Worst levels in Mario games

There's so much wrong with Yoshi himself in Super Mario Sunshine that he might just be the most overly complicated game mechanic I've seen in a Mario game. I'm happy only that one level (largely) requires using him.

•Why do you have to bring him fruit everytime you need him to hatch? Can't you just, like, hit the egg or something?
•Why are you forced to bring him a specific type of fruit at random when there's virtually no difference between the types of fruit?
•As if the requisites for getting to ride Yoshi weren't a tedious enough process in itself, why is the fruit usually placed so far away from him?
•Why do you have to keep eating fruit so Yoshi doesn't die?
•Why does only one level make use of his ability to turn enemies into platforms? Why is that a thing in the first place?
•WHY DOES HE DIE IN SWIMMABLE WATER? (the point that he is made of paint is a bunch of nonsense because he isn't vulnerable to water otherwise)
•Why can't you play as green yosh without glitches

In Super Mario Galaxy 2, you just find him, you break him out of his egg, giddy up, and boom now you can eat enemies and flutter jump at zero expenses other than getting hit. Sunshine on the other hand makes you jump so many unecessary hoops only for you to potentially lose him in some unfair circumstance. At least you can spin jump and triple jump with him.
 
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Super Mario Sunshine has quite the amount of different kinds of incompetence displayed here. I don't think Secret of the Dirty Lake is a bad level, just the physics kinda screw with you. It's a tough level, but dunno why they made it like this in the beginning of the game.

On the other hand, there's the roller coaster balloon episode where aiming doesn't work very well as rockets just seem to just offset by like 50 feet in any direction before you shoot. Look in this screenshot; you can even see how the smoke doesn't line up with where you're shooting.
Roller_Coaster_Balloons.png

Whoever decided that thing was to be put in a precision aiming minigame probably really didn't play that damn thing. It doesn't help they put you on a timer and on three cycles and then you die. At least with the trash clearing crap in Galaxy, you're permitted to retry however many times you like, you don't have to die in the process to have the game further mock you.

I think people are conflating difficult levels with "bad" levels; difficulty and poor design can correlate but I think genuine bad design is Super Mario Sunshine's Toxic Lily Pad crap as well as Yoshi Tower in Yoshi's Island DS. Secret of Dirty Lake is just a genuinely difficult level. I think the Trial Galaxies are also difficult but not really cheap. I get that a lot of the "hard" challenges in later Mario games are overreliant on length and a lot of pits to fall off, which doesn't make for a really great challenge; they wouldn't be as difficult if checkpoints were put in.
 
Koopa con Carne said:
Why do you have to keep eating fruit so Yoshi doesn't die?
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I believe their reasoning is that he's not a regular yoshi but actually made of paint.
Mario Party X said:
Super Mario Sunshine's Toxic Lily Pad
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I find it weird this one doesn't get talked about as much as Yoshi's Fruit Adventure. When people say difficult SMS level, this and the roller coaster are exactly what comes to mind for me.

WAIT OMG, THE FREAKING WATERMELON ROLLING CONTEST.. That one is badly made if you ask me... it's total hell.

Mario Party X said:
I think people are conflating difficult levels with "bad" levels;
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Like the sand bird level? It's annoying that they kind of made it so you have to die the first time, unless you're a really quick learner..
 
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Mariomaniacs said:
I find it weird this one doesn't get talked about as much as Yoshi's Fruit Adventure. When people say difficult SMS level, this and the roller coaster are exactly what comes to mind for me.
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Isn't the Toxic Lily Pad Ride basically the most infamous mission in Sunshine, though? If anything it hasn't been brought up in this thread much because it's already been talked to death.
 
I brought it up in passing. The level in of itself isn't the worst, though not good, much less great. It's just that the overall programming of secret levels and exiting to Isle Delfino lacks obvious oversight. Who thought putting in just one spawn point in a large hud map in Isle Delfino after you exit a secret level was a good idea? That toxic lily pad course requires a slow-moving boat to go to an otherwise inaccessible area way far off the map, and completing the course without dying, with or without completing the Shrine, will warp you back to the beginning. It appears to even worse than that secret course in the clock room in Super Mario 64 that spawns you in the moat if you fall off, and you have to progress all the way back to that clock room to retry.
 
Reading this topic reminds me that while I love playing sunshine, I only ever 100% it once.
 
I think I will add Extra 5: Kamek's Revenge from Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. Trying to 100% this level, you almost need to know exactly where those red coins and flowers are located. At a point, you need to use a morph bubbles to transform into Helicopter Yoshi right in top of a bottomless pit, so if you can't complete anything before the time limit (which is kinda difficult with Kamek and those Green Gloves along the way), you are pretty much doomed.

There's so many stuff happening at once in this level, which make things more complicated than it should be.
 
i kinda love sunshine but what i love about it has little to do with the gameplay which is frequently incredibly frustrating in comparison. no surprise it keeps being brought up a lot here !
 
