Topic: Super Mario 3D All-Stars

@Bolt_Strike I had you on my ignore list, but I don't know why... I ended up finding out as I couldn't see any of your posts.

I like the buttload of Star Bits. It is super easy to get them, and on rare occasions, I had actually left a galaxy with 500+ of them, but nothing is more rewarding than getting like 50 Star Bits in a row. So satisfying...

I would totally eat those Star bit candies as a kid. Oh, who am I kidding? I'd still eat them.

@Lindhardt The purple coin comets happen every other star. Some comets don't appear until you do another comet before that. It's possible, you just have yo be patient. Nintendo wouldn't make a game where you have one chance to get a star and if you fail then whoop-de-doo guess you're out of luck.

Just be patient.

@Apportal I meant that I think you need to beat Bowser first, because when I played it on the Wii I 100% it after playing beating him once.

@Lindhardt you need to defeat Bowser to unlock the purple comets. Everything else should be unlocked for you if you have the needed stars.

It's really disappointing how little they did with the Fast Foe Comets, they basically only use it for Thwomps and Tox Boxes, which I barely even count as enemies because you can't really defeat them. That's more like a Fast Obstacles Comet than a Fast Foe. When I first heard about them I was thinking like, fast Goombas or fast Piranhas or something. There's so much more they could do with that concept.

Also I totally mopped the floor with Daredevil Bouldergeist, I remember struggling with that one a lot when I first played.

@Lindhardt Yes, Galaxy is the only of the three games where you can't get all of the Stars before you beat the game since the Purple Comets don't appear until postgame.

I don't think they're great. The saving grace is that you usually get given a turtle shell and it casts a beam of light in front you so you can see where you're facing.

Playing the games in sequence you can definitely see many ways in which Galaxy is just a much tighter implementation of the concept than 64 or Sunshine. So much thought has gone into just about every aspect of the game.

...one thought that does come to mind from my playthrough is that Bee Mario is functionally very similar to FLUDD and the Bee Mario levels are among some of the very large open world sandbox levels. The ones that are most similar to Sunshine levels. They also have "cosmic Mario races" (which are similar to the shadow Mario races in Sunshine). We know that Sunshine was released half finished and that Nintendo rarely chucks stuff away. Were levels like Honeyhive Galaxy and Gold Leaf Galaxy originally meant for Sunshine (in a reskinned state obviously)?

They even play with verticality (using the star launchers) that could have been intended for you to use the rocket nozzle and - from memory - are among the only levels to have Cataquacks (an enemy only ever found in Sunshine and Galaxy. I don't think there are even any in Galaxy 2)

...by a similar measure - were any of the Galaxies originally intended as "special stages" in Sunshine? Some like Sweet Sweet Galaxy feel like they'd fit straight into Sunshine as is.

Playing Galaxy in Handheld Mode is pretty irritating. I've wasted so many Star Bits because collecting them and shooting them both require touch screen presses and the game constantly thinks I want to shoot one when I just want to scoop up the ones that just appeared.

@StuTwo Thematically I don't think Honeyhive fits in Sunshine. I also wonder how much leftover content from Sunshine actually exists. It's more like they didn't have the time to develop it in the first place. Early beta footage only shows Bianco Hills and Delfino Plaza, which got major overhauls. So I think they just never got around to developing more than is present in the game.

@Octane Thematically it's clearly not a match. Then again Cataquacks aren't a thematic match for a honey/bee hive themed level either and they're there as a strange hold over from Sunshine.

What I'm imagining is that the level geometry for Honeyhive was originally concieved as a Sunshine level. Strip away the bee's and honey (which aren't needed if you've got FLUDD) and it's easy to imagine it being something like a tropical forest on Isle Delfino. Perhaps it was never even skinned for Sunshine in the first place and Nintendo was only playing around with abstract polygons in a test environment?

I'm pretty certain that - however rushed they may have been - Nintendo did a lot of experimentation on level design to arrive at what they ended up with in Sunshine. I'm speculating that some of that skeletal structure was later dusted down and polished up in a slightly different way for Galaxy. Of course to do that you need to have a similar move set to Mario in Sunshine... which Bee Mario gives you.

