Super Mario Sunshine’s Blue Coins are Great, and that’s why I Hate them.
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- čas přidán 10. 12. 2020
- The blue coins in Super Mario Sunshine are a great reward for thoroughly exploring all the different stages. I also absolutely hate those coins. So what went wrong?
Well the answer is: It’s complicated.
There are several reasons why I end up really disliking the blue coins that I otherwise really like. So today we are going to take a deep dive into my love hate relationship with the blue coins in Super Mario Sunshine. We will not only discuss how the blue coins succeed at what they set out to achieve, but also why they fail miserably at the same time. We will not only try to find out what went wrong with them, but we will hopefully also learn about a couple of interesting and often lesser discussed crimes in game design that the blue coins in Super Mario Sunshine commit.
------------------Credits for the Music-------------------------
Super Mario Sunshine OST - Bianco Hills
Super Mario Sunshine OST - Delfino Plaza
Hollow Knight OST - City of Tears
------NoCopyrightSounds
/ @nocopyrightsounds
Alan Walker - Fade
• Video
------Holfix
/ holfix
HolFix - Beyond The Kingdom
• [Free Music] HolFix - ...
------Kevin MacLeod
"Adventure Meme"
Kevin MacLeod incompetech.com
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
creativecommons.org/licenses/b... - Hry
Honestly, a simple Blue Coin counter over the title of each level that tells you how many coins you still have to find for each shine would make the system much less rage inducing
I know it's not episode specific, but you can see how many blue coins for each level you've collected on the totals map/screen. There are 30 per level.
Yes this would be great or even hints in the levels themselves over a certain period of time of not doing anything it'll point out one location to look around for one.
You just described something that actually does exist in the game. Was this sarcasm?
@@Vampibatmanodactyle for each world but not every stage. Some coins are stage specific
This idea ocurred to me while he was at that part too, but I still dislike it because it would require you exploring the same areas multiple times.
I think they screwed up by designing the level loop the way they did (ending a level on shine collect I mean), mario odyssey did the idea much better by initially having objectives that guide you through the stage, then opening up the level.
the entire argument about framing is really so smart, I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of that before
It's very smart and I agree with 99% of it, but it's missing the point that blue coins are still optional since you can complete the game without them. You can actually finish Super Mario Sunshine without collecting a single one! I do agree that it would be better if they weren't tied to shines, though, and I completely get the point Ceave is making for people who feel like completing a game means 100%ing it.
I appreciate the argument, but don't really agree about the point on framing them as optional or not. You don't need to collect every blue coin to beat the game because you don't need every shine to complete the game. If somebody wants to 100% the game, that presents itself as a different challenge. The fact about them not being obtainable in every mission though does degrade the experience of looking for the coins. I think that's honestly the biggest problem with it considering there's no way for the player to know if everything has been found in a level.
Ds man on a mario vid
You didn't think about it that way because it was never framed to you like that.
Mr. Pineapple what are you doing here? Shouldn't you be playing more off-brand dollar store Soulslikes?
I just want to mention the seashells in Link's Awakening.
Once you have collected enough, all of them disappear, so even an OCD completionist won't need to check every single bush and tree in the game.
Felt good.
The fact that you mentioned OCD....
As someone with OCD, that sounds amazing
Was it also like that in the remastered version?
I don't think you know what OCD means-it's not an adjective-but otherwise, solid point.
@@callmeobsequious Most people who claim to have it online don't have a clue what kind of horrible sickness this actually is. They think they have it because they are mildly bothered by a blank spot on a map or something.
"Blue coins don't add to the coin counter!"
Purple coins: *sweats*
At least the Purple coins have another counter right next to them that you can see at any time, and they still make cool sound effects and come in an interesting variety of shapes.
@@kaleenar963
I mean, Blue Coins also have a counter, but yeah.
@@bhull242 The thing is that you have to collect one to see it.
Atleast blue coins can restore your life unlike purples
Ceave: "This video is an unusually difficult sell"
Me: Already sold
It's hard to sell because it costs blue coins XD
"You son of a fuzzy, I'm in!"
I was sold from the title alone. lol
Me: "Nah, it's actually surprisingly simple..."
I feel like the purple coins in Odyssey were actually the direct solution here too! It rewards you with a fully separate kind of item, even if they can still be difficult to find. Also a counter knowing where they're missing is a really key part missing from the system! Great vid!
Edit: Over 1k likes - that's awesome! I actually have a Nintendo channel with weekly content if you're looking for some more Nintendo vids to watch! I've just always loved Ceave's content too.
Sadly that game is utter trash, oh well
I missed 1 in the Luncheon Kingdom, and spent a week trying to find it.
