Direct Mario 64 sequel, tropical playground to scrub with the FLUDD water pack. Wild idea, vertiginous gameplay and tough secret stages to crack. Not the purity of its forebear but a genuine invention. Nintendo's 3D platform peak on the console.
Your verdict
Category
Platformer1 player3+
Description
Mario cleans Delfino island and battles Shadow Mario with his FLUDD in this Nintendo GameCube Super Mario Sunshine. Published by Nintendo, released in South Korea in October 2002. 3D platformer with Mario using FLUDD to clean and fly, varied Delfino missions.
Super Mario Sunshine review
MAX
Art direction
★★★★★
"Iconic"
MAX
Music
★★★★★
"Legendary"
2/5
Story
★★★★★
"Classic"
Blazing sun, turquoise waters and pastel façades: Isle Delfino breathes holidays and overflows with light-soaked colour. FLUDD's water jets and their reflections add an unprecedented visual freshness to the plumber's world. This tropical setting, joyful and luminous, keeps an irresistible summer charm.
Steel drums, marimbas and bossa-nova accents bathe Isle Delfino in an irresistible summer warmth. The Delfino Plaza theme, sunny and laid-back, makes you want to stroll as much as to jump. This tropical interlude, signed Koji Kondo and Shinobu Tanaka, remains a breath of fresh air in the Mario universe.
Gameplay
"Masterful"
Cleaning, hovering and bounding with the FLUDD water pack adds an exhilarating layer of mobility to the platforming: metering your jets to stay airborne becomes a joy in itself. The secret levels, stripped of the gadget, recall the purity of the jump. Its camera and a few difficulty spikes have aged, but the inventiveness of the movement still shines.
Fun
"From the very first seconds"
Armed with a water-jet backpack, Mario cleans up a sun-drenched island, jumping, hovering and sliding through a riot of tropical colour. The aerial control the FLUDD grants opens up exhilarating acrobatics and joyful exploration. Bright, inventive and bursting with sunshine, this 3D platformer breathes freedom and summery good cheer.
Addictiveness
"Obsessive"
Scrubbing away graffiti, spotting a well-hidden Shine and mastering the FLUDD's JET nozzle chains short objectives with the pure joy of movement, never a dull moment. Each Shine unlocks fresh challenges and secrets, and "just one more Shine" quickly becomes the rule. A handful of demanding missions frustrate, but this sun-drenched platformer keeps a freshness and generosity that pull you right in.
The Korean edition of Super Mario Sunshine is one of the rarest Nintendo Korea localizations ever distributed on GameCube. Its collector value is very high: an extremely limited local print run and a configuration never reproduced outside the Korean market for this cult 3D Mario.
Is Super Mario Sunshine still worth playing in 2026?
A tropical sequel to Super Mario 64, Sunshine introduces the FLUDD, a water accessory that lets Mario hover, propel and clean Isle Delfino spoiled by a mysterious pollution. The sunny levels, the holiday universe and the acrobatic FLUDDless challenges have become cult. More demanding than its elder and at times technically imperfect, the title keeps a unique playful identity and remains an atypical but essential 3D Mario. For anyone exploring the diversity of the saga, a strong recommendation without hesitation today truly here.
