Random: Super Mario Sunshine's Mysterious Language Has Been Translated

Super Mario Sunshine is my favourite Mario 3D game to date.

@Banjo- i remember first time i heard the delphino plaza song, it was amazing. but mario 64 will forever be my favorite (due to nostalgia mainly)

"I… said… if… we… just… oh for crying out loud" hehe yes that's Super Mario Sunshine. Great game but there are some bad parts it has to be said.

I feel like Mario Sunshine is probably the weakest 3D Mario game but it's mostly just a matter of being blatantly unfinished. It's still pretty good but another year in development to polish up the often nonsensical physics, cut down all of the obvious filler, and improve the camera would've done it a world of good.

@silberbauer15 First time playing Super Mario 64 as a kid was an incredible experience. Exploring 3D environments, hearing Mario's footsteps as he runs and racing on the icy slide are all highlights in my memory. I think it deserves a remake. I was hoping for a stereoscopic 3D remaster for Nintendo 3DS.

“This was no easy feet. ”

I prefer difficult feet myself.

Hi ma! I’m on Nintendo Life!

That this game never got a decent sequel still baffles me.

Wow, thanks for the article, Nintendo Life! That video is fascinating. Love it. 👍👍

I like sunshine but I never actually noticed these signs with a different language

"gelato" actually looks like "gelato"

I think you mean "no easy feat," not "feet."

And this was some impressive work!

@2CPhoenix dude you’re crazy love to see the stupid Nintendo games grindset

Yay, more fake languages to learn! (I already memorized a few Splatoon scripts!)

Great find! I'm surprised no one found this before

Odyssey>Sunshine>Mario64>Galaxy2>Galaxy

Amazing, I remember wondering several times if those symbols ever meant anything or if it was just to avoid having to translate signs in various languages. I guess now I finally have an answer

On another note, as much as I always enjoyed Mario games, 64 and Sunshine were never my favourites. 64 is too much of a first 3D tryout to my taste, and Sunshine had so many moves that I ended up accidentally triggering one instead of another, even more in challenging moments ... and that camera really wasn't there to help.

Anyways ... good old Mario and his 20 year-old secrets!!

@Banjo- I played 64 first and then played sunshine before galaxy back in the day. I still think Galaxy is still my favorite Mario game but over the years sunshine starts to grow on me every time I play it. It has some jank to it but tbh Mario feels like a dream to control in Sunshine. Its legit one of my top 3 mario games now.

@Banjo-
@silberbauer15

The crazy part is that when super mario 64 first came out, the levels seemed so expansive to me. It was truly something amazing to explore every corner of.

Now, I see the levels as almost 3d displays. They seem so small in retrospect.

But holy cow, when it first came out, it truly was revolutionary.

@Arcata I'm happy to hear that. Of course, I know that it has a few moments of frustration but it's less than 1% of the game and are not required. In spite of that, I completed it 100% again on Switch. Super Mario Sunshine has an agile Mario that is a dream to control as you said, but also excellent music, beautiful graphics and brilliant and original boss battles. On top of this, it has a lot of exploration, mysteries, challenges and a darker tone in some chapters. I find Super Mario Odyssey extremely boring in comparison.

@Kiwi_Unlimited Yes, I know that feeling. You zoom out the camera and can see much of the world layout, but playing Super Mario 64 was truly immersive. There were entrances that lead to other areas within the same course, making them bigger than they looked. Using the Mario camera was also quite immersive, but don't use it for long 😅. My favourite is Lakitu's closer camera.

I would argue Super Mario Sunshine has the highest highs and the lowest lows of any 3D Mario game. At its best, it's peak platforming. At its worst... it can be incredibly frustrating. It's interesting to compare that to something like Mario 64 or Galaxy, which are consistently pretty great from beginning to end but don't have the same sense of speed as Mario Sunshine that makes traversal a lot more fun. Galaxy is one of my favorite games of all time, but Mario's movement just feels so much more stiff and slow than Sunshine.

@Not_Soos In a sense, Super Mario Sunshine can be compared to Super Mario Word, both being the peak platforming in Mario 3D and 2D, respectively.

The Galaxy games are more action-oriented, and focus on smaller areas, thus being consistent and intense. Super Mario 3D World is along those lines.

I wonder if somebody else besides me here find Super Mario Odyssey the most boring of them all?

