensionalized take on a world I’d already fallen in love with, I experienced what I’d like to believe is a microcosmic version of the “awakening” that so often accompanies discussions of Super Mario 64. My cousin let me play the penguin race level in Cool, Cool Mountain, and I found the shortcut behind the illusory wall, and, man, that was it. I was on board. Video games.
Recommending Super Mario 64 in 2020 is tricky because it comes with the caveat that, to truly experience it, you “had to have been there.” Not that the game isn’t still good - it is, surprisingly so. But it was that built-in inscrutability, that sense of untapped, uncharted wonder that so profoundly characterized it. Everything in Super Mario 64 was, by default, unexpected. It wasn’t a design we could intuitively understand and navigate the way we can today. Crucially, it wasn’t a design the designers could intuitively understand and navigate, either, and so many elements seem bizarrely opaque as a result. Why are Shifting Sand Land and Snowman’s Land hidden behind nondescript walls? How was I supposed to know that I needed to look directly at the light to enter the wing cap area? What’s up with all the surreal, spatially untethered bonus courses scattered around Peach's castle, like the Secret Aquarium and Princess’s Secret Slide? The dreamlike atmosphere of Super Mario 64 was so ubiquitously felt that, in the years since its release, whole communities dedicated to “unearthing” its “mysteries” have sprung up. Of course, there are no mysteries; we were simply young, as was the genre. Nevertheless, that feeling stuck. We all sensed, buried deep within Super Mario 64, the promise of more to come.
Now, four console generations later, that promise has been fulfilled many times over, and Super Mario 3D All-Stars implicitly tasks us with determining how well Super Mario 64 has “aged” relative to its successors. Personally, I think the fact that it isn’t a completely unplayable mess is itself a small miracle; the bigger miracle is that it's actually generally great. The development team is on record saying that they prioritized Mario’s movement above all else, meticulously fine-tuning it until the mere act of running around an empty area felt satisfying. Super Mario 64’s introductory courtyard segment - functionally an open tutorial that acclimates players to the game’s control scheme - has been discussed ad nauseam, but even now, it stands as a testament to this philosophy: everything just clicks, and it’s difficult to not spend several minutes joyously triple jumping and air-diving and shimmying up trees before heading into the castle. That the game still has this effect more than two decades later is pretty astonishing, especially considering that it was, more or less, ground zero for an entire genre.
It’s not perfect, obviously. 3D Mario games wouldn’t have perfect movement until Super Mario Odyssey (though Sunshine comes close). In 64, there’s a slight slipperiness to Mario's actions, and his inability to turn on a dime causes occasional frustration. When the game is designed with these limitations in mind - more as a playground platformer than a precision platformer - it’s a blast. When it does require precision, it shows its age more readily. Some of the later courses are especially demanding, often doling out obstacles like rotating platforms, collapsible bridges, and narrow walkways in rapid succession. We recognize these now as 3D platforming staples, but 64 wasn’t quite equipped to handle them; I think it’s telling that, in every subsequent 3D Mario game, Mario was given abilities that let him easily correct his jump trajectory (the hover in Sunshine, the spin in Galaxy, the hat toss in Odyssey). 64’s committal, momentum-based movement just doesn’t fully gel with rigorous platforming, especially when the camera stops agreeing with you.
For those not familiar, Super Mario 64’s camera is controlled incrementally with the C buttons (presumably the right analog stick on the Switch, but we’ll see), with an option to recenter it behind Mario by pressing R. Degrees of rotation are fairly limited, and with how frequently the camera gets trapped behind objects, it feels less like an intuitive system and more like something that must be constantly, unnecessarily managed. In fairness, this was another largely unprecedented mechanic that designers and players alike had very few points of reference for (the game even literalizes and physicalizes the camera as an in-universe character to help ease players into the concept), but even on release, it was widely maligned. Since there's nothing to suggest Super Mario 3D All-Stars is adding a full analog camera option, 64’s camera may forever bear the unflattering title of “learning experience.”
