Sun Baking: Edition 2

and now, Jason and I are going to respond to some of the emails from readers, regarding the first edition. We're also going to comment on reader ideas for Super Mario Sunshine as well.

Hi,

You've had some great ideas there, but I think it's important to point out that, while some of your ideas are possibilities, it would be far too complicated to include all of them. Mario 64 allows you to do almost everything with 3 buttons. also, think of Zelda (OoT). In that game you can control a huge number of items and weapons, and yet the control scheme is still marvellously simple. I just can't see Mario ever having more than one mode of control to switch to at any one time.

anyway, that's my view, "Sun Baking" is yours. What really matters is the view of a certain Mr. Miyamoto...

PS I love the Cannon Jump by the way, although I would prefer double tap a to activate it....

- arthur Blair

James: I agree with you. Particularly with regard to jumping, Super Mario 64 really only used the Z Button and a Buttons to perform many different moves. as you can see with my second version, I've taken this into account.

Jason: Double tapping a would be a much better way of doing it. The key would be that it frees up an entire analog shoulder button for something far more useful. Remember, even though Mario 64 was very simplistic in controls, games like Luigi's Mansion were not. You use both shoulder buttons and both sticks, which is on top of using the actual other buttons on the controller to interact with objects.

I loved yur article on Super Mario Sunshine, real good ideas. But you had put that you were going to cover two control schemes being Normal, and Underwater. Now if im mistaken, only the Normal Control scheme was written, and the underwater control scheme was negelcted. just wanted to inform you...keep up the great work.

- The B.H. Ofella

James: Thanks for the kind words. In the previous edition, I mentioned toward the end that the underwater scheme would be shown in the second edition. I hope you enjoyed it. ^_^

I really enjoyed reading this feature! Very imaginative and well thought out. But I expected nothing less. Keep up the wonderful writing.

This gets me even more excited about the game!! and while I'm sure the gameplay will match, maybe even surpass Mario 64's, I'm a bit dissapointed with the graphics. Especially after having picked up Resident Evil. How much longer till E3 dammit!

- Marian

James: I must say, I'm pretty pleased with the way Super Mario Sunshine is looking. and I'm pretty sure that the game will look very nice on a television screen -- certainly much better than looking at static shots on the Internet. In any case, N-Sider will be at E3 to provide you with hands-on impressions, so stay tuned!

Jason:Whatever you do, make sure not to compare any games to Resident Evil. Not only is it not a fair comparison, but you would hate every games graphics after that. Resident Evil is untouched. Saying that, I am extremely confident that Super Mario Sunshine will have us all bug-eyed with the visuals. Remember that graphics are not always textures and the sort, but rather they be anything from animation to a huge draw distance with a truckload of objects in it. Keep your chin up kiddo, I'll be getting hands-on with this topic in less than a week.

Sorry, I don't think your ideas are that bad, but I think that you have forgotten a few things. all of your suggestions for the control scheme for this game are viable to a certain point. But I think that the way you've projected it now, this game would be a chore rather than a game. First of all, I'd like to point out the lack of an attack button. I also don't think that the B button is context sensitive. I remember it was going to be, then it was changed.

I'd like to refer back to an interview in EGM where Miyamoto hinted that the water cannon was probably not the only thing Mario wears. I believe there have been some shots recently released that show a slightly similar backpack.

I will have to comment on your warm/cold water suggestion. This game is not Luigi's Mansion and definitely isn't Zelda. Mario has never been and never will be a puzzle solving game. Items aren't usually used either. Power-ups temporarily give Mario a certain ability, but Mario never received items ala Banjo-Kazooie. Mario has always been an exploration type game. This can be credited to the extremely large environments shown in the screen shot.

It may be fun to guess aspects of a game from screenshots, but I don't think you should expect too much different from this game than Mario 64. Expect an extremely similar control scheme and probably a lot of returning traits from Mario World and Mario 3 as well. If I was going to make any guesses about this game, I'd say that there is definitely going to be quite a bit of flying in this game. Remember those flying pirahnas? How's that distance shot going to get WaaaaY up there? Mario certainly won't be able to fly with that silly gadget on his back all the time. But that's all the speculation I'm willing to admit. Heck, E3's in a week so I guess I shouldn't have written this letter. Sorry again but I might as well send it since I spent all this time.

