Bennett Foddy, the independent game designer behind QWOP and Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy and one of the masterminds behind Baby Steps, is known for making notoriously tricky games with wonky movement, but overall uplifting vibes. So I probably shouldn\u2019t be surprised that when I asked him to talk to me about a game that had inspired his work for a new article series I\u2019m trying to spin up, he came to me with Super Mario Sunshine.<\/p>\n
Confession: I am also a Super Mario Sunshine lover. It is actually, for real, probably my favorite Mario game, and it certainly is Foddy\u2019s. Hearing Foddy name Sunshine in response to this pitch immediately invoked both childhood and recent adulthood memories of bouncing around Delfino Plaza: spraying water, scooting around on the ground, spinning through the air, bounding off the heads of angry Piantas. Every time I play it, I can\u2019t help but run, scoot, and leap around even when I don\u2019t actually need to, just for the sheer joy of it.<\/p>\n
I also unironically like the notorious Sand Bird level, which perhaps explains why I spent something like 10-15 hours of my life climbing the Manbreaker in Baby Steps last year, all so I wouldn\u2019t have to call another man \u201cLord.\u201d Yeah, the developer behind stuff like this is definitely a Mario Sunshine guy.<\/p>\n
Foddy first encountered Super Mario Sunshine in 2002, after it came out in Australia. Consoles are expensive there, he says, so he didn\u2019t have a GameCube at the time. But a friend of his did, and when he saw Super Mario Sunshine, he went straight to the store and bought both the console and the game. \u201cIt was one of those moments, I can say there\u2019s only been two of them in my adult life, where I saw it and I was like, I have to have that,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Due to the aforementioned expense of consoles, Foddy (who was in his 20s at the time) was a PC gamer \u201cthrough and through,\u201d though he\u2019d played most of the major Mario games prior to Sunshine and enjoyed them. He also loved platformers, specifically citing Prince of Persia as a favorite. But it wasn\u2019t the platforming, or the Mario of Super Mario Sunshine that drew him. It was the heat.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was about the sense of hotness coming off the screen,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m from Australia. So we\u2019d go to the beach in the summertime. But I loved the tropics. I got to go to Indonesia once, to Hawaii once as a kid, to the Australian tropics a couple of times. And it was really for me the dream of a good vacation. And I\u2019d never felt that in a video game. You had a little inkling of it in The Secret of Monkey Island. There\u2019s a couple of Leisure Suit Larry games that take place in the tropics. I feel like they just really observed tropical heat.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a way that when you\u2019re in the tropics, it rains a lot, right? There\u2019s always really big towering clouds. And it can go from really bright to really dark multiple times over the course of a day. And you get really wet when it rains. And then you dry super fast because the sun is hot. And it feels like everything has this feeling of just being roasted and you don\u2019t get that in the kind of dry heat that we had in the south of Australia. So I just felt that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The coolness of the water creates space for you to actually feel the hotness of the sun. <\/p>\n
At the time, Foddy wasn\u2019t a game designer. He was \u201cworking toward being a philosopher\u201d and was in a band, he says. So he didn\u2019t know how Nintendo had made Super Mario Sunshine\u2019s heat so compelling to him. Now, of course, he can tell me. \u201cThey put a lot of this heat haze, right? They put a lot of blue in the shadows, created the sense of there being a heavy atmosphere everywhere. The whole game is darkened, right? Like that\u2019s really important? Because it gets brighter as you play. But you sort of see on the horizon this kind of heavy cloud. And the idea is that it\u2019s pollution. But it also just feels observed.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then the other thing is that they put water everywhere in the game. There\u2019s fountains, right? There\u2019s canals. You can spray water on the ground and slip and slide. Like there\u2019s just something about that summer use of water. There\u2019s sprinklers, water balloons or whatever. Like everything that we associate with playing with water and having water around in the summer, in the heat, is represented in some way. And so the coolness of the water creates space for you to actually feel the hotness of the sun, which is just absent in most video games. A lot of games go for this. But they don\u2019t really get it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Foddy comes back to the water aesthetics a lot during our conversation, giving us both space to gush about how stylish the water looks. He thinks the water in Super Mario Sunshine still looks good even by today\u2019s standards because it\u2019s not intended to be realistic, but to invoke a feeling. It \u201clooks how it wants to look.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWater is so hard to get right\u2026And lots of different types of water as well, right? There\u2019s a sort of sense of, like the shallow water and the canals and lakes feel different from the sea and all of these things. And it\u2019s tough to do that on a weak console because water is tough to render. It requires you to draw everything that\u2019s inside it and to draw the water itself and to do stuff to the pixels. Like, that\u2019s heavy processing. So, it\u2019s really, you know, it\u2019s a testament to their technical artists.