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[OB1]

Mario 64 did the diversity of themes better, but the levels were small and the game was very easy.

I love Mario Sunshine because of the incredibly tight, precise controls and all of the great acrobatics. You can pull off so many moves in Mario Sunshine (and to a slightly lesser extent, Mario 64) with just one analogue stick and two buttons. It's pure, 100%, "hardcore" platforming excellence.

And how cool would it be if Nintendo were to release a bonus disk full of more mini-levels for Sunshine? I can't get enough of those.

I'd love for the next Mario game to go in the direction of those mini-levels. Get rid of the six or so main levels and just have around fourty or so long, linear levels. Not linear like Crash Bandicoot, but more like Rayman meets the mini-levels from Sunshine. And then of course make it seem like full-blown levels rather than mini ones, and balance out the difficulty. It would also be silly for them to be floating in space like they were in sunshine, so real backgrounds are a must.

And DJ, Mario World came out just a year after Mario 3 so they didn't exactly have a lot of time to make it very different.