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This one is a bit more dark than my previous posts. It's probably even more profoundly abstract in what I learned from it. Mario Sunshine though...Hoooh Boy here was a game that just sent me up the wall in the weirdest ways. Like a lot of other Nintendo titles though it had some subtle yet impacting things being held over my head. Even now I remember them well because I was just that one weird kid on the block you didn't want to sit next to at recess. Well! Let's dive right in and get wet!\n\nWhat Super Mario Sunshine Taught Me\n\n\n- Injustice Is Everywhere. Oh also Racism. -\n\nIt's that time again to bring some of you not familiar with the game a bit up to speed. Mario is on a plane, he's heading to an island and you know somehow that whatever great things he has in mind its just. not. going. to. happen.\n\nSo of course the moment you get off the plane you find out that the runway has been taken over by a sentient pink pile of...semen? I used to ponder way too much about what the hell those things were seriously made of. Also the...jellyfish. No really, they had a different form and consistency that completely did not match up with- The point...I am somehow getting around...is that as Mario I put that mound of living human basting to rest! Score one for the hero! Theeeen the police got to me.\n\nFor a moment I thought I spent the day at Gamestop buying the wrong game because suddenly I'm finding Mario in a void of complete darkness in what I am assuming is a courtroom for hell. Turns out there seems to be a conviction against Mario causing Chaos. Not only Chaos but just totally screwing every little thing up for every single person on the island you're currently on. Alright, I'll give you that much. That's a big and tall comment on the one guy who has saved the day for god knows how many years now.\n\nNow let's see the evidence that will surely back these claims. What's that? A couple statements issued by witnesses who were not even present for the attending court session? A single picture made from various descripti- Wait hold up. Why the fuck is Mario Blue on that? I mean that, he looks like he went against Mister Wonka's orders and decided to try some dinner gum. Did the artist run out of colors and paint before they could start and blue was the only thing they could find? Suddenly Princess Peach who was present calls out an objection.\n\nThe judge quickly overrules and full on convicts Mario. End of story. You have just been incarcerated. Let's ignore the obvious facts like how Mario had not even been on the island for the previous week all the horror was going on. I want to talk about the other collar tugging thing.\n\nAs players and veterans of Super Mario Sunshine we know that one of the main antagonists happened to be a mysterious blue shape shifter that happened to take on the form of mario. Just a really terrifying in-human red eye glowing translucent version of Mario. HARD TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE.\nYet even with that blaring over sight of limited motives, past spotless records and a first time visit to the locale, Mario is still sent to Jail and forced to do community service for the entire island. This is all because he happened to be a slight pastier and colored version of the guilty suspect.\nYou know...we have a certain word for that. It's on the tip of my tongue...oh yeah. It's called being Racist.\n\nNot even three minutes into the tropical paradise I was promised and I've already learned there is hard core racism and illegal unfair due practice of prosecution in the Mario universe. WELCOME TO SUPER MARIO SUNSHINE! That fact is even more present just knowing that Mario and princess peach are the ONLY humans on the entire island. You are the minority. That would be like me calling out my Middle Eastern-ish mailman as a terrorist because 9-11 is still relevant.\n\nNo matter how fun the idea seems it's just fucking hateful. The message was all too clear to me at that point. In many other games I've been used to the player being the un-sung hero, I've also seen the kind being compared to the villain. I think Super Mario Sunshine was the first for me however that full on screamed Hate Crime. I've even seen the cliche of the good guys being mistaken for the bad but never because they looked similar yet so obviously different. Wrong place at the wrong time is one thing but I just can't get over that complete certainty a judge with such hilariously limited information just totally looked Mario up and down and said \" Yep. Guilty. \" and totally bi-passed so many human rights and freedoms.\n\nI was looking forward to that vacation by the way. Look, we all know what we were getting ourselves into when we saw the first trailers for Sunshine. Nintendo just had this dark magic that made any idea they seemed to throw at us stick. Even the thought of meticulously cleaning streets with a water hose. Who the hell thought that was a great idea? I did and so did everyone else. When I got through that intro movie though I forgot that I wanted to do any good deeds because holy shit all that stuff in the welcome movie looked like a whole lot of fun. Mario totally deserved to have that fun. I'm not only cleaning up the pavement corner but I'm a convicted felon with a record now for a crime I didn't commit. The hell Nintendo.