Mario's Vacation Goes Down the Drain

You've read far too many previews. You know Mario's on vacation. It goes wrong. He's on clean-up duty with a FLUDD water cannon strapped to his back. There's some "terminator" Mario running about Delfino Island like he owns the place, causing the Pianta natives to wobble their gigantic noses in disgust. You know Mario's rescuing "shine sprites" to lighten up the island. You've seen the video footage. Heck, you might have even played the import copy. What you need to know is, "How big's the game, where's Luigi, where's Wario, where's Waluigi, and do I really have to rescue the princess again?" Oh, and "is this Miyamoto masterpiece any good?"

The answer to those questions are, in order, "Quite large, he's not in it, he's not in it, he's not in it, yes you do," and "most certainly; the game's phenomenal." Firstly, if you're looking for the differences between the Japanese and US games, here's the score: The title screen has a different layout. "Montes" are called "Piantas" (the large-nosed islanders). "Mares" are called "Nokis" (the small-nosed islanders). When you die in mid-level, it says "Too Bad!" instead of "Miss!" There are extra pieces of fruit scattered about the main "hub" level called Delfino Plaza, and some levels have different names. So there's nothing too major; except for the terrible removal of the unintentionally hilarious "Shine Get!" after each successful mission, which is replaced with the bizarrely boring "Shine." Strike one for whatever suit at Nintendo America decreed that plan. It's almost as damaging to the cool factor of their major mascots as those Donkey Kong 64 print advertisements.

But, you're not here to read about nitpicking. Instead, why not start slavering at the prospect of an all-new, and mostly awesome, Mario adventure? After the initially amusing introduction, you're thrust into the stumpy body of everybody's favorite fluffy-moustache quivering plumber. He's got a short-sleeve shirt on, and he's here to spray countless gallons of water over oozing goop that's seeping across the world. Even at the game's beginning, everything's so damn colorful, chunky, solid, and believable, that any thoughts of checking the nearby palm trees for polygonal seams (there aren't any) are washed away faster than the gunk off a Piranha Plant. Which is one of your first tasks, incidentally.

I had absolutely no qualms about the cute, Crayola-daubed landscapes. I wasn't grumbling about the blurry textures when you're zoomed right in and staring at a rock face. But then, I'm not a jaded hack. So marvelous is this game to look at, so fabulous are the water effects, and so far can you see into the distance, that you'll sit back, scratch your head, and wonder how all of this is chugging around at a decent framerate. But only for a second, because there's moves to learn, gasps of joy to utter, and hopelessly addicting gameplay to dive into again, and again.

Microsoft's Blinx the cat may already be copying Luigi's vacuuming plan of action; but this feline's motion physics aren't nearly as fluid as Mario's. You quite simply have to control Mario for half an hour to fully appreciate just how spot-on his movement is. There's no lag. Every move can be executed the first time (having problems with the Side Somersault? That's your ineptitude; not the plumbers). What's more, there are literally hundreds of linked airborne "move combos" that can turn the stages into limitless playgrounds.

Mario gets fruity.
Indeed, learning to side-somersault, wall-kick, reverse-hover, and land on an outcrop the programmers thought was high enough can lead you to enter or complete stages out of order. You haven't played Super Mario Sunshine until you've run and sprayed water from your nozzle, slide stomach first along the ground, leapt up onto a wall, bounced off it, and hovered onto the building's roof. While second-rate developers are loading up their increasingly lame "animal avatars" with 30-plus power-ups that haven't been completely thought out or developed, Nintendo once again shows us how it's done: Take one character, round him out with four different nozzles, and create dozens of moves around each similar device to create countless variations on hovering, Turboing, squirting, and rocketing. That's the pinnacle of immersive gameplay in the year 2002 right there.