And as long as I’m committing the cardinal sin of being mean to Super Mario 64, I’ll level some light criticism at its structure, which only really seems limited because of how convincingly future games improved upon it. The game contains only fifteen “courses,” but each has several sub-missions - a clever trick that alleviates the need for dozens of separate, distinct levels à la 2D Mario. This is perfectly fine, but the game arbitrarily boots players back to the hub after each mission, leading to a good deal of backtracking in more complex courses like Tall, Tall Mountain and Tick Tock Clock. I say “arbitrarily” because later games (especially Galaxy) would justify this design by dramatically altering courses between missions, whereas the course layouts in 64 stay mostly the same, with a few exceptions. (Banjo-Kazooie would refine this approach in the opposite direction a mere two years later, making all collectibles simultaneously available on the map while eliminating segmented missions altogether.)
The courses themselves are delightful. Visually pleasing, mechanically varied, and geometrically interesting. Later 3D entries would feature more imaginative locales, but there’s something to be said for Super Mario 64’s vibrant simplicity: its environments evoke the conceptually straightforward Mario levels of yore, with themes like “grass,” “desert,” “lava,” “sky,” and so on. Peach’s castle, the hub connecting them, is three-dimensional in the most meaningful sense, allowing for open-ended, player-dictated progression while squirrelling away enough secrets that it itself becomes a properly explorable course. Again, it’s simple, it’s fundamental, but it’s familiar. All of Super Mario 64 is familiar, whether you’ve played it recently or never at all. This is where it all began, and it still feels like home.
It’s no Super Mario Sunshine, though.
Super Mario Sunshine
If Super Mario 64 is home, Super Mario Sunshine is a vacation. It’s about a vacation, yes, but it also is a vacation - aesthetically, mechanically, thematically. Departing utterly from the heightened, whimsical fantasy of 64, Sunshine runs aground of something much weirder. You’re not in the Mushroom Kingdom anymore - you’re on holiday at Isle Delfino. There’s a talking hose-backpack. Mario gets arrested. Bowser’s son thinks Peach is his mom.
Super Mario Sunshine remains far and away the most controversial title in the 3D Mario lineup, for reasons that are simultaneously perplexing and crystal-clear to me. Points commonly cited by its detractors are: it’s unfairly challenging, some of its objectives are too esoteric, there’s a lot of tedium, it’s too “weird.” I don’t disagree, but I also don’t care. Sunshine is an absolute blast. Its growing pains are proudly flaunted: “This is who I am, Dad,” the game yells while wearing a sleeveless denim vest with the words VOICE ACTING scrawled on the back. “Take it or leave it!” I take it. I bring it in for a hug, kiss it tenderly on the forehead, and reward its tenacity with over 30 hours of playtime.
Though I’m not writing this piece with the intention of “ranking” these three games, if I’m being honest, like really just throwing myself on the sword of my own taste, Sunshine is probably my favorite. Depending on who you are, this is either me proving my genius or showing my ass. My reasoning is simple: it’s Super Mario 64, but more. More is, of course, not always better, but every ounce of moreness in Super Mario Sunshine is meaningful, experimental. It takes the delicately-mixed chemical compound that is Super Mario 64 and detonates it over an open flame. The hub world is denser. The levels, bigger. The movement, tighter. The story, dumber.
In addition to an already-extensive base moveset carried over and expanded from 64, players have access to F.L.U.D.D. (that’s Flash Liquidizer Ultra Dousing Device), which necessitates a total shift in both player engagement and level design principles. Mario can use the jetpack function on F.L.U.D.D. to hover mid-jump for several seconds at a time; to accommodate this, levels need to be taller and wider, and much of the platforming becomes emergent rather than prescribed. Players chart their own routes through levels, pairing creative jump combos with the hover to reach far-off platforms that, in 64, would have been inaccessible. As a result, the main courses are laid out like open, freely navigable jungle gyms - the aforementioned “playground platformer” approach that was already so conducive to Super Mario 64’s movement - while more straightforward platforming segments are relegated to secret areas scattered throughout the courses and the central hub. The designers got ballsy, here: F.L.U.D.D. is taken away from Mario in these areas, effectively stripping players of their only safety net. This time, though, the game is ready. Mario’s handling, even without F.L.U.D.D., is terrifically snappy, far better suited to high-stakes precision, and the game takes full advantage.