\n\nI did what was right though and cleared the rest of that island and all the horrible things to go along with it from Giant Polluting Squids to mechanized disasters. I did damn over time even cleaning out alternate pocket universes to prove myself. Of course eventually we all find out that -Gasp- Bowser was behind it all! What is seriously up with that guy? He's like the ultimate form of that one guy who just makes the party awkward. He did that too by the way, he found a way to ruin every single Mario Party. All those years though, all of it lead up to his ultimate goal of shitting over one single vacation.\n\nI toppled over him though! I tilted that tub of his and brought back the final Shine Sprite that brought peace and harmony back to the island! You see, I was the hero again!....not quite. Even when I realized I'd triumphed over the bad guys and even proven halfway through the game who the culprit was...I was still on conviction way. I still belonged in Prison and you know Mario would still go back at the end of the day to that same prison.\n\nI'd done everything right yet my only reward in the end was fixing the damage the real bad guys did. They got off easy and still end up having a vacation of their own. Where the hell is the justice? Sure Mario got like...two or three clips showing him having what was most likely five minutes left of time for him to enjoy anything else of his vacation but that's just not enough. The man wasn't even apologized to for the wrongful jailing.\n\nThere were no public statements of apologies, no admittances of error. Again, Where the hell was the justice? Even when Mario got his vacation it was only because he'd literally cleaned every inch of that island, the neighboring islands and beyond. There was no justice. It's funny how small an idea can ring so loudly a presence throughout a game.\n\nIn any other Super Mario Brothers title you just did what was right and that was that. Super Mario Sunshine told me that what I was doing was right but I was only doing it because I was the only guy that I could be. It's messed up and it actually opened my eyes to a great deal in injustice that is so subtle to trickle down our every day lives.\n\nI could go into lists upon lists of men and women who faced the same standing as Mario only that would be a way too long set of lists and I promise you none of those people got off with simple community service or a vacation afterwards. It may seem dark but to a ten year old who was constantly sheltered from the bad things in the world..it helps you grasp others own insecurities.\n\nThe worst kind of reason I was picked on in school was because I was a nerd. I mean come on that's the most tame when all the peers around you don't know how to hate each other for not having the same pigment or belong to the same country. Once I'd hit middle school I was facing that same circumstance like Mario. A minority Caucasian student of a group so small. You would be amazed how insecure we all are when we're slowly becoming adults. I had my fights, I'd been ridiculed for my color and once even been shot at with no provocation. The hell do you get a gun in 6'th grade?\n\nIt's the oddest thing saying with a straight face that Super Mario Sunshine helped me already cope with the idea of abuse, mistreatment and prejudice. The authorities didn't care, the school staff didn't care, and every day I expected to either be beaten senseless by my peers or just straight up killed. The idea was already firmly implanted in my head of what to expect though. All the way back in 2001 when I was only a nerd and not a ghost. You can read about racism, watch movies about it, even see it, but somehow when it enters your own little world of escape the impact and presence of it is illuminated all around you. Call it whatever you want. A cartoonish misunderstanding taken too far or me being too cynical as a kid but The message made me one spiteful bad ass to the threat that eventually came. Still here ain't I?\n\nAs for what happened to Mario after everything that went down on the Island Delfino, I have no flipping idea... but I want to imagine that Mario hit a ground pound block so hard that it sunk all their ignorant asses into the sea.\n\nThat's a perfectly healthy and normal kind of thought right?\n\n- Think Beyond Creativity -\n\nSuper Mario Sunshine even with the idea of it being a cleaning simulator just had this gift with the way it handled and the way it felt. While I'm glad the water Pack you utilized did not become the next Navi, I was a bit surprised how additively unique and smooth you could be with the water pump. Where most games of the time were still just handing players a set of jingling keys, Mario Sunshine gave you a bent one that you could fashion into a shiv.\n\nOkay that was giving off a way too dark overtone, let me re word that. I highly doubt there were really diverse and unique ways to utilize the tools you were given in Mario Sunshine. It was straight forward if anything, but the way everything felt it almost seemed like you were silently being begged to do something insane or outside the ordinary with it. The water physics wasn't the best either but it gave you ways to exploit the system too.