GMAN-GAMES: Super Mario Sunshine

Super Mario Sunshine

July 21st, 2002

I picked up Super Mario Sunshine this weekend!

Again Nintendo shows the way. Mario is full of stuff you haven't seen in other games. Liquid is everywhere. The water looks amazing. Enemies are covered with paint. You can get paint on yourself and on your friends.

Another thing that sticks out though. It's HARD!!!! I'm sure I'll get used to it but so far that's the thing that sticks out the most probably. The reason is you have this water pack that at the start can be used to hover for a short time or to hose things down like hosing the paint off walls or the the ground or hosing down enemies. The same button is uses for both function with another button switching whether you are in hose mode or hover mode. You often need to switch and you often forget which mode you are in so you take a jump, hit the button expecting to hover and realize you are in hose mode.

Another issue is to use it you press the R key. When you are hosing, if you press the R key all the way down you will stand still and can aim. If you press it only partly down you will continue to run hosing in front of you. It's great idea but it takes some getting used to. But like I said the more I play the more I get used to it. I'm sure it will become second nature soon.

One thing I noticed about Mario vs pretty much all other character action games.

Every Mario is different. What do I mean by that?

Well pretty much, since the original Mario Bros, every version of Mario has changed it's gameplay, what you do, what your main moves are, what you spend your time doing in every new version. That is not true of pretty much all other character action series.

For example on Sonic 1, 2 and 3 you run Sonic around collecting rings. The basic moves are jumping on the back of enemies while you are in a ball hitting them with your spikes. The other is crouching into a ball, revving up and spinning very fast. That same behavior is the main thing you do (other than run and jump) throughout the entire series. New levels in each game, new monsters, a few new bonus games but the main play never changed.

The same is true of the Crash Bandicoot series. You spin to break boxes. That's about it. Throughout the character action series, 1, 2, 3 and 5, 70% of your game play is exactly the same. All that's change is the locations and a few bonus games.

Gex is also similar. I'm sure there are other examples. Megaman for example although that's a shooting game.

Mario though, in each game has changed your basic movies to the point that each game is a new experience.

Mario Bros

In Mario Bros the basic move was jump under an enemy to flip it over on it's back, then run up to kick it off a ledge before it turned back over.

Super Mario

This one is what most people might call the first of the series. Gone are the flip over enemies. Now you jump on top of them. New main move, new feel to the game. Also added was big and little Mario which changed the basic feeling of the game. When you are big mario you take chances since you can take a hit. When you are little mario you are more carefull and change your focus to finding a mushroom to make you big mario again.

Super Mario 2 (Mario USA in Japan)

In this game the basic move is jump on top the enemy then pick him up and throw him at another enemy. Again, new basic move.

Super Mario 3

Here they added a map so you could pick your levels. If one way was too hard you could try another. As for basic movies, ever level had powerups.
Tanooki-Mario

The most common was the tanooki powerup which have you raccoon tail. This let you float down a little and if you got enough speed you could fly.

Frog Mario

allowed you to swim easily underwater

Hammer-Mario

let your throw hammers left and right

Shoe/Sock Mario (I forgot the name)

let you walk over spikes

Statue Mario

turned you into a statue which the enemies would ignore so you could let them pass by you.

Mario 3 also added items/inventory that you could use in various places on the map making you want to search for them.
The over all effect is that again, Mario 3 is significantly different from its predecessors

Super Mario World (SNES)

Added Yoshi which had his own way of playing and added flying with the cape. Both again changed a signifcant portion of the basic gameplay.

Yoshi's Island

Some people might not call this part of the series but it was the next character action game in the Mario world.

This one was completely different. In played Yoshi protecting a baby mario that road on your back. You could eat enemies and then you'd lay an egg. You'd drag the eggs behind you, up to 8 of them and you could shoot them around the screen using a targeting cursor. If you got hit by an enemy baby mario would go flying off and you had upto 10 seconds to get him back or you lost a life. Talk about COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.

Mario 64

Next up was Mario 64. Being 3D made it a completely different game. Now the play changed to exploring and finding stars. 4 to 8 per level. Some were hidden, some required doing special things like carrying a baby penguin back to it's mom.

Mario Sunshine

Now Mario Sunshine just came out and Mario now sports a water pack on his back. He can use the water pack to shoot enemies, to clean up the mess in a messy level, to fly for short periods by shooting water down like a jetpack, to shoot way up in the air like a rocket. The point is again, a very basic element of the game has changed making this a new experience.

