Trivia / Super Mario Sunshine

• Acting for Two:
  • Charles Martinet, in addition to voicing Mario, voiced the Isle Delfino commercial at the beginning of the game, a voice role he didn't even remember having until he replayed the game!
  • Jen Taylor voices both Peach and the Toads (besides Toadsworth).
  • Dolores Rogers voices Bowser Jr. and the female Piantas.
  • Scott Burns voices Bowser, Toadsworth and the male Piantas, as well various other NPCs. Toadsworth and the male Piantas were nearly universally assumed by fans for years to be voiced by Charles Martinet (thanks to the game's credits not actually specifying which voice actors voiced which characters), but Scott Burns ended up confirming he was the actual voice behind the characters in an email with a fan in 2021, nearly two decades after the game's initial release.
• Blooper:
  • During their flight, Mario and company watch a video that gives them an overview of Isle Delfino. At one point in the video, Mario and FLUDD can be seen standing in Bianco Hills, despite the fact that they haven't been there yet.
  • In the Japanese version, the actor who voices the prosecutor in the court cutscene mispronounces "Shine" as "Shrine" and says "Indeed, how can one not be of where of what is going on?" instead of "aware".
  • When FLUDD examines Mario, a list of games that Mario appeared in shows up in the corner of the screen. Mario Kart is incorrectly spelled “Mario Kirt”.
• Christmas Rushed: The game was only in development for about 18 months, a shorter development cycle than its predecessor Super Mario 64 which was in development for 21 months. The shortened development time was due to two main factors: the development of Nintendo's at-the-time new R&D system, and the need to release the game by summer partly due to Sunshine's vacation theming and partly due to a scarce library and demand for the Nintendo GameCube. This is considered to be the root of Sunshine's lower level count compared to 64 and lack of polish in some areas such as the 30 FPS framerate, and Shigeru Miyamoto believed at the time that the game could have been more interesting if it had more development time.
• Colbert Bump: This game introduced many Westerners to durians, though their lack of availability in Western grocery stores (due to their rapid spoiling, sensitivity to freezing, and infamously pungent odor making importing them difficult) means most such players never got their hands on these fruits. Due to the durians' terrible reputation in its native Asia, however, perhaps that's for the best.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: The Bradygames guide is a mess. Not only do they call all the enemies by their Japanese names (or the internal filenames in some cases), they don't even spell them consistently. They also misspell durian as "dorian," apparently unaware that it's a real fruit.
• Creator Backlash: Shigeru Miyamoto feels the game was held back from its full potential due to its condensed development cycle. Nintendo also seems to share his disappointment with the game as at E3 2007 they promoted Super Mario Galaxy as "the true successor to Super Mario 64".
• Creator's Favorite Episode: On the flip-side, Charles Martinet listed Sunshine as one of his favorite Mario games in a 2022 interview, and has even called it "underrated" at a convention.
• Development Gag: "Delfino" is Italian for "Dolphin", the development name of the Nintendo GameCube.
• Dummied Out:
  • Only in the original Japanese release does there exist text files for what seem to be a train station system, with a list of harbors leading to levels, even ones that aren't part of the final game at all. The text for what could be a messaging tree also includes buying tickets and stamps.
  • The game contains functional code for another goop variant. This variant acts as quicksand that drags down Mario while dealing a lot of damage over a short period of time.
• Early Draft Tie-In: Almost all Yoshi-related merchandise for the game features a Green Yoshi. Green Yoshi can't normally be found as Yoshi only turn green right before they disappear. However, renders for the game feature a green Yoshi, because in development Yoshi were able to be green.
• First Appearance: Of Bowser Jr./Shadow Mario, Petey Piranha, Toadsworth, Gooper Blooper, as well as species such as the Piantas, the Nokis, and the Cataquacks.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: For nearly two decades, Sunshine didn't see any kind of re-release, so the original release was the only way to legally play it. In 2020, it finally got re-released as a part of Super Mario 3D All-Stars. However, even this release was doomed to fall victim to this, being announced as a limited-run release with no further copies getting manufactured or sold after March 31, 2021.
• Life Imitates Art: F.L.U.D.D.'s Hover Nozzle feature is eerily similar to the real-life water-propelled jetpacks◊ that would eventually come into being well after the game's conception.
• No Dub for You: In the Japanese version, the pre-rendered cutscenes are in English with Japanese subtitles. Funny enough, it's a slightly different audio track from the English version, less polished in places.
• What Could Have Been: There were several things that were considered for this game:
  • The game, as unveiled, ran at 60FPS, but with significantly lower-detail graphics. The final game runs at 30FPS though the 60 FPS functionality was only Dummied Out; it's possible to raise the framerate cap to 60 FPS with the use of a few simple cheat codes, which is useful for playing the game on emulators, though the fact that the game was coded around the lower framerate means that bumping it up introduces a number of glitches that aren't otherwise present.
  • Mario was originally going to both spread and wash away paint, but this was scrapped due to technical limitations.
  • F.L.U.D.D. was considered as a water gun, but this was scrapped due to the potential implications of violence.
  • The Spaceworld 2001 trailer shows all the Piantas as blue, a human inhabiting Delfino Plaza, enemies walking around the Hub Level, a slimmer F.L.U.D.D., a completely different water supply counter, a monster named Hinokuri (while Dummied Out, he can still be found in the test level accessible by hacking), and Sol Coins that were originally intended as currency for a scrapped train system. A text file left over in the Japanese version of the game called "station.bmg" contains dialogue trees for a train transportation system. Mario would buy tickets using Sol Coins and the train would take him to any of the levels or areas on the island. The train system's list of locations and an old level list both contain the following unused locations:
    • Hotel Lacrima
    • Etro Rock
    • Lighthouse Island
    • Island Harbor
    • Fire Shrine
    • Battleship Island
  • There are dummied out textures of Ricco Harbor still in the game, including the unused Blooper designs.
  • The E3 2002 trailer had, likewise:
    • A completely different life counter.
    • No pineapple/warp goop in the pipe.
    • Bouncing Petey Piranha heads.
    • Gooper Blooper in the trailer is more black-blue as opposed to his primarily white coloration in the retail game.
    • Yoshi only died when he touched water.
  • In the files for the Japanese version of the game, this document can be found which includes dialogue for a number of unused scenarios. Notable is some dialogue from a "Mayor" (presumably the mayor of Pianta Village) who treats Mario with considerably more respect than any authority figures do in the final, and implies that originally, the goal of the game would have been to help improve Delfino Plaza's tourism rating rather than to clear Mario's name.

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