\n\nDid you even know that there is a way to conserve twice as much of your water yet somehow being able to expel the same amount? That's thinking creative because Super Mario Sunshine was just crying out for it. All Nintendo games are. I used rocket attachments when I should not have, defied the suggested and sometimes expected paths in favor of alternative routes. I spit in the eyes of every and all programmers as well as level designers that made that game.\n\nAll it took was the right game with the right amount of push to stop thinking creatively and start thinking beyond. They say most kids are more smart than we give them credit for. Yeah well I was considered special needs so let me have this triumph. I was bypassing challenging puzzles because I had found the right distance to jump and how long to hold the control stick in what direction. I WAS A GOD! Well maybe not that much but I'd like to think I did a bit better than I had in previous games before it.\n\nI was just so used to all the games giving players what they wanted but not exactly giving them the ability to do more with what they had. There were the limits. It's all exploitation to be sure but when you're not used to getting more, suddenly you just can't get enough of the accomplishment you somehow bypassed the system and did something others didn't think of. Only you.\n\nThis sort of comes full back on to how I learned to pat myself on the back instead of expecting, even needing it from others. I wasn't patting myself though, I was shaking my goddamn hand at the simplest accomplishment. All it took was a different way of thinking.\n\n- Futility Doesn't Mean You Give Up -\n\nYou ever play a game long enough where every action becomes tedious and every little accomplishments starts to boil down into some sort of singular win. Like once you've heard it after so long you think the first goody you got was the only one. Eventually I hit that path with Super Mario Sunshine. It's those blue coins and Shine Sprites. Couple those both with everyone blaming you for their troubles and you start to say \" You know what fuck this island. \"\n\nI think a bit of my life had been straying that way too for awhile. I didn't have a bad life and when you're born in the First world let me tell you somethin' : You've already won. You have no idea. Still, I reached this point just like in the game where I was bored in the way everything starts to melt together and you feel like nothing is ever going to be accomplished. That's a dark place to be in and some days I'm pretty sure I'm still there, just in a different way.\n\nEven knowing that none of these soulless digital bastards had anything more to say than \" I'm selling Fruit. Fruit. \" or \" You did this to me!!!!! \" I couldn't help but feel like I wanted them to say some more encouraging things to me. It was futility, man. You're doing your best to make things right and no one is helping you, no one wants to help you. You're trying harder to be something or be somebody, anybody and you're still being sent to jail because you're just you.\n\nMan Super Mario Sunshine...I'm making you a downer. I didn't quit there though. I mean sure there were a few other contributing factors to my little burn out like getting just about everything not even before I made it halfway through the game ( thank you for the pacing fellas ) but I wanted to see things through. That's something that is hard for some people to stomach. Seeing things through. Tough critics and an even tougher audience of people that are raised on the notions different means wrong.\n\nWhen you get discouraged it is so simple to just stop. You feel bad, you feel useless, you feel alone. Even a video game can't take away that loneliness. Sometimes it just reminds you about it and sends it full circle. The thing is though that you don't stop. You're not supposed to stop. If you stopped then the adventure ended there and you just proved that the majority was right and that numbers mean everything. I make it sound spiteful but really it's empowering.\n\nI said screw you to Delfino and went for every single Shine Sprite because words are only just but I was me. So I beat the game, I sat there with a smirk on my face knowing full well I'd beaten a game and how that didn't matter at all. I was just one of every one else trapped in his or her own world. If they had wanted to they could say I wouldn't beat it, or they could say anything they liked. By the end of Super Mario Sunshine I had already reached the conclusion that no matter how many voices speak against you, family or friends, strangers and beyond...if you know you can do it or know it's right then you do it. You never know until you try otherwise you're just that guy sitting in jail watching a dirty island only growing dirtier. ", "description_bbcode_parsed": "Now I'm going to be straight to the point with you all this round. This one is a bit more dark than my previous posts. It's probably even more profoundly abstract in what I learned from it. Mario Sunshine though...Hoooh Boy here was a game that just sent me up the wall in the weirdest ways. Like a lot of other Nintendo titles though it had some subtle yet impacting things being held over my head. Even now I remember them well because I was just that one weird kid on the block you didn't want to sit next to at recess. Well! Let's dive right in and get wet!