Even more impressive than Sunshine’s raw gameplay, though, is its hangout factor. Hangoutitude is a distinctive, coveted quality, manifesting only on the rare occasion that a game’s environments are intrinsically appealing enough to just kick back and relax in. As mentioned, in Sunshine, you’re on an island; every level is on the island. Instead of warping to far-flung pocket dimensions and riding flying carpets across rainbows, Mario goes to the harbor, or the beach, or a hotel. It’s a wonderfully inviting premise, and the grounded, palpably atmospheric levels manage to pluck the precise feeling of going on vacation from the ether of human experience and juice it directly to your eyeballs. Seriously, I’ve booted up Sunshine on more than one occasion just to swim around Noki Bay (it doesn’t hurt that the game’s water visuals are still unsurpassed in the medium). It milks this environmental cohesion for all it’s worth, never feeling redundant despite its shared theme.
The game milks a lot out of everything, actually. Maybe too much; that teat is bone dry when the credits roll. It’s no secret that Sunshine was rushed through development, with some of its more ardent critics even describing it as “unfinished.” I wouldn’t go that far, but it’s definitely a mess, and its messiness is exacerbated by the fact that it desperately wants you to play all of it. One of Super Mario 64’s greatest strengths was its flexibility: though players needed 70 stars to access the final boss, there was rarely a set order, and it was possible to skip entire courses altogether. While Sunshine alters courses enough between its stars (er, shines) to make each mission feel unique, it also seldom allows for more than one shine on the map at a time, meaning that, more often than not, missions must be completed sequentially. Compounding this issue is the unlock condition for the game’s final area: to enter Corona Mountain (which is, by a wide margin, the worst level), you need to collect all the Shadow Mario shines. These are nearly always the seventh shine in each course, and though there are only seven courses, completing Sunshine requires playing through them all in their entirety, including shines you don’t like.
Remember, though, I’m a freak. I do like most of the missions in Super Mario Sunshine, even the ones that suck. Yes, that includes the casino one, and the one where you have to clean a giant eel’s teeth. I even like the one where you have to push that stupid watermelon down that stupid hill without hitting those stupid ducks. I won’t deny that these levels (and others!) are tedious and, in conjunction with the more rigid progression system, exist largely to pad out what is clearly an undercooked game, but I buy so wholeheartedly into Sunshine’s magic that its concessions don’t really register. The game is generous. Even when it doesn’t meet expectations, it delivers what it can, and plenty of it. It runs deep, so long as you’re willing to dig.
Super Mario Galaxy
When Super Mario Galaxy was announced in 2006, it struck me as both the natural evolution and logical conclusion of 3D Mario. Not that I didn’t expect more Mario games; I just couldn’t imagine what they would be. How do you top space? Super Mario Galaxy - which took this endlessly compelling, somehow underexplored platforming concept of running around a sphere and built an entire game around it - was so new, so iconoclastic in its design that to speculate on a future beyond it seemed almost disrespectful. There was no more ground to cover. Video games were about to peak, and I’d be alive to witness it.
When I brain-project into the mind of my ten-year-old self, I can’t recall thinking about anything that wasn’t Super Mario Galaxy between the moment of its unveiling and the day of its release. It is, to date, the most excited I’ve ever been for a video game (with the possible exception of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, which I drove to a Best Buy two and a half hours away and stood in line for an additional three hours in ninety-degree weather to play a five-minute demo of). I remember sprinting home from school on November 12th, 2007, ravenously calling the local Game Crazy, and feeling electricity shoot out of my fingertips when the bored cashier told me that they had my pre-ordered copy - which came with a limited run commemorative coin (!!!) - in stock. I played that game. I played the hell out of that game. And now, nearly thirteen years later, combing through Super Mario Galaxy with the unclouded, scalpel-sharp eyes of a critic, I’ve concluded that it is, front-to-back and top-to-bottom, “pretty good.”
