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Super Mario Sunshine's Unexplained Downgrade From 60FPS to 30FPS.
- Thread starter NuclearCake
- Start date
Which is another shame because while that was a dope year... The droughts weren't worth it...
Yup. GCN got a downclock in GPU speed, but an upclock in CPU speed prior to launch.
Never knew Sunshine was originally 60fps, it looks so good. However, all I can remember was that it had a lot of frustrating parts while playing as a kid.
Wind Waker was great tho. I'm impressed they were able to make such a game in 2 years. The only part that was shitty from what I remember was finding the Triforce pieces...in a pre-YouTube era.
Wind Waker was great tho. I'm impressed they were able to make such a game in 2 years. The only part that was shitty from what I remember was finding the Triforce pieces...in a pre-YouTube era.
It's even more impressive that they made an even better game in even less time!
JokingNotJoking
The cut people and the train system navigating you around the island (you collected tickets to progress further I think) sounded really intriguing.
Had this had enough time I think we would've gotten something really unique.
EDIT: here's the train info
I feel like this sort of stuff is more common than the OP implies.
It's one of the main reasons why game demos and previews have had "this footage is from an in-development version and may differ from the retail version" disclaimers on them for 20+ years.
It's one of the main reasons why game demos and previews have had "this footage is from an in-development version and may differ from the retail version" disclaimers on them for 20+ years.
It's extremely common, but generally not with Nintendo games. There are few instances of public and visible downgrades in Nintendo games, Sunshine is the most infamous one, though I personally feel like Breath of the Wild tops it.
Nintendont runs GC games in Wii mode but I'm pretty sure it has to pretend to run the games at their original speeds, leaving the extra CPU cycles for save card and controller emulation.
If they dropped to 30 theres probably a million causes for it, a drop from 30 to 20 aint bad, but from 60 to 20? oooof
Most games have a shit framerate right before release anyways (at least non-Nintendo ones) Its why its so crucial to have time to polish before release, you would be surprised how many beloved AAA games were near unplayable a month before launch
Most games have a shit framerate right before release anyways (at least non-Nintendo ones) Its why its so crucial to have time to polish before release, you would be surprised how many beloved AAA games were near unplayable a month before launch
Don't know too much about how much of the game was demo'ed. But isn't it quite possible it was just an optimized vertical slice that ran at 60, rather than the full game? Yeah, it sucks that the game was a bit undercooked, but I don't find it all that surprising that it was capped at 30. If they couldn't get the whole game to run at 60, then capping at 30 is the right choice, IMO.
OP
OP
Why would they care? That's not their footage of the game. That's just the original trailer.
This sounds great, but I'm sure this would make Galaxy or Odyssey not exist as well, so I never want to mess with this kind of things, even if it's always hipotetical...
What saddens me a bit more is that this kind of games will never get a chance to get improved by much. When they bring them to new consoles they usually do some quality of life changes, but never risk on improving on the rushed content changing it for something better, as people would complain about stages/events being missing.
At most we get the Super Mario 64 DS / Bowser Inside Story DX treatment: new levels on top of the older ones that lenghten the game overall.
Do you know any examples where some developers have done that kind of big rework with some game to improve pacing/quality/content, thought? I know Rare tried to do it with Banjo for the 360 before it turned into Nuts and Blots.
Giant Bomb Game Tapes is a premium feature they do on their site I'm pretty sure, so technically behind a pay wall.
Ohhh geez. This really makes me want Sunshine remade in an open world (island?) format. The hub was already great fun to play around in and could only be better if it led to walk/swim/ferry/train into each of the levels rather that randomly warping to 'em. I loved how you could see other levels from the game in the background skybox of certain levels, but getting to each one felt super disconnected which sucks! Really does feel like at some point it was meant to be one big interconnected game.
The cut people and the train system navigating you around the island (you collected tickets to progress further I think) sounded really intriguing.
Had this had enough time I think we would've gotten something really unique.
EDIT: here's the train info
You know reading your post, could you imagine a Sunshine 2 that is fully open-world where you can enter a level without loading screens?
Yesssss! Nintendo should totally do this! Few people like Sunshine so it needs redemption in the eyes of many an a sequel like this'd surely do it! The FLUDD Turbo Nozzle could at least be put to great effect!!
I mean, It's an interesting thing to talk about. I personally didn't know about it.
The amount of work they would need to put in to a sunshine rerelease is way bigger than any of the other 3d Mario's. Most of them you could get away with just with improving frame, resolution and call it a day.
To make Mario sunshine a game on level with the rest of the franchise would require scrapping a bunch of the shines, because frankly, lots of them are junk, greatly reducing the blue coin shines and replacing them with new shines, adding new levels including an actual bowser level and lots of other stuff, at which point they might as well make a new game entirely without the baggage.
Nothing that fludd can do that requires a sunshine 2. They basically reused that mechanic anyway in odyssey in the beach level with one of the enemies there.
I guess so. I just find this obsession with framerafs so so full.
Oh my god you gave me another idea, combine the Turbo Nozzle with a surfboard addon for FLUDD and you could do crazy things on the ocean around Delphino Island! And as someone who liked Sunshine alot, I agree, it deserves a second chance!
OP
OP
I'm perfectly satisfied with the quality of Sunshine overall. Yeah there were junk objectives but i could say the same for 64 and Galaxy as well and that didn't stop me from enjoying those games either. The positives of Sunshine far outweighed the negatives imo. 60FPS, Widescreen and improved lightning and textures as well as basic QOL gameplay tweaks would make Sunshine pretty excellent.
I don't think the level of effort required would be nearly the same as making a brand new game. I'm not expecting a brand new game or a completely altered game with a Sunshine Remaster. I would be fine with some clean up.
I guess they did it because even at 30fps this game has framedrops. For example on the last boss fight against Bowser. Or at the first mission of Sirena Beach.
Zelda OOT doesn't dip to 20fps, it runs at 20fps!! It actually dips to like 12 to 15 at some places.
Ocarina was capped at 20; sometimes it dipped lower. (Incidentally, the team who did the 3DS remake found increasing the framerate to 30 to be a huge challenge.)
Too difficult, but designing an entirely new game is easier?
Sunshine is a fantastic game. It has it's problems, but I'd take it over 64 and 3D World. Maybe even Odyssey. FLUDD was a dream.
It's worth Nintendo putting a bit of effort in to bring it up to standard.
I didn't say it was too difficult, I said it wasn't worth it. To bring sunshine up to standard you're looking at year(s) of extra development to add new stuff that should have been there two decades ago, but wasn't because they shoved it out the door unfinished originally.
That time would simply be better spent on a full new game (presumably odyssey 2) without the baggage of the black sheep of the 3d mario family being attached.
I don't think the development would be as intensive as a new Mario game. I also don't think they'd need to add a substantial amount, just fix the buggier shines and add QoL improvements to the blue coin hunt for example. Some extra content would help though.
An excerpt from this interview about Sunshine it's a really interesting read with how in depth it is about the development of the game.Shiegeru Miyamoto said:
I remember this quote but it's so vague, what do they mean with the "feel it is more than a 30-frame game" ? Frame pacing?
Waverace, 1080 and Starfox were all far superior on the N64.
So was Mario 64 (vs. Sunshine).
I'm sure some would say both Zelda games were better as well, though I can't comment on that since I only ever finished Wind Waker.
The point is valid, in my opinion.