What Super Mario Sunshine Taught Me


- Injustice Is Everywhere. Oh also Racism. -

It's that time again to bring some of you not familiar with the game a bit up to speed. Mario is on a plane, he's heading to an island and you know somehow that whatever great things he has in mind its just. not. going. to. happen.

So of course the moment you get off the plane you find out that the runway has been taken over by a sentient pink pile of...semen? I used to ponder way too much about what the hell those things were seriously made of. Also the...jellyfish. No really, they had a different form and consistency that completely did not match up with- The point...I am somehow getting around...is that as Mario I put that mound of living human basting to rest! Score one for the hero! Theeeen the police got to me.

For a moment I thought I spent the day at Gamestop buying the wrong game because suddenly I'm finding Mario in a void of complete darkness in what I am assuming is a courtroom for hell. Turns out there seems to be a conviction against Mario causing Chaos. Not only Chaos but just totally screwing every little thing up for every single person on the island you're currently on. Alright, I'll give you that much. That's a big and tall comment on the one guy who has saved the day for god knows how many years now.

Now let's see the evidence that will surely back these claims. What's that? A couple statements issued by witnesses who were not even present for the attending court session? A single picture made from various descripti- Wait hold up. Why the fuck is Mario Blue on that? I mean that, he looks like he went against Mister Wonka's orders and decided to try some dinner gum. Did the artist run out of colors and paint before they could start and blue was the only thing they could find? Suddenly Princess Peach who was present calls out an objection.

The judge quickly overrules and full on convicts Mario. End of story. You have just been incarcerated. Let's ignore the obvious facts like how Mario had not even been on the island for the previous week all the horror was going on. I want to talk about the other collar tugging thing.

As players and veterans of Super Mario Sunshine we know that one of the main antagonists happened to be a mysterious blue shape shifter that happened to take on the form of mario. Just a really terrifying in-human red eye glowing translucent version of Mario. HARD TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE.
Yet even with that blaring over sight of limited motives, past spotless records and a first time visit to the locale, Mario is still sent to Jail and forced to do community service for the entire island. This is all because he happened to be a slight pastier and colored version of the guilty suspect.
You know...we have a certain word for that. It's on the tip of my tongue...oh yeah. It's called being Racist.

Not even three minutes into the tropical paradise I was promised and I've already learned there is hard core racism and illegal unfair due practice of prosecution in the Mario universe. WELCOME TO SUPER MARIO SUNSHINE! That fact is even more present just knowing that Mario and princess peach are the ONLY humans on the entire island. You are the minority. That would be like me calling out my Middle Eastern-ish mailman as a terrorist because 9-11 is still relevant.

No matter how fun the idea seems it's just fucking hateful. The message was all too clear to me at that point. In many other games I've been used to the player being the un-sung hero, I've also seen the kind being compared to the villain. I think Super Mario Sunshine was the first for me however that full on screamed Hate Crime. I've even seen the cliche of the good guys being mistaken for the bad but never because they looked similar yet so obviously different. Wrong place at the wrong time is one thing but I just can't get over that complete certainty a judge with such hilariously limited information just totally looked Mario up and down and said " Yep. Guilty. " and totally bi-passed so many human rights and freedoms.

I was looking forward to that vacation by the way. Look, we all know what we were getting ourselves into when we saw the first trailers for Sunshine. Nintendo just had this dark magic that made any idea they seemed to throw at us stick. Even the thought of meticulously cleaning streets with a water hose. Who the hell thought that was a great idea? I did and so did everyone else. When I got through that intro movie though I forgot that I wanted to do any good deeds because holy shit all that stuff in the welcome movie looked like a whole lot of fun. Mario totally deserved to have that fun. I'm not only cleaning up the pavement corner but I'm a convicted felon with a record now for a crime I didn't commit. The hell Nintendo.