@@aturchomicz821 before anyone says anything, remember subjectivity is a thing
@@moodle6500 it is a thing but if you’re gonna say a game is bad at least do it with respect, that’s why I believe his comment is trash, as it’s disrespectful and doesn’t provide any kind of reason or discussion topic to continue, he’s just slamming his opinion waiting for someone to reply...
@@moodle6500 yeah but its indefensiable seing it has 90+ on Metacritic like wtf??
Framing has almost exactly the same result as naming. People started calling the african "Wild Dogs" "Painted Dogs" which raised awareness of the decreasing population. Wild sounds scary, Painted sounds cute.
The Patagonian Toothfish is another example. When sold as food, it's almost always referred to as "Chilean Sea Bass" since the name sounds more appealing to eat
a somewhat sillier example of this is the difference between water, h2o, and dihydrogen monoxide/DHMO.
they all mean exactly the same thing (dihydrogen monoxide and h2o both describe the chemical composition of water, even), but they come with different connotations - water is just water, most people know more or less what h2o means (though it's a bit pretentious to use in a casual context), but dihydrogen monoxide and DHMO are names that're rarely used, so they're less recognizable at a glance.
they make it sound like a Scary Mysterious Chemical, and are often used alongside misleadingly worded (but technically true) facts about water, mostly as a joke, but also as a convenient way to demonstrate how easy it can be to mislead people, even with information that's technically true, and a way to poke fun at how scared many people can be of any chemical name that sounds just a little too spooky.
@@mozarteanchaos
Don’t forget hydroxyl acid, a major component of acid rain!
@@bhull242 that's actually an example i haven't come across before, thanks!
@@bhull242 I hear it's a major component of many common cleaning solutions, is a universal solvent, but is used as an additive in many commercially manufactured foods!
"Collecting all the Korok seeds is optional
"
*SmallAnt has left the chat*
This channel has become:
So I was working on something else and then I started talking about one thing too much and it became its own video.
First it was the Cat Suit, then Tanks, and now this.
And I love it.
This is top tier content fs
this is justgoing off on tangents the channel and as a tanget goer, i like it
These format types are my favorite along with the "playthrough without doing x"
also here's a rant about political framing
@Johannes Maclean because ceave is your frying pan daddy
“You see, I play both sides, so I always come out on top.”
Well yes, but actually no.
Tbh he seems more like a bottom judging by his voice.
Lol where did THAT come from?
@@ankergutten3428 top? Bottom?
bi_irl
One thing I always thought that would have made the system 100x better with just a small change is just telling us how many of the coins we have collected out of how many available in each chapter rather than only sorting them by stage.
The other frustrating thing about the blue coins being part of the Shine system is they aren’t shines (nor are any of the optional shines ) that can help you unlock the final boss. The only requirement for the final boss in sunshine is beating episode 7 in all the stages. Unlike in Mario 64 where any 70 stars can unlock the stair case
Pausing the game to emphasize hits on the player or enemies is actually a pretty common tool to enhance game feel. Hollow Knight just draws way more attention to the technique than most games by drawing it out longer and adding lots of visual effects.
I would think pausing when taking damage isn't just a punishment, but gives you a second to process your mistake, and to figure out how to recover. Sort of a mercy at the same time.
@@Revenge-fm9tt In hollow knight I agree. In most games however I would say the time frame is too short to really be significant when it comes to deciding your next couple moves.
Funny it's being used against Sunshine, since Mario was the series that made it a staple in the first place.
@@zeeteepippi275 I haven't played Sunshine, but in all the other 3D Mario games that hasn't been a thing so I doubt it's a thing there.
@@dusklunistheumbreon It's been a thing ever sinse Super Mario Bros. on the NES.
Ceave talks about ugly coins for 16 minutes straight.
Content
Countaint
You mean “coin”tent
Don’t you mean shiny but deadly coins
@@schmoop3660 they aren’t shiny
Pretty much the type of video that got me watching his channel.
I think Odyssey's moons felt about as satisfying to get as Sunshine's blue coins, which is why I wish Odyssey had a system like blue coins for those easier "mini-challenge" moons.
Yeah I felt like I was the one person who didn’t like Odyssey. The missions just weren’t satisfying.
Key difference is that Odyssey keeps track of the ones collected by giving every Moon a name as a hint. Also you can inquire the names of 3 hidden moons in advance, making it even easier to find them. Only for a handful moons of all the the 880 did I actually have to look up a guide.