- almighty Space Mongoose

James: I agree with you. My first control scheme was perhaps more of a "what I'd like to see" rather than a "what is most likely". My second scheme is more realistic, I believe.

With regard to your comment on the hot/cold water aspect, I somewhat agree. However, I think most people would be dissappointed if Super Mario Sunshine were exactly the same as Super Mario 64 with only a visual upgrade. and obviously, the new game will revolve around Mario's new-found toy. So I think it's fair to suggest that his backpack will have varying features/functions.

Furthermore, it's interesting that you mention flight and Miyamoto's comment about different machinery/backpacks. My theories have been centered on the idea that the Water Cannon is the only backpack that Mario uses, but that it has many different capabilities. However, I have also considered the concept that Mario might be able to use other devices, like a jetpack for example, to be used for flight. There are many different possibilities and I'm certainly going to be interested to see what Nintendo does.

Jason: The funny thing is that nobody really knows what the truth is. We certainly don't and neither does anybody outside of Nintendo's development circle. Given what we have to work with, we can make some assumptions though. Like the different back-packs comment. Who's to say that Mario flying doesn't come from a backpack exactly like the water one with the exception that it points backwards-down and spews fire. That would be a workable jetpack, as James suggested.

Dear N-Sider,

Great article yet again. I enjoyed the your theories of how Mario Sunshine will work like. I have come up with a few Ideas as well.

I think in SMS(Super Mario Sunshine) you will aim the water cannon with the c stick ala like his brother in Luigi's Mansion, who also has a device on his back. Who needs a camera? If they really needed one, they could make it were you hold down Z, and move the c stick to adjust the view. Or make it like on Pikmin, where you press a shoulder button to make it go behind you.

What about Mario's great punching/ kicking skills he had in Mario 64? B would be for that.

I also think, that if Mario fills his device up with water, it should slow him down, to add to good gameplay elements, physics, and realism. That way, it would be a little harder to get up to the top of the buildings as well as conserve enough water to take out those Cactus guys.

also, what about levels? In my theory, there will be underground sewers that you get to via pipes like in the Marios of old. I also think the world will be more like on Zelda, where you don't have sections, but one huge world of doorways and pipes.

Enemies? Well, judging on how they put new characters as well as old ones (cactus guys), I think they need to have Football player guys, and koopas from Super Mario World. and it looks as if Bowser is nowhere to be found, but you just know he is behind the Mario Imposter! Even in Luigi's Mansion Bowser was there! I didn't even see it coming.

Nintendo has made Mario more mature by making his face more serious, and his stance more ready, so now all they need to make his voice more low, like Luigi's. Give him larangitus or something, but that italian high pitched voice may have turned off some older gamers in the past. Just a suggestion, but I don't mind if they don't- it just seems like they'd appeal to a broader audience if they did so.

and last but not least, I think Luigi and his vacuum should be mentioned, if he is not playable like that in the game. It should be like a continuation from Luigi's Mansion's story. Luigi and his vacuum could be a bonus, or the second player. after all, Luigi can suck in water with his vacuum, so with the jump and the punches, Luigi could be a viable, and awesome second player alternating character! That would rock!

Thank you so much for reading this.

- Christian Hudspeth

James: Great ideas, Christian. In terms of using the C Stick to aim the Water Cannon, I personally feel that such a system could be awkward. I would much rather have a simpler Z-Targetting system, so that Mario can run around and jump everywhere, while also locking on to enemies and shooting water at them. Of course, this is assuming that the Water Cannon is even a weapon; it might simply be a tool used for cleaning up paint and moving around the environment. It's hard to say at this point.