Larry Koopaling said:
Looks like this topic ufficially became 'Let's fucking roast Sunshine'
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That's because Sunshine is an absolutely sadistic game, there's been way too many times I've questioned how anyone on the dev team thought what they made was fun and I've only gotten like halfway through it so far lol

Koopa con Carne said:
Shigeru Miyamoto, producer of Super Mario Sunshine
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At first I read this as "a deleted game is eventually good" which uh, seems appropriate
 
Larry Koopaling said:
Looks like this topic ufficially became 'Let's fucking roast Sunshine'
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We're not even done with Sunshine

Blooper surfing! The minigame gimmick thing where you're given no indication of how different colors mean different speeds, with pink fastest and blue slowest! There's that insidious red coin mission where you have to collect all red coins, and there's a time limit, and there's no going back after you ride on that thing. I've one time ran into a boat and didn't die for some reason until I turned around and then eventually hit it again. Also, even if you manage all 8 coins, you still have to collect that Shine Sprite, which is located on the pier and you CAN screw up by misjudging your jump and die by hitting into a slight 1-inch elevation of one of those jank ass logs they put.
800px-Red_Coins_On_The_Water.png
 
I went with the pink blooper which was as wise as my going into Secret of Dirty Lake with Rocket Nozzle and that costed me too much time. Levels like these make me not want to really complete Sunshine lol.
 
red coins on the water
highly-specific-indescribeable-energies.png

i think me commenting on it while trying to get it sums it up
me on discord said:
i discovered the blooper moves on its own without holding the stick so im free
guess what
gues swaht
i heckiedf
i hecknif feid
ui died rtyting to grab the shine
[insert message from a friend here]
i DIED ITHETYIRNG TO GRAB THE SINE BECAUSE MARIO DEDCIDED TO LAND ONTO A YELLOW BLOOPER AND I JUST COULDNT TURN ATRROUnD AT ALL AND I HIT A WALL
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i still got the shine soon after but it made me cry. like a lot of sunshine did, once again summed up with this
2021022720035800_c.jpg

this game is a mess

yknow i literally just played it earlier today over galaxy anyway
 
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Yeah no, surfing those bloopers were awful. And I have had that happen to me once too. This is why I almost always choose the green blooper now instead of the other two colors.

As for this thread, I have so many things that I probably will say later after playing SM3DAS. But for now, my first thoughts are, Rolling Gizmo Galaxy, and all those other Star Ball galaxies can go in the trash.
 
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Yeah it's a pity Sunshine is such a sadistic game. Like you said, it's actually pretty enjoyable when you just play it casually, the atmosphere is just charming - and having a properly dubbed Bowser totally at random (you know, he was only capable to express himself through roars and angry tortoise noises till the previous game) is priceless.
 
ok so i think i found a mission in dreadnought galaxy where this gearmo literally expects tool assisted speedrun levels of precision and timing out of you in order to blow up all the trash in 30 seconds. i spent like 10 minutes trying to get it and decided it was a mere waste of time
at least the gearmo doesnt literally murder mario for failing like every other npc would in this game for some godforsaken reason
with this and trying to get snow cap galaxy once (where i spent the whole timer trying to FIND one bunny and then trying to CATCH said one bunny and i completely failed even trying to catch ONE bunny and they expect you to find and catch THREE within this time limit). i am reconsidering ever going for 120 stars in this game .
 
You'd love Luigi's Purple Coins.
 
Never really saw the difficulty in the garbage bombing levels. There's the little gold spots that help you place your bombs correctly, and the bombs themselves have a ridiculously large explosion range that can destroy a pile which may not even be tangential to the visible explosion--at least that's how it felt to me.

You just gotta pick up the last bomb before there are 10 seconds left, is all.

Now, the similar crate destruction missions from the sequel? Man, Gearmo can stick his magnet pole in his hydraulic reservoir for that.
 
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You know, I'm a bit surprised there has been only a single Super Paper Mario callout in this thread. Because that game is FILLED with shit moments.

The chapter (Chapter 2-3) with the hamster wheel and hitting the block tediously for rubees is dreadful, contemptuous game design, while the NPCs there insult you repeatedly. Not to mention the game's NPCs outright condescend you when you bribe them for advice, and the thing is, it is REQUIRED to pay the NPCs to even progress through that chapter!
 
The thread is filled with complaints about Sunshine because underneath those pesky, sometimes game-breaking defects lies a brilliant game that people like to remember and discuss.

Super Paper Mario is just a woeful mess, and a low-hanging fruit of a subject that feels redundant to talk about. Might as well bring up Super Mario Bros. 3 so the thread diverges into "Worst Mario games".
 
Most ghost houses would fit in this category for me. I just can't enjoy them because I find them boring or just not interesting at all. And then there are additionally some ghost houses that just confuses the player, which doesn't make me like them more.
 
Personally I think ghost houses are awesome, that was my favourite part of SML2 and they were pretty good in NSMBDS and NSMBW. The music and artstyle in these three games was pretty cool and I kinda liked the unique structure of them. I respect your viewpoint tho
 
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