More of many more musings to come
Mario's movement in galaxy sometimes gets a bad rap, its interesting because it's definitely slower and you notice it more when in sections that involve jumping between multiple planetoids with their own gravitational pull or when you start a triple jump at the slowest possible speed leading to a lethargic finale. Otherwise though its actually impressive to me how well Mario's movement adapts to the game, even when running around upside down with the camera in a relativelty fixed spot, Mario always feels completely in control.
And as Galaxy starts opening up more platforming intensive segments like the sweet sweet galaxy, I'm really noting how tight Mario's control is and thinking that while I also love what 64 allows, the sheer idea of imagining having 64 Mario jumping for a segment like rocky road is almost terrifying as I imagine the extra step mario takes per jump plunging him down into the black holes of doom.
In any case, there's basically no points where I'm thinking that Mario needs to hurry up because the game spaces its environments nigh on perfectly to his own pace.
Sunshine handed me my first game over via the horror of pachinko, it's impressively more jank than in my memories, Mario's movement does whatever the heck it wants here with seemingly little consistency, the device is a mario torture chamber where even succesful coin nabbing can and will break his legs, I recall back on the GC version actually almost dying here by fall damage accumulation as I failed to get the last coin and then land in the shine sprite slot.
I legit don't know how Nintendo let this in the game looking back, surely they knew, surely they could've whipped up anything else!
On a brighter note, an aspect I loved about sunshine when I was younger was the idea of unfolding stories, interacting with NPCs across the various stages of Delfino Plaza progress for instance, you've got these two sailor looking piantas constantly giving each other shit at various points throughout the game, by the end I think they get chummy, it's a neat touch.
Stepping into Gelato Beach and the gradual unfolding of the sand bird subplot, watching how NPCs actions match their dialogue in that previously calm characters start running around panicked, as I said earlier, no other Mario game approaches this kind of world building, it's pretty novel.
Alas I'm reminded how ARSE the swimming in Sunshine is, how did the game with the most water get the worst swimming segments?
Gelato Beach is also surprisingly small and compact, in turn this reminds me just how few worlds Sunshine is packing compared to 64 and Galaxy.
Of course you have to note how Galaxy mostly takes place in a void with linear progress across isolated areas with only a few areas like Beach Bowl, Sea Slide and such having that kind of classic design.