We know from Nintendo themselves that they did do something similar to what I'm suggesting they may have done here with a couple of dungeons intended for Wind Waker being reused in later Zelda games.

I kind of suspect that Sunshine had more leftover content than any other mainline Mario game precisely because they were so rushed. They clearly had some great half formed ideas but not enough time to form them all.

@StuTwo I haven't gotten to replaying gold leaf, but Honeyhive does feel like the skeleton of a Sunshine level, definitely. Well, the main island anyways. Throw in some NPCs and blue coins and you're on your way.

There are 13 removed secret stages from Sunshine (minimum), 3 in the plaza, 1 in Bianca Hills, 6 in Pinna Park (somehow), 1 in Noki Bay, 1 in Pianta Village, and 1 in Corona Mountain. So yeah, I'd expect some ended up in Galaxy. Also, we know Corona Mountain was originally a full stage with multiple missions.

@Octane We know that Sunshine at the very least was supposed to have train stations. In addition to that, we know the train originally had stops at Hotel Lacrima, Erto Rock, Battleship Island, the Flame Temple, and Lighthouse Island at one point in development, in addition to every level that made it into the final game. So that's at least 5 (+Most of Corona) cut worlds to 7 in the game (+what was left of Corona)

If Nintendo did make Galaxy 2 DOC how much would you spend for it? I would prolly spend around $30 or $40 maximum for it

The first time that I played Super Mario Sunshine on GameCube, the only course that seemed rushed, even graphically, was Corona Mountain.

@Bolt_Strike I have that problem too. I wish Nintendo would have used the second analogue stick for star bit collecting.

@Bolt_Strike That is one of the glaring problems of playing on handheld. It's still worth it in my opinion though.

@Blooper987 20 MAX. It's not one of my favorite games out there, and it's a decade old. Knowing Nintendo they'll probably charge 40 for it.

@StuTwo Well, at least it's fast. Trying to swim in 64 felt like this:

@Blooper987 ...Honestly? $60. Galaxy 2 is one of my most wanted titles of any series to have a portable option on. It's right up there with Morrowind, the Mass Effect Trilogy and the Prime Trilogy as games I want endless options to play on.

That said, I'd prefer to pay less of course.

@BlueOcean I think the courses that were left were probably amalgamations of multiple original courses, which helped fill them out. For example, I suspect the reason there's a random casino in the basement of Hotel Delfino (Sirena Beach) that otherwise doesn't fit the theming is because it was pulled from the scrapped Hotel Lacrima. Pinna Park was likely merged with Battleship Island, considering the cannons outside the park don't otherwise mesh with the level's theming, plus the park itself is on a different map than the beach for no clear reason considering how small the beach is. There's really no reason you shouldn't have been able to walk into the park without a loading screen. And Sirena Beach and Hotel Delfino were originally listed as separate locations entirely.

So yeah, it's quite likely that what happened was that the courses were merged together for the most part, creating the (mostly) larger courses of Sunshine compared to 64, but still leaving a number of visible seams that give it that rushed feel a lot of people talk about. Notably, some of the stages (Pianta Village and Gelato Beach in particular), aren't much bigger than 64 stages, while others are massive in comparison.

I agree. $€20 was the price for Wii games on Wii U, more than that would be ridiculous but, then again, it's Nintendo we are talking about.

I think the price of Galaxy 2 if offered as DLC would be $25 or $30, reasoning is:

On Wii U:

• 64 is $10
• Galaxy is $20

So that would suggest by 3D All Stars pricing that Sunshine is $30 which seems unrealistic (NES < SNES < N64 < Wii < Wii U for price so GC would likely be between N64 and Wii). Seems more likely Nintendo's logic with the pricing of 3D All Stars is something like:

• 64 is $15
• Sunshine is $20
• Galaxy is $25

@Grumblevolcano Sunshine is actually selling for around $40 these days. I guess it's right in the middle of "too old to be worth anything" and "Too new to sell for nostalgic purposes".