I have new game.

[Dark Jaguar]

I think it all comes down to how much of platforming's fun comes from mobility. The more you are able to bounce around walls and across things, and the faster, and the more you can chain together more acrobatics, the more fun the game becomes. So take away something like Mario's dive, an ability that adds an amount of speed and some need flips to come out of it, and the absense is felt. I think the lack of a number of flexible acrobatics in Mario Sunshine play a large part in why people don't really enjoy it's "feel". The long jump just seems so very right so when it's gone you suddenly feel like Mario is a burdened lumox, even though he clearly has some extra mobility from that water pump in certain situations. Heck, the majority of the fun from Prince of Persia happened with no enemies to speak of, just plain acrobatics. I even remember purposefully playing the battles in a wreckless manner, by which I mean trying to do all the cool tricks I could squeeze into the battle. I was always trying to do some neat thing like fly off a wall into someone's head transformed into a roll up someone's back. I knew it was wreckless but it was a lot more fun than if I played with the only objective being to win (in which case repetitious standing guarding and rolling tactics would be sufficient).