Obviously the games are well done just in general but I think one thing that keeps the series so strong is that constant change in basic moves. I don't remember if Sonic added a single move during the entire series. Crash added a few moves over his series but that basic play didn't change, 2 of the moves, body slam and burrowing never needed to be used. 70% to 80% of the time the game play was the same was the first Crash 1. Gex changed from 2d to 3d but I believe his basic move set stayed similar from #2 to #3. I haven't played the Rayman series.

Obviously it's risky to change something that was working. I wonder how Nintendo does it. Are they just geniuses or do they try many different things throwing many ideas away until the come up with something new in the basic move set that's fun.

Pass it on

Comments:

Donkey Kong started it all!

I forwarded this post of yours to my friend who responds:

And let痴 not forget where the series really began (my favorite game):

Donkey Kong

Which also fits into the paradigm of being vastly different from any other game in the series; instructions for the Colecovision:

STEP 1: The choice is yours.

Press the Reset Button and the title screen for DONKEY KONG will appear on your TV. Wait for the Game Option screen to appear. It contains a list of game play options. Select one by pressing the corresponding number button on either controller keypad.

STEP 2: Start at the bottom.

After you select a Game Option, the first of your Marios appears at the bottom left corner of the ramps. To rescue Mario's girlfriend, move him up to the ramp where she is held captive

STEP 3: Mario to the rescue!

To reach his girlfriend, Mario must climb up or down unbroken ladders. (Notice that Mario can climb part of the way up a broken ladder.) Jump or avoid the barrels thrown down by Donkey Kong to halt his progress.

STEP 4: Hammer away!

Learn just the right technique to make Mario jump up and grab the hammer With the hammer, Mario can hit barrels for points! Remember,--Mario can't climb ladders or jump while holding the hammer. When the hammer disappears a few seconds later, Mario must avoid the barrels once again!

STEP 5: Time is running out . . .

As you race Mario up the ramps, the bonus keeps getting smaller. When it decreases to 1000 points, a warning sound begins. If the bonus reaches zero, Mario is eliminated. If Mario reaches his girlfriend, the remaining bonus is added to your score.

STEP 6: Mario's magic touch.

When you reach the top of the ramps, Donkey Kong takes the girlfriend up to the rivet screen. Mario must remove all the rivets to save her. To remove a rivet, Mario simply runs or jumps over it--and it disappears. But once the rivet is gone, Mario may only JUMP over the gap. Jump over or avoid the dangerous fireballs!

STEP 7: Chivalry is not dead.

If Mario grabs his girlfriend's hat, purse, or umbrella, he earns extra points.

STEP 8: Donkey Kong does it again!

When Mario removes the last rivet, Donkey Kong takes the girlfriend to a still higher section, so that you can try your skill on the elevators.

STEP 9: Success is a few jumps away.

When Mario makes it to the elevators, he has to jump to and from moving elevators to reach his girlfriend. When jumping on and off elevators, make sure your timing is right. If Mario jumps too soon or too late--poor Mario!

STEP 10: The fun never ends . . .

When you reach the top of the elevator screen, the game continues to cycle through the screens--but the action gets harder as you go! Keep playing until you run out of Marios.

posted by anon_mikebJuly 23, 2002 at 14:08 [ e ]

mario vs. the world

I grew up on Nintendo games, as did probably most gamers of my generation, though most of them seem to have abandoned them for the unholy trinity of role-playing/one-on-one-fighting/sports games :) Most gamers don't know how lucky they were during the era of the NES -- I certainly didn't until 1998 or so. I think of the number of people who have missed out on the pure joy of Super Mario 64 because they bought a Playstation instead, and I weep.

For me, Nintendo games are the gold standard. You mention Crash Bandicoot, Sonic, Gex, etc having no real gameplay changes in the sequels, and I can't help but consider these to be expansion packs rather than sequels when I compare them to Nintendo's equivalent series'. Why does a series get stuck in a rut like this? Does one development team generally work on a series throughout the lifetime of the series, or are there, like "A" teams, which come up with new game ideas, and "B" teams, which make new games using already proven ideas?

I'm not so sure that the expansion pack method isn't the superior one. I've been waiting for a sequel to Super Mario 64 for six long years, and I know I'd've been content with minimal gameplay changes and fifteen more levels. And perhaps some revised camera code :)

Nintendo has shown that they're willing to try this out with Majora's Mask, and that's one of the reasons I bought it even though I hated it. I wanted to support the idea of making a second game out of the shell of an A-list game like Ocarina of Time. I hope Majora's Mask sold well enough for them to consider making a habit of it.

