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NuclearCake

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
9,867
With the not so recent Yoshi's Crafted World Thread that focused if that game was downgraded from the initial reveal trailer, it occurred to me that Nintendo has a pretty good track record of not doing this sort of stuff. Most of the games came out looking more or less exactly the same as they did when they were originally shown. If not a little bit better. Nintendo like to show off games when they are much closer to completion than most other companies, so first party Nintendo games don't ever really have any significant downgrades. Well except in this case.

Mario Sunshine is probobaly the weirdest Mario game and the most underrated. (but that's another topic) However one thing that's really just bizarre is that in nearly all of the games pre release coverage, the game was reported to run at 60FPS but the final game ran at a capped 30FPS and that is really baffling, because the game was running at a rock solid 60 even as far as E3 2002 and playable at the show floor. So this massive downgrade kind of happened last minute with the game releasing only two months later in Japan. I can't think of any other game that had a downgrade like this cutting the games framerate by half, just before it came out. That this happened to a Nintendo game especially a brand new main line Mario game is even more puzzling. Sunshine looked great but there wasn't anything about it that exactly pushed the Gamecube to it's breaking point for it not to be able to reach 60. Heck it was already at 60 at E3. So what gives?

Here is a quote from a Gamespot hands on preview article of Sunshine at E3.

The attention to detail in the gameplay is matched by the graphics. Mario's footsteps can be seen in the goop, and creatures will morph out of the ooze and attack. Mario will become covered in the pollution after sliding around in it on his belly, and when you then jump into one of the water sources it can be seen dissolving into the water. The draw distance for the levels is amazing, and a slight distance blurring effect is instituted to haze objects on the horizon. There's also a nice blurring effect used for the water, and it can be seen in even the smallest drop that shoots from Mario's cannon. The Y button will make the camera center behind Mario, and holding it will allow you to view the levels from a first-person perspective. The camera can be manually adjusted using the C stick. The camera gets stuck behind objects occasionally, but Nintendo has found a unique way to work around it. Even if an object obscures your view of Mario, you'll still be able to see his silhouette. Texturing is the game's biggest issue thus far. While flatly shaded to give the game its Mario aesthetics, the textures that cover each level's border are of a low resolution and stand out against the rest of the game's visual presentation. But in all, Super Mario Sunshine is a visual treat, and it's what you would expect from a Mario game in this generation of consoles. The display is incredibly clean and crisp, and the frame rates are at a rock-solid 60 frames per second no matter how much action is taking place onscreen.

Nintendo as far as i know never acknowledged the downgrade or explained the reason for it. It just came out from nowhere and i'm wondering if anyone here knows what's up.
I believe Giant Bomb has some E3 60FPS footage of the game from their Game Tapes series but i don't have access to it, so i can't post it.

But here is some compilation footage from IGN and even tho this YT video is rendered at 30. The game itself definitely seems to run smoother even here than it does in the final.


Luckily not all is lost as it's possible to force Sunshine to run at 60 on Dolphin through hacks but it's a shame that the final game isn't running at 60.



Unfortunately even with this configuration on Dolphin the game brings with it some unintended bugs when running at 60. Some animation play at twice the speed than intended for example. So it's not perfect.
 
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IIRC, there were areas in the game that simply could not run at 60fps in the time frame that the team had left to work on the game, so they made the decision to cap the framerate at 30fps for the whole game to help those areas out in terms of their presentation.

Sunshine really needed another year, but Iwata was hellbent on launching that, Metroid Prime and Wind Waker in the fiscal year.
 
Oct 29, 2017
4,721
Perhaps it was always 30FPS and whoever originally wrote that just had no idea about what the difference between 30FPS and 60FPS was?

The game regularly drops to 20FPS anyway. I doubt that 60FPS was really the target; at least not without another year or so of development.
 

Adam_Roman

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,066
I wonder if it would be possible to execute the 60fps hack for dolphin on real hardware to stress test it and see what areas may have had framerate dips that could cause them to make such a last minute decision.
 

Lant_War

Classic Anus Game
The Fallen
Jul 14, 2018
23,556
IIRC, there were areas in the game that simply could not run at 60fps in the time frame that the team had left to work on the game, so they made the decision to cap the framerate at 30fps for the whole game to help those areas out in terms of their presentation.

Sunshine really needed another year, but Iwata was hellbent on launching that, Metroid Prime and Wind Waker in the fiscal year.
What a shame. Sunshine could've been a great game.
 
The E3 demo absolutely ran at 60fps, for anyone doubting Gamespot's write-up. G4 did a piece or two on Sunshine that year and it was running that smoothly, though archival footage sadly never seems to come in the 60fps variety these days for any of the content they did back when they were a gaming network. When X-Play got around to reviewing a month or so later, you could tell the difference instantly.
 

Ms.Galaxy

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
1,653
I bet you the giant manta ray thing in Sirena Beach gave them a lot of trouble with 60 fps. Heck, I recall it chugging in the final version of the game too, although it's been 10 years since I played the game proper so memory could be fuzzy.
 

