The company is perfectly happy to slide into the pipes of its past and emerge with treasure, the better to squeeze a few extra gold coins out of us. If Sony or Microsoft tried to persuade us that one of their exclusives would be gone forever, we would laugh. ![]() That evaporation, by the way, may drive more people to purchase Super Mario 3D All-Stars than the pure desire to revisit a trio of classics. Now, through the wide window of the Switch, in 16:9 and 720p, it’s all come flooding back. Back in 2002, after all, I was squinting through the heat and fizz of a 480p resolution, in a boxy format (our fondest memories of games are always in 4:3, with the periphery of our lives chopped off and channeled into a square frame). I did wonder, before playing the reissue-which is included in Super Mario 3D All-Stars, a limited-edition compilation, set to evaporate from the eShop at the end of this month-whether my recollection might be hazy, dehydrated by romance. ![]() Water, water everywhere, and not a drop out of sync. Nineteen years on, and it’s all as it was in my head-every mouth-drying shade. Then, of course, there was the silver-white spume, jetting from the gizmo on Mario’s back. The streams and lakes, which were a crisp, drinkable turquoise-and, when tainted with spilt paint, a suspicious lavender. There was the sea, clear, blue-tinted, and thin. ![]() The game was Super Mario Sunshine, and the water came in many flavours. ![]() Water, at the turn of the millenium, was the measurement of a developer’s visual muscle: can you massage a bathtub of crunchy polygons until they melt and purl? Many tried and failed (remember the wavering gloop of Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex?), but Nintendo delivered the goods. More specifically, the water still looks like good graphics.
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