-Jim

posted by pfJuly 25, 2002 at 19:05 [ e ]

Why games suck

Well, having made a few platform games myself I can tell you that most people just don't get how to do it well including myself. I learn more each time I do it and then compare to Nintendo and see what I'm missing.

Examples:

Although less by design, more because we ran out of time. M.C. Kids has no power-ups. Having no power-ups (or any major rewards) left us nothing to give the player as a reward for doing good except extra lives. Maybe that's not that important but we thought it was.

One cool idea I heard of, Sarugetchu 2 (Ape Escape 2) which just came out in Japan features a toy gumball machine, the kind of machine you get gumballs out of except big enough for small toys. While playing the game you can collect tokens, 5 tokens and you can get one prize out of the machine. The prizes are things like (copied from Tokyopia.com)

a bestiary, "gag" pictures, development artwork both used and unused, a full sound test, video of the game's FMV sequences, 4-panel manga, alternative shapes for one of the gadgets, riddles from Specter, the research notes of your female friend, Natsumi; the diary of the scientist, Hakase; even fortunes. There's even a comprehensive archive of "Monkey Stories," traditional Japanese and Western fairy tales retold with a monkey twist. These multipage stories are a hoot, including such forgotten classics as Saru-Taro, Monderella, and the Gold and Silver Banana. There are literally hundreds of items to unlock with at minimal expense, and cashing in chips after each mission is a joy.

That sounds like one way to solve that issue.

Another big one I noticed after making Gex is that in Gex you had a couple of powerups. One was fire breath, one was ice breath. What didn't seem to occur to us is that all enemies are killable without either powerup. That's not true in Mario. For example in Mario, fire Mario can kill many enenies he cannot step on. There are also enemies which are immune to fire. This makes Mario's play more interesting because for example your strategy for a level changes significantly if you have a certain powerup vs if you don't. That's not nearly as true in Gex. I think when I was making Gex I mostly thought of powerups as just things that made the game easier, not things that made new things possible.

Another I noticed when Crash 1 came out was how important it is to have a reward screen for the player. At the end of any Mario level or Sonic level you get rewarded. A short victory song plays and you are congratulated for a job well done. You might think "it's silly" but it feels good. It makes you proud. In Crash 1 instead you get punished. Unless you collect every box in a level, when you finish the level you have every box you missed bashed over your head showing you how much you still suck. You get no congratulations and no victory song.

Another one of my friends noticed about Mario when Mario 64 came out. Mario is fun to play with. If you made a level that was just a single plain room with nothing in it it would still be fun to play with Mario in that room. Doing triple jumps. Jumping off the wall. Running around and sliding. It's both about the move set, how well it's tuned, how well it feels and also how it's presented, the sounds of him jumping, yelping, shouting etc. That's not true for pretty much any other character.

Just recently I noticed the change the article above mentions. That each Mario changed it's basic move set. I think before I noticed, most times I mostly thought of running and jumping and what kinds of things you could put in the level to play with (ememies, vehicles, platforms...) It wouldn't have occured to me to change the basic move set. Probably because I would think the basic move set IS the character. Mario butt stomps, Sonic spins, Gex sticks to walls, Crash spins. Nintendo has not limited themselves to that idea for Mario though.

I guess my point is people get stuck in a rut because they don't really know what they are doing. They generally think if they just make the character run and jump, have good graphics and an interesting setting that's all they need.

posted by greggmanJuly 25, 2002 at 22:49 [ e ]

platformers

It might be that Donkey Kong pretty much invented the platformer. Subsequent games have needed to distinguish themselves to stand out, but Mario could get away with having a very simple set of established moves -- established personality, really -- by being there from the beginning. No recent platformer could really get away with that. They have to be complex from the start, and that establishes the personality of the character fairly rigidly.

I couldn't agree more with your paragraphs about Super Mario 64's real virtue being the controls. In fact, I'd put an essay on that very topic on my own personal slashdot:
http://goombas.org/fullview.
asp?id=48

You've already provided a pretty good summary of what I had to say, so there's not much point in going there, but I'm just a self-promotional kind of guy. You might notice that I've cribbed some features from your page that I haven't noticed anywhere else, I hope you don't mind :)

Another thing, while we're on the topic of platformers... the main character's shadow is an integral part of a 3d platform game's interface: it gives you additional information on the character's location along the horizontal axes. How do you think developers can reconcile this with the more realistic shadows in games like Doom 3 or Luigi's Mansion? Are 3d platformers doomed to either look primitive or play poorly, at least until the advent of a true 3d display?

-Jim

posted by pfJuly 31, 2002 at 17:44 [ e ]

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