I did what was right though and cleared the rest of that island and all the horrible things to go along with it from Giant Polluting Squids to mechanized disasters. I did damn over time even cleaning out alternate pocket universes to prove myself. Of course eventually we all find out that -Gasp- Bowser was behind it all! What is seriously up with that guy? He's like the ultimate form of that one guy who just makes the party awkward. He did that too by the way, he found a way to ruin every single Mario Party. All those years though, all of it lead up to his ultimate goal of shitting over one single vacation.

I toppled over him though! I tilted that tub of his and brought back the final Shine Sprite that brought peace and harmony back to the island! You see, I was the hero again!....not quite. Even when I realized I'd triumphed over the bad guys and even proven halfway through the game who the culprit was...I was still on conviction way. I still belonged in Prison and you know Mario would still go back at the end of the day to that same prison.

I'd done everything right yet my only reward in the end was fixing the damage the real bad guys did. They got off easy and still end up having a vacation of their own. Where the hell is the justice? Sure Mario got like...two or three clips showing him having what was most likely five minutes left of time for him to enjoy anything else of his vacation but that's just not enough. The man wasn't even apologized to for the wrongful jailing.

There were no public statements of apologies, no admittances of error. Again, Where the hell was the justice? Even when Mario got his vacation it was only because he'd literally cleaned every inch of that island, the neighboring islands and beyond. There was no justice. It's funny how small an idea can ring so loudly a presence throughout a game.

In any other Super Mario Brothers title you just did what was right and that was that. Super Mario Sunshine told me that what I was doing was right but I was only doing it because I was the only guy that I could be. It's messed up and it actually opened my eyes to a great deal in injustice that is so subtle to trickle down our every day lives.

I could go into lists upon lists of men and women who faced the same standing as Mario only that would be a way too long set of lists and I promise you none of those people got off with simple community service or a vacation afterwards. It may seem dark but to a ten year old who was constantly sheltered from the bad things in the world..it helps you grasp others own insecurities.

The worst kind of reason I was picked on in school was because I was a nerd. I mean come on that's the most tame when all the peers around you don't know how to hate each other for not having the same pigment or belong to the same country. Once I'd hit middle school I was facing that same circumstance like Mario. A minority Caucasian student of a group so small. You would be amazed how insecure we all are when we're slowly becoming adults. I had my fights, I'd been ridiculed for my color and once even been shot at with no provocation. The hell do you get a gun in 6'th grade?

It's the oddest thing saying with a straight face that Super Mario Sunshine helped me already cope with the idea of abuse, mistreatment and prejudice. The authorities didn't care, the school staff didn't care, and every day I expected to either be beaten senseless by my peers or just straight up killed. The idea was already firmly implanted in my head of what to expect though. All the way back in 2001 when I was only a nerd and not a ghost. You can read about racism, watch movies about it, even see it, but somehow when it enters your own little world of escape the impact and presence of it is illuminated all around you. Call it whatever you want. A cartoonish misunderstanding taken too far or me being too cynical as a kid but The message made me one spiteful bad ass to the threat that eventually came. Still here ain't I?

As for what happened to Mario after everything that went down on the Island Delfino, I have no flipping idea... but I want to imagine that Mario hit a ground pound block so hard that it sunk all their ignorant asses into the sea.

That's a perfectly healthy and normal kind of thought right?

- Think Beyond Creativity -

Super Mario Sunshine even with the idea of it being a cleaning simulator just had this gift with the way it handled and the way it felt. While I'm glad the water Pack you utilized did not become the next Navi, I was a bit surprised how additively unique and smooth you could be with the water pump. Where most games of the time were still just handing players a set of jingling keys, Mario Sunshine gave you a bent one that you could fashion into a shiv.

Okay that was giving off a way too dark overtone, let me re word that. I highly doubt there were really diverse and unique ways to utilize the tools you were given in Mario Sunshine. It was straight forward if anything, but the way everything felt it almost seemed like you were silently being begged to do something insane or outside the ordinary with it. The water physics wasn't the best either but it gave you ways to exploit the system too.