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve done my share of technical art working on Baby Steps over the last five or six years. And I have new appreciation for those folks who are, you know, especially on the weak hardware of the day. The fact that there isn\u2019t really water in games that looks better than that now from a kind of artistic point of view, sure, there\u2019s water that looks more realistic. But there\u2019s nobody really working with it to get that sort of sense of it, that sort of tactile, textural sense of wetness and of waterness and of refreshingness and all of that stuff that we get when we look at water. It\u2019s just hard to do, right? That takes real inspiration, I think.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just the vibes. Foddy also loves the mechanics, and the way players can combine different elements of the game\u2019s mechanics to do interesting things, what he calls \u201ccombinatorics.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI was just remembering how when you are doing the spraying water mechanic, and it comes out strong to let you know that you\u2019re running out of your charge. It starts to spray around all over the place. It\u2019s kind of a way that is like\u2026 It\u2019s hard to think of it as anything other than kind of urinary. It just seems like there\u2019s so many little ideas like that in the mechanics. And they\u2019re kind of inspired from life. And they\u2019re complicated in a way that provides combinatorics. For example, that you can spray the ground. And the ground becomes slick. And then you can slide along on your tummy. You can kind of flip out of that into a jump. That\u2019s the way that you go fastest, right?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Perhaps controversially, Foddy loves FLUDD, the combo water gun\/jetpack that Mario totes around with him most of the game. His least favorite levels are the ones in which it\u2019s taken away. He says he thinks the movement flexibility offered by FLUDD turned out to be a significant inspiration for his own games that also play with movement.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Mario Sunshine, there\u2019s always like 50 different ways you can do something\u2026That\u2019s an aspect that I hope is reflected in my own work. I think in Getting Over It and Baby Steps, there\u2019s a sense of flexibility in how you\u2019re playing it. And you can learn to play it in different ways and different situations. There are a lot of different solutions to everything. Nothing is too tight or too inflexible. Everything is kind of like a little bit expressive. A little bit open to being played in different ways. Not to say that Mario Sunshine is easy. I don\u2019t think Getting Over It or Baby Steps are easy. But they afford you a lot of different ways to play them.\u201d<\/p>\n
In fact, he cites Sunshine as an orientation for him in interesting traversal. He says his work is more focused than Sunshine because he\u2019s indie and he naturally can\u2019t make games as large and varied as Nintendo can, but he thinks Sunshine inspired him to start thinking about a sort of fuzziness in movement, as opposed to precision platforming. While he loves games with tight movement too, he says his work plays more with movement that\u2019s \u201csofter,\u201d \u201ca little bit more liminal\u201d and \u201ca bit less certain,\u201d just like Sunshine\u2019s.<\/p>\n
\u201cGabe Cuzillo, who is part of the Baby Steps team as well, just gave a talk at GDC, which is about how in the level design of Baby Steps, we were trying to zero in on what\u2019s in between the clearly possible and the clearly impossible. We wanted stuff that was kind of plausibly possible, which is unorthodox, right? The kind of, I think, Nintendo-informed orthodoxy for how we do difficulty in games, especially in level design, is to make it clear what\u2019s possible and what\u2019s impossible. And they have really zeroed in on that in Mario and in Zelda, a little bit less in the physics in Zelda. But Sunshine\u2019s not really like this. There\u2019s always a sense of like, ah, just think about if I had just activated the jetpack a millisecond before, then I might have been able to get over that jump. It\u2019s very, very low clarity on what\u2019s possible and impossible. It\u2019s that aspect of the game that is informing my work and I think our collective work now.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the thing that made the biggest impression on Foddy wasn\u2019t the vibes, or the movement, or FLUDD. It was instead a weird Easter egg model of a book hidden in Noki Bay whose purpose no one has ever been able to determine:<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s rare in video games, especially games made by big teams on a tight deadline with a lot of pressure, that you feel joy in making coming through. And in that book thing, that\u2019s somebody\u2026 I just cannot help but imagine people laughing in the studio as I see them putting that book in there, knowing nobody\u2026 People will wonder about this, right? Like people will be talking about this for decades. That\u2019s a thing that you do out of joy, and I think that joy echoes through the game in a way that\u2019s not always there for marquee titles in big franchises that are used to sell consoles. There\u2019s too much pressure, right? There\u2019s too many people, usually. It\u2019s too constrained. And [the Sunshine developers] were given a little bit of freedom to do this stuff.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI contributed to a couple of Easter eggs in Just Cause 4. Because I lived nearby the offices, and I knew some of the folks who were working on that. And, you know, that game, those games with Just Cause 3 and 4 have a joy that comes through as well that was there in the studio. But even then, if they wanted to put an Easter egg in, they had to apply for permission from the parent company. Because you\u2019re spending money, right? It makes sense. You\u2019re spending company money to do this stuff. But that process, it\u2019s like a narrow bottleneck for the joy to escape out of, if you see what I mean.<\/p>\n