Super Mario Sunshine was different, within bounds: however bizarre and tangential, it built on a foundation that was ultimately derived from 64. Super Mario Galaxy is traditional, out of bounds: its level structure feels shaped from the pre-Super Mario 64 primordial ooze, but the levels themselves are wholly unlike those in any other Mario game. Though Galaxy retains the multiple-missions-per-course approach of 64 and Sunshine, its missions are, effectively, miniaturized courses, since routes are now completely reconfigured between stars. To this end, courses are split into suspended, isolated puzzles and platforming challenges, bridged by gravitational catapults called “launch stars.” Depending on the selected mission, launch stars will be oriented differently, though most areas in a given course are generally visible even if they’re currently inaccessible. This sort of carrot-dangling creates an interesting effect, akin to playing a 2D platformer and seeing the next two levels parallax-scrolling in the background. Super Mario Galaxy confines you, but it also makes promises. It feels expansive even as it gently guides you in a straight line.
Straight lines are fine, by the way. The open-world explosion of the new millennium seems to have generated a widespread consensus to the contrary, with people frequently complaining about perceived “linearity” in games where such distinctions are probably meaningless. Like, I’ve seen people call Bloodborne linear. Even if that were true (it’s not), it wouldn’t matter, because Bloodborne is one of the best action RPGs ever made. Super Mario Galaxy isn’t the best 3D platformer ever made, but it is one of the most creative 3D platformers ever made, and that alone is enough to carry it across the finish line. It demands that we completely reconsider player-object relationships in 3D space: now Mario can explore every surface of an object, so long as it has its own localized gravity. There’s a rush of sheer, lightbulb-illuminating euphoria when you seamlessly walk underneath a platform for the first time and discover an entirely new area, and for the most part, the game does an excellent job of maintaining this freewheeling, imaginative momentum. Every course had at least one moment that made me say “whoa” out loud (I’m talking about my most recent playthrough, here). For as much as I love 64 and Sunshine, rarely did they provoke a “whoa.”
And yet, I can’t shake the feeling that so many of these whoas were cheaply earned. While I reject the notion that someone having fun playing a game is ever “not actually having fun” (with the exception of gachas - I promise you, if you like these games, you are not actually having fun), I believe it’s still important to question why someone is having fun. When we play Uncharted, are we having fun because the game’s systems are interesting, or because jumping across collapsing bridges is an innately satisfying action? Similarly, when we play Super Mario Galaxy, are we having fun because of good level design, or because its concepts are so thrilling and its spectacle so immense that they overshadow all else?
The answer, I think, is both. Super Mario Galaxy does have generally good level design (with occasional bursts of genius), but it’s also so depressingly easy. Courses often seem designed to show off how ambitious the developers can get with their zero-g toys, seldom questioning how meaningful or challenging they actually are for players. Once I started vaguely keeping track of how similar, how fundamentally straightforward so many of the planetoids were, I glimpsed the game’s sleight of hand. It feels good to play, but it doesn’t pick my brain. It doesn’t go all the way in with its brilliant ideas the way I want it to (Super Mario Galaxy 2 is a much more robust realization of Super Mario Galaxy than Super Mario Galaxy, which is why its omission from Super Mario 3D All-Stars is such a shame). The constant tutorializing doesn’t help (players are still being told about basic functions like swimming more than halfway through the game), nor does the truncated movement, which, while perfectly serviceable, has been significantly pared down from Sunshine so as to not overcomplicate traversal across spherical surfaces. Worst of all, though, is the empty sterility of its hub. The Comet Observatory, essentially a glorified menu, is the hollowed-out shell of Delfino Plaza. Exploring it yields nothing of value; entrances to courses are grouped together in various rooms, unlocked automatically when players reach a certain star count. The joy of discovery has been all but peeled away.
The team behind Galaxy very clearly had little interest in replicating the structure of 64 and Sunshine, further evidenced by the outright absence of a hub in Galaxy 2. With Super Mario 3D Land and Super Mario 3D World (both great games), 3D Mario fully embraced the individualized course-clear format, and wouldn’t return to its roots until 2017, when Odyssey rocked our world. Galaxy, as it now stands, exists in a bizarre valley between old and new (or is it new and old?). And yet, it’s fun. It’s so damn fun. Past a certain point, it may not make a difference where that fun is coming from. I’m content to just stargaze.
There's so much wrong in this I stopped reading. Facts as well as bizarre takes
This was very fun to read, and left me very excited to replay Sunshine. Well done 💕