Did you even know that there is a way to conserve twice as much of your water yet somehow being able to expel the same amount? That's thinking creative because Super Mario Sunshine was just crying out for it. All Nintendo games are. I used rocket attachments when I should not have, defied the suggested and sometimes expected paths in favor of alternative routes. I spit in the eyes of every and all programmers as well as level designers that made that game.

All it took was the right game with the right amount of push to stop thinking creatively and start thinking beyond. They say most kids are more smart than we give them credit for. Yeah well I was considered special needs so let me have this triumph. I was bypassing challenging puzzles because I had found the right distance to jump and how long to hold the control stick in what direction. I WAS A GOD! Well maybe not that much but I'd like to think I did a bit better than I had in previous games before it.

I was just so used to all the games giving players what they wanted but not exactly giving them the ability to do more with what they had. There were the limits. It's all exploitation to be sure but when you're not used to getting more, suddenly you just can't get enough of the accomplishment you somehow bypassed the system and did something others didn't think of. Only you.

This sort of comes full back on to how I learned to pat myself on the back instead of expecting, even needing it from others. I wasn't patting myself though, I was shaking my goddamn hand at the simplest accomplishment. All it took was a different way of thinking.

- Futility Doesn't Mean You Give Up -

You ever play a game long enough where every action becomes tedious and every little accomplishments starts to boil down into some sort of singular win. Like once you've heard it after so long you think the first goody you got was the only one. Eventually I hit that path with Super Mario Sunshine. It's those blue coins and Shine Sprites. Couple those both with everyone blaming you for their troubles and you start to say " You know what fuck this island. "

I think a bit of my life had been straying that way too for awhile. I didn't have a bad life and when you're born in the First world let me tell you somethin' : You've already won. You have no idea. Still, I reached this point just like in the game where I was bored in the way everything starts to melt together and you feel like nothing is ever going to be accomplished. That's a dark place to be in and some days I'm pretty sure I'm still there, just in a different way.

Even knowing that none of these soulless digital bastards had anything more to say than " I'm selling Fruit. Fruit. " or " You did this to me!!!!! " I couldn't help but feel like I wanted them to say some more encouraging things to me. It was futility, man. You're doing your best to make things right and no one is helping you, no one wants to help you. You're trying harder to be something or be somebody, anybody and you're still being sent to jail because you're just you.

Man Super Mario Sunshine...I'm making you a downer. I didn't quit there though. I mean sure there were a few other contributing factors to my little burn out like getting just about everything not even before I made it halfway through the game ( thank you for the pacing fellas ) but I wanted to see things through. That's something that is hard for some people to stomach. Seeing things through. Tough critics and an even tougher audience of people that are raised on the notions different means wrong.

When you get discouraged it is so simple to just stop. You feel bad, you feel useless, you feel alone. Even a video game can't take away that loneliness. Sometimes it just reminds you about it and sends it full circle. The thing is though that you don't stop. You're not supposed to stop. If you stopped then the adventure ended there and you just proved that the majority was right and that numbers mean everything. I make it sound spiteful but really it's empowering.

I said screw you to Delfino and went for every single Shine Sprite because words are only just but I was me. So I beat the game, I sat there with a smirk on my face knowing full well I'd beaten a game and how that didn't matter at all. I was just one of every one else trapped in his or her own world. If they had wanted to they could say I wouldn't beat it, or they could say anything they liked. By the end of Super Mario Sunshine I had already reached the conclusion that no matter how many voices speak against you, family or friends, strangers and beyond...if you know you can do it or know it's right then you do it. You never know until you try otherwise you're just that guy sitting in jail watching a dirty island only growing dirtier. ", "writing": "", "writing_bbcode_parsed": "", "pools_count": 0, "title": "What Pikmin 1 & 2 Taught Me As A Kid", "deleted": "f", "public": "t", "mimetype": "image/png", "pagecount": "1", "rating_id": "0", "rating_name": "General", "ratings": [], "submission_type_id": "1", "type_name": "Picture/Pinup", "guest_block": "f", "friends_only": "f", "comments_count": "3", "views": "59" }