\u201cSunshine is so full of little gags like that, little observations, little jokes, little ideas. Like I said, with the spraying of the spray nozzle or that thing where you\u2019re riding on your tummy or how Yoshi reacts if he eats a chili\u2026All those little things. I don\u2019t know. I feel like they were just given freedom and it seems like they were happy. I could just be making this up. It could be there was a miserable death march and everybody was sad and couldn\u2019t wait to get to the next thing. I doubt it. I just think that what\u2019s coming through with that game and kind of drips out of it is confidence and joy. It\u2019s just rare.\u201d<\/p>\n
Super Mario Sunshine initially launched to near-universal critical acclaim. It received some criticism at the time for its wonky camera system, difficulty, and FLUDD, which some felt was a detriment to the platforming. In the years since Sunshine\u2019s launch, those criticisms have only grown stronger and stronger. Super Mario Sunshine has, over time, easily become the least popular of the 3D Mario games, particularly with its re-release as a part of Super Mario 3D All-Stars in 2020. You can Google \u201cSuper Mario Sunshine bad\u201d and immediately be fludd-ed with articles, videos, Reddit posts, and other discussions going back over a decade canvassing the reasons why people no longer look at it with the same sunny disposition they once did.<\/p>\n
We need to understand that with that joy and with that confidence, there are going to be elements that are annoying. <\/p>\n
Foddy says the fault for that reputation lies not with Super Mario Sunshine, but with all of us, the Mario fans and the media. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s a big exaggeration to say that it was in the reception to Mario Sunshine, the best Mario game by a long way in my opinion, that things went wrong for 3D games, for the Mario series, for AAA in general.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think what happened was they took a big bet with Mario Sunshine. I think they felt like they were on fire probably over Nintendo EAD because Mario 64 had been so influential and so great. And it gave them confidence to take a big swing and do something that was a little bit bold, a little bit new. Like, let\u2019s try and do something new with this. Let\u2019s try and push Mario off in a new direction and make a new kind of game. And everyone was like, ah, the jetpack is annoying. And the camera gets stuck sometimes. There are low-resolution textures. And I don\u2019t know what happened over at Nintendo. All I can say is that what we got next were two games that were very similar in style to Mario 64 and then another one that was similar to Mario 64, some games that were similar to Super Mario World. And they\u2019re stuck now. They\u2019re confined, I think, by fan expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Foddy\u2019s perspective here helps me make sense of his answer to my last question, which was, if he could make Super Mario Sunshine in 2026 for the first time, what would he do? Apart from cleaning up the camera controls, he wouldn\u2019t change a thing. But he also thinks that just remaking Mario Sunshine again and again is antithetical to the reasons why he loves it in the first place. What he thinks it should inspire is more risks.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s called for is games that are new and different and inspired by the boldness and the experimental approach and the joy and the confidence of that game,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd they won\u2019t look anything like Mario Sunshine, right? They\u2019ll look like something totally different. Part of it is as players and as critics\u2014I think people do now understand more so now\u2014We need to understand that with that joy and with that confidence, there are going to be elements that are annoying, right? It\u2019s to understand that a little bit of annoyance is not a ding on a game. In fact, it might just be the sort of like the salt or the bitters that makes it even better.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bennett Foddy, the independent game designer behind QWOP and Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy and one of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":678540,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[295772,26324,1299,74],"class_list":["post-678539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-baby-steps","tag-mario","tag-nintendo","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=678539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/678540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=678539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=678539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=678539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}