Also the reward for getting all 880 unique moons and 999 moons in total is miniscule like in Sunshine. However unlike Sunshine there's another post-game goal after the main game other than 100%ing the game: Darker Side of the moon, which requires 500 moons to reach. Meaning even if you don't wanna go for all moons it still makes sense to collect more moons than required whereas in Sunshine the blue coins as well as *every single shine sprite* outside of missions 1-7 of each level are completely pointless to collect if you aren't going for 100%: you either grab the assigned 50 shines for the regular ending or all 120 for the 100% ending. Anything between that is unnecessary. This last fact is what makes Super Mario Sunshine the most frustrating Mario game to date for me.
You mean the purple coins? Lol
What I disliked about the blue coin system in particular is that due to the episodic nature of Mario Sunshine's mission and the player only really needing to complete the 7th mission in every level to unlock the access to Corona mountain, blue coins are completely pointless to collect if you're not going for 100%. In Super Mario 64 every single of the 70 stars you need to collect to complete the game matters, in Sunshine only 7 shines really matter.
The regional coins in Odyssey were definitely these but done right, they unlock completely optional things and are more satisfying to collect
Odyssey blows though
@@TheOmegaGamer ok but i don’t remember asking
@@seanyproductions you have the right to share your opinion and so do I
@@TheOmegaGamer yeah odyssey was like if sunshine had no stars and Only blue coins
@@blake..- exactly, Odyssey is one of the worst 3D platformer I ever played, the Moons feel so weak to collect compared to Stars and Shines, they are unsatisfying as hell
Using blue coins to get expansions to Fludd's water capacity would've been so much better!
I actually remember seeing Blue Coins off in the far distance and sometimes thinking "well I can either go out of my way to get it now or I'll need to go even further out of my way to get it later", they just didn't seem exciting enough. It makes so much sense now that you explain it, that it was because they were tied to the main objective.
A Hat in Time did this really well. There is a similar system to the blue coins in Sunshine called "Rift Coins" in the game, and they are basically the same exact thing. You explore around the levels, and then sometimes you come across rift tokens. You put 3 of them into a machine to unlock a cosmetic for the Hat Kid, and they are completely optional yet really fun to collect.
and nearly every cosmetic item obtained from the machine is really cute or good, and the variety is awesome. skins for hat kid and her hats, and even music remixes of levels iirc. plus rolling the machine felt really satisfying. im having trouble waiting for gears for breakfast to announce a new game honestly
Instead of not rewarding shines for blue coins, I would argue that reducing the number of blue coins required for a single shine, while maintaining the 120 shine max would solve the problem.
For example, let's say shines only cost 5 blue coins. Now only half of all blue coins are required to 100% the game, and the player will still be required to do some extra exploration to 100% the game
Maybe add an extra reward (maybe an outfit for mario or maybe some optional challenge levels with no shine at the end) for collecting all the blue coins
Is this wobbles from melee?
Honestly that's a great idea.
They probably would have done that if given more time to complete the game
But then you STILL haven't completed the game!
Additionally the game would indicate after collecting half of the blue coins that now every other coin is optional and doesn't give you shines anymore. Like maybe they turn purple and give you 3 one ups each or something. Also there's gotta be a way to keep track of the blue ones you collected whereas the remaining ones do not count towards the 100% progression.
Ceave: "There are a total of 30 coins..."
Dislike count: 30
* the coins have disliked the video *
But there are 240 blue coins...
this comment has 30 likes currently... I guess the coins admit they did it.
dislike count: 60
* the coins are starting to learn how to make sockpuppets *
Now Pi has.
Theyre learning how to multiply
"Super Mario Sunshine's Blue Coins are great, and that's why I Hate them."
Ah yes, the floor here is made of roof...
When you live on the second floor
@@Nat1CreativityCheck You hear the Illuminati theme from the distance...
@@user-zr7su5qi5d it's not called the "illuminati" theme, it's the x files intro.
On Isle Delfino, it really is.
@@Ghorda9 Right, my bad.
I love how Ceave is kind of becoming the "GameMakersToolkit" of Nintendo games
Wow, I felt the same thing when picking up blue coins. I started avoiding them because I hated having to manually save every time.
When Hollow Knight music started playing I thought I had somehow clicked on the wrong video. I'm glad I was wrong, Hollow Knight is amazing!
The Hollow Knight part came right after an ad break for me. Which confused me to no end.
Same!
@@MichaelHeide Yeah, i thought the video ended and I had autoplay on
When he talked about being able to always see what hit you I thought about radiance and her stupid bright yellow background with bright yellow attacks
@@WaluigiisthekingASmith Exactly! I've been trying to do PoH charmless and Absrad is driving me insane.
Alternate Title: Shiny, yet deadly coins
Nicobbq reference?
It’s a Ceave refence. I think it started with the first Mario Maker no coins video
@@mr.tapman8685 okay it's problably a ceave reference
Shiny, blue looking yet deadly coins.