Varjet

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,153
That mission with the three mirrors at the beach has certainly something to do with it. Major slowdowns there.
 

AndreGX

GameXplain
Verified
Oct 24, 2017
1,815
San Francisco
The game clearly struggles at points, most obviously during the final boss fight. As the game was notoriously under a tight deadline, it seems they just didn't have time to optimize is across the board and settled with 30, which was the right decision if the trade-off was increased stability.
 

sir_crocodile

Member
Oct 25, 2017
23,482
A lot of first party GameCube games were just made in a great hurry. Wind waker is the most notorious example, we lost entire dungeons.
 

EinBear

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,664
I imagine they just ran out of time to optimise it. The final game still has some noticeable slowdown in spots so they must have been struggling. Both Sunshine and the Wind Waker suffered from very rushed development cycles, being released as quickly as possible in an attempt to right the ship for the GameCube.
 
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NuclearCake

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
9,867
The E3 demo absolutely ran at 60fps, for anyone doubting Gamespot's write-up. G4 did a piece or two on Sunshine that year and it was running that smoothly, though archival footage sadly never seems to come in the 60fps variety these days for any of the content they did back when they were a gaming network. When X-Play got around to reviewing a month or so later, you could tell the difference instantly.

Yeah it was 60fps no doubt. I think GiantBomb has footage of it in one of their game tapes episodes but i don't have access to it and even if i did, i'm not sure if it would be allowed to be posted here since it's paid content.

Still it's weird that something like this happened that late for a Nintendo game. It must have been just before it shipped. They should have paired some of the visual effects down in some of those areas to reach the target. Then again they probobaly took some pressure from places like IGN, which complained in interviews that the game didn't look that different from Mario 64 graphically. Which is just crazy.
 

snesiscool

Member
Feb 15, 2018
299
I wonder if it would be possible to execute the 60fps hack for dolphin on real hardware to stress test it and see what areas may have had framerate dips that could cause them to make such a last minute decision.

I've actually tried this on my softmodded Wii, and it works very well for the hour or so I've played it. I'm under the impression the Wii clocks down to GameCube clocks when running Gamecube games, though I don't know if this is the case when running it through Nintendont.
 

Soul Skater

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,201
It still confuses me how this game and Wind Walker managed to be so rushed

Like did they not know the GC was coming or something? Development on both really needed to start sooner
 
Oct 27, 2017
5,778
I always heard that it was dropped to 30 due to them wanting a 3D mode of some sort, but that it never panned out. Supposedly there was to be a headset that used the digital out port.
 

SPRidley

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,232
It still confuses me how this game and Wind Walker managed to be so rushed

Like did they not know the GC was coming or something? Development on both really needed to start sooner
What they didnt know is the GC would do so poorly. Thats why they had to rush them through the door. At least wind waker was a good game though, i dont think more time in the oven would have helped Mario Sunshine in the least.
 
It still confuses me how this game and Wind Walker managed to be so rushed

Like did they not know the GC was coming or something? Development on both really needed to start sooner
The short story is that they really thought that the system was going to launch to much higher numbers than it actually did, resulting in management panicking and getting all of their big projects rushed out the door to make sure that they hit the console in that fiscal year. It was even worse for Wind Waker, since Iwata promised that it would hit Japan by the end of 2002 and, well, it did.

The Gamecube generation wasn't particularly kind to the first party production output at Nintendo. It's actually a miracle that Metroid Prime turned out the way it did, considering it was in sheer crunch hell due to Nintendo stating it was going to be their big fall game, come hell or high water.
 
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NuclearCake

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
9,867
It still confuses me how this game and Wind Walker managed to be so rushed

Like did they not know the GC was coming or something? Development on both really needed to start sooner

With Wind Waker i can sort of understand as the team wrapped up Majoras Mask in 2000. So it had two years of development but i guess it wasn't enough. I doubt Nintendo expanded their development teams significantly from the N64 days to the Gamecube.

With Sunshine it's crazier, since Mario 64 came out in 1996. There is no good excuse for why it was so rushed. I guess some of the development team was working on Mario 128, which seems like it was a completely different project but it left Sunshine lacking in resources. Nintendo should have delayed the game. Even a few extra months and staff could have done wonders, even if it meant we were playing a summer themed game in winter.
 

fiendcode

Member
Oct 26, 2017
24,911
I want to go to the alternate reality where Sunshine and Wind Waker got the extra year of development that they needed.
 

donhonk

Member
Oct 30, 2017
480


This should become HD soon, giant bomb strike me down if this is uncool! There was no Gametapes Raw available for this.

Game looks soooo much better in 60 fps
 
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NuclearCake

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
9,867


This should become HD soon, giant bomb strike me down if this is uncool! There was no Gametapes Raw available for this.

Game looks soooo much better in 60 fps


There it is.