@Banjo-

World and Sunshine do honestly have a lot of similarities, which is something I've thought before myself. Neither game has you going through the traditional snow, desert, etc. levels but rather picks one theme and sticks with it throughout the adventure. In World's case, that theme is dinosaurs, and for Sunshine, it's obviously tropical locales. They both take place on a singular island and have strange, new enemies not seen in previous Mario games and that have hardly ever shown up again. Neither game even has traditional Goombas, opting for weird variants of familiar Mushroom Kingdom baddies.

Neither game is particularly revolutionary, but more so they build upon what came before--World iterates off SMB3 and Sunshine iterates off 64. Neither was really trying to break new ground, other than being a graphical step up from their prefecessors. Both games also feature a rideable Yoshi and every level's music is remixed from the main title theme.

Lastly, Sunshine and World have less power-ups than 64 and SMB3, instead focusing in one core gimmick. For Super Mario World, your only new ability besides the cape is Yoshi, who comes in a variety of colors with different attributes. Likewise, Mario's only "power-up" in Sunshine is FLUDD and his different nozzles.

The biggest difference between the two is that World strove to be an easier, more accessible experience than what came before, whereas Sunshine is fundamentally more difficult than 64. You could argue this wasn't by design, though, and that if Nintendo actually polished the game more, Sunshine would feel less unfair and might even have been one of the easier Mario games. I think that was the whole point of FLUDD, after all--to make the platforming easier.

And I agree with you on Odyssey, although I would say it's on par with 3D World for me as being the weakest 3D Mario games. I found both of them a bit on the boring side, honestly.

@Not_Soos I also consider the Galaxy games better than Super Mario 3D World/Land. It's always a pleasure reading you. I couldn't agree more with your comment, but it's also really deep and meaningful.

@Not_Soos I kinda agree with the fact that Super Mario World was inspired on Super Mario Bros 3... but in other hand, I kinda disagree a little. Actually, Super Mario World introduced some innovations that were quite revolutionary. Contrary to SMB3, in SMW:

• we could save our game, so no need to try again from the very beginning nor using warpzones or flutes;
• it was entirely non linear, so that we can play again each stage as much as we want, whereas in SMB3, if we go to another world, their stages become unreachable;
• a sense of exploration that was greatly increased, with a lot of alternative routes, and even hidden hardcore stages that were not necessary to do, so that the game invited the player to finish it at 100%.

At that time, that was not especially common, in 16 bits platformers, even after this game was released.

On the contrary, Super Mario Sunshine, although I prefer this game than Super Mario 64, was not really revolutionary. Perhaps we could say each stage was like a part of an isle, so we could feel some unity in that world, contrary to Super Mario 64 whose stages were totally disconnected. And Super Mario Sunshine added more narration, so more linearity than Super Mario 64, because almost each Shine couldn't be gotten without getting the previous ones.

@Rudolf They say that Super Mario Sunshine is one of the first "open worlds" since you could see some levels from the others. I don't take it literally, but I have to admit that they did a great job with a spinning Ferris wheel visible from other levels, among other things.

I wouldn't say that Super Mario Sunshine is linear, but it's much more cohesive than Super Mario 64 regarding levels, episodes and the occasional storytelling. Some levels are completely different depending on the episode. Like you two said, the whole game is a location. Super Mario 64 is more of a sandbox platformer, like Super Mario Odyssey but infinitely better (in my opinion), because Odyssey is basically bland exploration, light platforming and terrible boss battles.

I agree that Super Mario World is full of innovation and he acknowledges it, but I think (I might be wrong) that he means that, from a technical point of view, Super Mario World is an evolution of Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario Sunshine is an evolution of Super Mario 64.

@Banjo- When Super Mario Sunshine was released, I did'nt really considered its open world as "revolutionary", because, just one year before, I played... Banjo-Tooie, whose world was even more cohesive in my opinion, with more interaction between each stage (and when we also consider the fact we gained new abilities, Banjo-Tooie looked like a 3D Metroid game). Nevertheless, I appreciated the cohesive world in Super Mario Sunshine though.

@Rudolf Well, Banjo-Tooie is really revolutionary in that sense. You have very good taste 😁. Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie are more ambitious as games and arguably better than anything Mario has ever done in 3D.