Jason: Wow, lots of ideas here. I personally think that full stick control might be the way Nintendo goes with this game. Only problem being that it is not accessible to younger players. as I showed in this edition, what might be explored is something like a half C-Stick setup where up and down is vertical aiming, but left and right rotates the camera. Something like that may work, but definitely holds some challenges with the controls for players.

about the enemies, I wouldn't say that the need anything specific. Goombas and Koopas would be nice, but remember that Mario isn't in the mushroom kingdom anymore. We could get some new enemies that become Mario classics in this title though. I'm already getting the villagers embedded in my memory.

Dear James,

I really liked the control scheme that you made for Super Mario Sunshine, but I think it has a problem. In this scheme there isn't a button that replaces the function of the Z button of the N64 controller, so you lose a lot of actions that you could do in Mario 64: Z+movement, Z+a, a+Z, Z+B, etc. (buttons of the 64 controller). I think the best solution would be (now in terms of the GCN controller) use the Z button to fill the water cannon and leave one of the main buttons for the actions of the 64 Z button. I don't know what you think about this issue, I'd really like to know what you think about it.

- alex

James: I agree. The Z Button was fundamentally important to Super Mario 64. and as you can see with my latest concept, I've included the L Button as a crouch button.

Jason I also proposed the idea of having the Y or X buttons as the crouch button. Rolling your thumb off of the Y button would be extremely simple for Mario's complex moves.

I was thinking about Mario and I remember reading on IGN that Miyamoto(sp?) was going to implement more environment effects. Matt at IGN made the connection to Maximo, in which the ground crumbles and breaks open in various places. But my idea is a little different.

What if Mario could use his water gun not only on enemies but on the landscape itself? an example: say Mario's walking down a hill when all of a sudden he hears something and some of the dirt he was walking on starts to rustle. Using his water gun he could spray the dirt consequently causing some erosion to occur. The erosion in turn could reveal a question mark box or any number of other things. Likewise, in past Mario's we've often seen the traditional vine that Mario can climb up.

Maybe he could water a seed or sapling to make the vine grown up to the sky. Or how about using the gun to effectively transport water from one location to another. For instance, a barrel might be laying in a dry ditch. But Mario could fill the ditch with water. Once filled the barrel would float and Mario would be able to successful jump onto the barrel to reach a new area. I have a ton more ideas, but I won't bore you. You get the idea. By the way, great site.

- Joseph Puglisi

James: Interesting ideas there, Joseph. Certainly, Miyamoto has previously discussed the idea of watering a seed to make it grow into a plant and such. It's an interesting theory and it certainly reinforces the idea of the Water Cannon being used for movement/environmental interaction rather than as a weapon.

Jason: Your ideas are very inventive. One thing I thought of a long time ago was the use of a world bound by realistic physics. This would be things like the barrel example that you proposed. This sort of thing could have limitless amounts of potential for puzzles and, in turn, the fun factor. What if you could push logs in such a way to create a dam for water to reach an item. This sort of thing could be done with advanced physics.

Dear James,

I just wanted to tell you that i thought your first edition of Sun Baking was awesome. really creative! My question to you though is how many and when do you anticipate writing your next editorials. E3 is almost a week away and we have only seen one edition. If you are not able to write a new article before the 21st, all of the fun of speculation will cease to exist. Well in any case. I hope you get some more of these articles done because they are really great. Keep up the good work.

- GLOBE

James: at the time of me writing this, I am hoping to have this second edition ready before E3. as you mentioned, once E3 rolls around, we will know more about Super Mario Sunshine. However, that doesn't necessarily mean the end for Sun Baking. Perhaps we can include hands-on impressions and analysis in the next edition. You just never know.

Jason: Next week I will be reporting hands-on impressions for you guys. James and I will be interpreting the game too, so that all of you can still get your Mario fix. Keep the questions/comments coming!

That's it for the latest edition of Sun Baking. Jason and I really enjoyed writing this edition and we hope you enjoyed reading it. Remember to continue visiting N-Sider.com throughout the E3 show, as we'll be providing hands-on impressions of Super Mario Sunshine and other games.

James Burns, Jason Nuyens