I have spent a lot of energy throwing shade at Super Mario Sunshine over the years. If anything, playing it again as part of Super Mario 3D All-Stars has only amplified my disdain for this GameCube title. The further I go, the more glaring its issues become, from its terrible camera, to its slippery controls, to its overly-punishing level design.
Even so, this game does have a few bright spots. Playing it now has reminded me that it isn’t all bad.
Hate-watching as a concept is described as watching television or film while also hating its concept or subject. Even if you hate it, you’re still going out of your way to consume that content.
Let’s apply that same logic to games. Do you ever hate-play games? Years ago, I made a vow to myself that I wouldn’t spend any of my precious time playing games that I don’t like. Yet, here I am, cringing my teeth as I powered through Super Mario Sunshine as part Super Mario 3D All-Stars. Of all games, why this one?
I’m standing on a tightrope. Somewhere above me is a red coin. Despite repeated attempts at snagging it from the sky, I can’t quite seem to snag it. An angry cloud is whooshing back-and-forth, trying its best to snipe me out of the sky.
Again, I leap. Hurtling towards the coin, the angry cloud finally tags me. Reeling from the pain, my Mario falls like a rock to the lake below. In time with the splash, my controller gets spiked into the ground…again.
Fire Emblem may be a modern phenomenon to many, but the franchise’s history goes way back. Even excluding the Japan-only releases that make up roughly half of the catalogue, you’re still left with 10 mainline games and multiple spin-offs. Those alone might make Fire Emblem one of Nintendo’s deepest franchises in terms of quality and volume.
Though I don’t think there’s a bad game in the series per se, there are certainly titles that stand out from the rest. It’s always been a goal of mine to rank them, but it’s been a long time since I’ve played some of these games, and I don’t want to do the legwork required to confidently place them on a numerical list.
Instead, I’m going with a tier list. Unless stated otherwise, there’s no particular rankings within each tier. As of right now, here’s how I’d rank the mainline games in the Fire Emblem series!
GameCube Week “technically” today on In Third Person! One more official post in the series; this time about Animal Crossing!
Whether I’m cracking skulls with gravity-defying uppercuts, or launching mystical dragons from a bow and arrow, or dropping blocks down a well, I primarily use video games as an escape from the ordinary. Animal Crossing – while maybe not the most dramatic departure from reality, was an escape nonetheless. One that I obsessed over for a solid year.
GameCube Week continues on In Third Person! Did you know that launch versions of Mario Kart: Double Dash came with a demo disc? Let’s explore its contents!
If you were fortunate enough to put in a pre-order for Mario Kart: Double Dash prior to its release, you got a special edition of the game that came with a Bonus Disc. Despite being a key selling point for me to pre-order in the first place, I would ignore the demo disc for over a decade before finally deciding to give the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles demo a try on stream. The ensuing fallout of that stream and the wonderful friendship that grew out of it is a well-documented tale that we don’t have to go over again (despite how much I’d love to).
At this point, nothing in my heart will be cooler than that Ninja Turtles demo for reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of the demo itself. But there’s more content on the disc than that. Let’s see what else it has to offer!
GameCube Week continues on In Third Person! Did I wrongfully dismiss Mario Kart: Double Dash when it first came out in the early 2000s?
From its origins on the Super Nintendo, to the magnum opus that is Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on the Nintendo Switch, I’ve been with Nintendo’s kart racer since its inception. Though it’s never had any real competition to its throne, I haven’t always been high on every entry in the series. I bounced off of Mario Kart 7 on the 3DS really quickly for feeling stale. Mario Kart: Super Circuit on the Gameboy Advance was another weak entry in the series, as the hardware simply didn’t have the horsepower to translate the high-speed thrills to the small screen.
And then there’s Mario Kart: Double Dash. I remember really disliking it upon release. My distaste for the game was so strong that I dropped the game out of my rotation almost immediately. When I hooked up the GameCube again in 2019 to stream it, I had totally forgotten why I hated it in the first place. Do I still feel the same way about it now?
GameCube Week continues on In Third Person! This time, I morph ball roll my way back to Metroid Prime!
Some games age like fine wine. You can pick up a Gameboy today – or 100 years from now – and still have just as much fun with Tetris as players did when it was first released in the 1980s. Other games lose their sheen faster than you would hope. Have you played Goldeneye 007 on the Nintendo 64 recently? Despite being revolutionary for its time, advents in the shooter genre have rendered it obsolete. It’s only real value now is nostalgia, which it admittedly has in spades.
Going back to Metroid Prime recently proved to be an interest test of its staying power. Revolutionary in its own right, Samus’ debut on the GameCube successfully translated its 2D exploration roots into the third dimension. How much of the experience still stands strong almost 20 years later? I played it for a few hours on stream to find out.
GameCube Week begins on In Third Person! We start with the curious case of one of gaming’s most notorious bait-and-swich!
Flashback to the year 2000. At Nintendo’s now-defunct Space World show, they revealed the Nintendo GameCube. Though I had concerns with the console’s cutesy looks and its asymmetrical controller, one demo that was shown gave me hope. Little did I know the one thing I clung onto would lead to the ultimate disappointment.
Nintendo’s cute gaming box gets the spotlight in this week of themed posts! GameCube Week begins tomorrow, with a post-a-day relating to the lunchbox that could. We’ll revisit a few games from my past, one of the biggest swerves in Nintendo history, and a dive into the demo disc that changed my life. There might even be…something different and very personal at the end of this run!
Hope to see you tomorrow and for the rest of the week as we celebrate GameCube Week at In Third Person!
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