This is amazing, wow!

@Banjo-

Thanks, friend! Much appreciated! This is probably very controversial, but I'd say I actually have a more positive opinion of 3D Land than 3D World. 3D World was tailor-made with 4-player co-op in mind, and while it's perfectly playable as a single-player experience, it's incredibly easy. Platforms had to be much wider to accommodate four players all trying to land on them at once. The game is fun with friends, but going solo, I just think 3D World is a bit of a slog with very little in the way of challenge except the Crown World. The increased speed in the Switch version helped somewhat, but not enough to make me love it.

3D Land, while smaller in scope and with less level variety, offers a tighter, more intricate platforming experience that can be quite challenging. In some ways, it feels like Nintendo took the Mario Galaxy experience and truncated it for handhelds, which is really cool. Lots of similar ideas were brought back and expanded upon. It was also great to see the Tanooki Suit return after so many years!

But for the next console Mario, I was definitely expecting something more grandiose in scope. Mario's character model may have a lower resolution in 3D Land, but because it was closer to Galaxy and didn't have that plastic-y look of 3D World, I honestly think it's the better of the two.

I also thought the Cat Suit, was a bit of a lame addition; from a gameplay perspective, it's a useful power-up, but by that point we had already seen Mario transform into so many different animals like Flying Squirrel Mario the year before. It felt like Nintendo was out of ideas and were basing the whole identity of their newest game off the obligatory animal-of-the-month.

Maybe that's hypocritical of me to say after just talking about how I was happy to see the Tanooki Suit come back, but that was special because it had been so many years since we had seen it. There was a lot of nostalgia there for those who grew up with the classics. But the Cat Suit didn't do any favors for the "kiddie" image that permeated the Wii U at the time. Maybe I'm just a stick-in-the-mud, but I can't help but cringe whenever I hear Cat Mario say, "Mee-oww!" after grabbing the flagpole, lol.

I love the Crash Bandicoot series, and in some ways, 3D Land feels like Crash Bandicoot with a timer, navigating a linear obstacle course and overcoming difficult platforming challenges. But 3D World felt like the worst of both worlds to me, where it didn't fully commit to being either a linear platformer or an open sandbox; it was just an awkward middle ground to me, but I think Kirby somehow managed to nail it with Forgotten Land.

But yeah, 3D World and Odyssey both felt devoid of any real challenge. Not bad by any means, but not as gratifying as other Mario experiences where I felt like my skills were being sufficiently tested.

...I wish I had this much free time...

It's not a language. Call it text, or a cipher, but it's nothing more than that.

Well, being italian myself I realized I had no problems reading Dolphic... The letters were fancy, sure, but gelato... How can an Italian person miss gelato? lol

@mafalb @Octane Yep, I told him in the comments section that it's an artistic representation of the Roman alphabet and the words he got are English and Italian 😊. Besides, all the letters have rays and/or spirals, used to depict the sun since ancient times. Super Mario Sunshine is consistent.

@Not_Soos Actually, I also agree about Super Mario 3D Land. I didn't like the combination of 2D movement limitations in a 3D environment, it made some pole jumping frustrating and I thought it was a bit short, but I liked it and the stereoscopic 3D was nicely done.

When Super Mario 3D World was revealed, that I have for Wii U, I was like wtf, this is what Nintendo games have become? Graphics and gameplay looked like those platforming Mario Party mini games.
The Cat Suit is lame, but many powerups are lame in the Super Mario series. Like you said, the animal disguise of the month. They can't be compared to what came before like the Super Leaf and Cape Feather. I can't help but cringe whenever I hear Cat Mario say, "Mee-oww!" either, but not just that but Super Mario used to be a deeper, more serious IP and then it's like they made Mario some kind of clown for kids, but what kids loved back then was the cooler and more capable Mario of Super Mario World, so why do they make this now for the new kids? This is why I still haven't bought Super Mario Bros. Wonder, the only Mario game that I haven't played yet, because I think it's another ridiculous journey, although with some great ideas taken from games like Rayman Legends. I will buy it, but I think that it will disappoint me.

I only played Crash Bandicoot in the N.sane Trilogy (Xbox) and I loved it more than I thought I would. It looks beautiful and although gameplay is limited, levels are well designed for the controls and I managed to get 100%, new levels included. I find it challenging and addictive.