60 is always better but based on this footage some graphical effects seem to be missing that are in the final. Like the heat haze effect. Guess it was a choice between making the game look better graphically or performance. I wish they went with performance tho.

Also i just read that Mario 64 DS was also showcased at 60fps initially as well and Koizumi mentioned in a interview that they were considering making 3D Land 60 as well but 3DS hardware couldn't handle it. It's a shame since most mainline Mario games are 60fps but it is what it is.
 

SantaC

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
3,763
IIRC, there were areas in the game that simply could not run at 60fps in the time frame that the team had left to work on the game, so they made the decision to cap the framerate at 30fps for the whole game to help those areas out in terms of their presentation.

Sunshine really needed another year, but Iwata was hellbent on launching that, Metroid Prime and Wind Waker in the fiscal year.
Iwata didnt take over until 2003?
 

jett

Community Resettler
Member
Oct 25, 2017
44,653
Thankfully the game can easily be hacked to run at 60fps on Dolphin. Zero drawbacks.

The Gamecube days were definitely pretty shaky for Nintendo. Unfortunate they rushed both Mario and Zelda out the door, ending with subpar products, considering the legacy of each respective franchise.
 

Kcannon

Member
Oct 30, 2017
5,661
With Wind Waker i can sort of understand as the team wrapped up Majoras Mask in 2000. So it had two years of development but i guess it wasn't enough. I doubt Nintendo expanded their development teams significantly from the N64 days to the Gamecube.

With Sunshine it's crazier, since Mario 64 came out in 1996. There is no good excuse for why it was so rushed. I guess some of the development team was working on Mario 128, which seems like it was a completely different project but it left Sunshine lacking in resources. Nintendo should have delayed the game. Even a few extra months and staff could have done wonders, even if it meant we were playing a summer themed game in winter.

Pretty sure the Mario 64 team was also the Pikmin one, since a lot of 128's ideas and gameplay served as the its basis.
 

ghibli99

Member
Oct 27, 2017
17,728
Didn't bother me at the time since 60fps 3D games weren't the norm (or at least not as much of a focus was placed on it coming from the PS1/Saturn generation). Also, as the follow-up to SM64, visually it was a huge step up. That being said, I would take a 60fps remaster or full sequel with zero complaints.
 

SantaC

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
3,763
Thankfully the game can easily be hacked to run at 60fps on Dolphin. Zero drawbacks.

The Gamecube days were definitely pretty shaky for Nintendo. Unfortunate they rushed both Mario and Zelda out the door, ending with subpar products, considering the legacy of each respective franchise.
Personally I thought gamecube had some of my favorite Nintendo gaming moments.
 

headspawn

Member
Oct 27, 2017
14,605
Maybe there are parts of the game where that 60fps framerate faultered so they killed it to 30fps?
 

andymcc

Member
Oct 25, 2017
26,272
Columbus, OH
Personally I thought gamecube had some of my favorite Nintendo gaming moments.

I think the N64 and the GC are some of the most underwhelming Nintendo consoles for opposing reasons-- the N64 had some stellar output from Nintendo but third party stuff I don't like and the GC saw the return of genres that were basically neglected on the 64 but Nintendo's output for their biggest series just wasn't for me.
 
Oct 25, 2017
1,478
I think the N64 and the GC are some of the most underwhelming Nintendo consoles for opposing reasons-- the N64 had some stellar output from Nintendo but third party stuff I don't like and the GC saw the return of genres that were basically neglected on the 64 but Nintendo's output for their biggest series just wasn't for me.
Honestly, I don't see how Nintendo did anything better with the N64 than what they did with the GCN
 

Sub Boss

Banned
Nov 14, 2017
13,441
Yeah it was 60fps no doubt. I think GiantBomb has footage of it in one of their game tapes episodes but i don't have access to it and even if i did, i'm not sure if it would be allowed to be posted here since it's paid content.

Still it's weird that something like this happened that late for a Nintendo game. It must have been just before it shipped. They should have paired some of the visual effects down in some of those areas to reach the target. Then again they probobaly took some pressure from places like IGN, which complained in interviews that the game didn't look that different from Mario 64 graphically. Which is just crazy.
GameCube Nintendo is not the same as later Nintendo, all 3d Marios before Sunshine were 30fps so why not 🤷‍♂️
 

Corporal

Member
Oct 27, 2017
807
I seem to remember that the Gamecube suffered a GPU clockspeed downgrade late in the game, comparatively shortly before the spec was finalized close to release. Provided my memory holds true, that also may have added delays and complications, particularly if the game was already straining the hardware.
 

AndreGX

GameXplain
Verified
Oct 24, 2017
1,815
San Francisco
I seem to remember that the Gamecube suffered a GPU clockspeed downgrade late in the game, comparatively shortly before the spec was finalized close to release. Provided my memory holds true, that also may have added delays and complications, particularly if the game was already straining the hardware.

You're right. I remember asking Nintendo about this at E3 2001 during a booth tour, which is where they revealed the final tech specs. As I recall, the CPU did get a slight boost though.
 
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