Shiny yet deadly (blue) coins
The idea of framing in-game systems is really well put. I also think it heavily applies to Korok Seeds in Breath of the Wild. Lots of people hate them because it's unreasonable and tedious to hunt down all 900 in the game, but I don't think they were ever supposed to be completely collected by anyone but the most hardcore collectors and completionists. Unlike Blue Coins in Sunshine, you only need roughly half of the total Korok Seeds in the game to get all of the benefits--fully increasing your weapon inventories. Sure, you get the golden poop after collecting all of them, but this is nothing more than a trophy, having absolutely no gameplay function. I think where Breath of the Wild fails with Korok Seeds, is that it doesn't properly communicate that you aren't ever intended to collect them all, which wouldn't take more than a little bit of nudging toward the player when the system is introduced by Hestu.
It's true that the game could've atleast told you that you only need to collect some of them and that there's no useful reward for collecting them all. But I mean the golden poop is symbolic enough that the game is making fun of you for even going that far.
At a certain point though, Hestu stops giving you inventory upgrades. After that, it becomes pretty obvious that there's no point in collecting all of the seeds.
@@AbruptAvalanche well it doesn't specifically tell you that there's no useful reward for collecting them all, and considering you get a new outfit upon completing all shrines it wouldn't be unreasonable to believe there's a special reward for collecting them all
@@solidzack Every shrine rewards you with a useful spirit orb though, so there's always the incentive to find more, even if the outfit didn't exist. Hestu stops incentivizing you to collect more seeds after you're done with upgrades. The shrines are easier to find, easier to keep track of, and there's a reasonable number of them vs the hundreds and hundreds of seeds. The game also gives you a way to track down shrines with the shrine locator radar, but no such locator (pre-DLC at least) for the seeds. Given all of that, I think it would be crazy to think the game actually expects you to find all of the seeds.
@@AbruptAvalanche it would be completely unreasonable to expect the players to find all blue coins that are spread throughout all the different missions in Super Mario Sunshine, and yet here we are. Especially because in Sunshine Shines essentially don't matter. The condition to unlock the final level is beating Shadow Mario in all levels, which requires you to get shine 1-6 of that level in that order, meaning that all other shines are pointless, including the blue coin shines, unless you wanna get all shines, in which case you gotta collect all blue coins. Some game devs are simply that crazy.
Honestly, I'd rather collect all Korok seeds than all blue coins in Sunshine.
To this day my Super Mario Sunshine save sits at an aggravating 119 shines because of some blue coin in Noki Bay
Yeah, that's gonna bother some people's OCDs. :/
9:46 "on paper" then you remember the current state of Paper Mario and it all makes a little bit more sense
I really like how Splatoon deals with collectibles, how they give you info on the lore but don’t do anything
Yeah, and how the purple coins are used in Odyssey - Optional cosmetics, a small percentage of which are needed to get moons.
@@Stephen-Fox and the ones used to get moons are fine because people who don’t get every purple coin are gonna buy the clothes first anyway.
It's interesting that the blue coin design philosophy clearly evolved into the way moons are handled in Mario Odyssey- they solved a lot of the problems by making the smaller collectables feed the same pool as the primary ones, everything is Moons. And they're still able to tell a story over the course of a level and collecting it's major Moons while still hiding other Moons in smaller puzzles or as exploration rewards too. Mario Sunshine may not be everyone's favorite Mario game, but it was important in terms of the design evolution of the series.
Oh hey, funny seeing you here from a year ago!
If you don't have 16 minutes to spare: "getting to collect coins is fun" "having to collect coins is not fun"
Bravo, 5 stars on that top-notch monkey brain translation of the last 16+ minutes of my life.
"Ceave gaming is such a good channel, thats why i (i dont actually) hate it"
that title tho lmao
hmm??
@@aturchomicz821 he’s making a parody of the title but he is specifying that he’s joking and really likes Ceave
Yeah, the title's like, "Bipolar much?"
Hello Memenade videos commenter! I see your journey of commenting in several videos around the internet has started! How's it going?
@@smolse6854 its been nice. Im trying to be a Justin Y Type person
I can listen to you speak on camera. I can say “yes, that’s Ceave, that’s his face, he is speaking.” And then as soon as you’re offscreen I immediately stop believing that face and that voice go together. I think it’s because you sound like a well dressed foreign arms dealer, rather than a guy in a Mario themed normal room.
Yeah
I mean, he could be a polite foreign arms dealer with one normal Mario themed room.
Ceave's day job is at Steyr, clearly.
Basically, yes. I can see the face. But the voice and that face stop working the moment I can't see.
I think it's also because the change in audio quality kind of makes the transitions really harsh.
I think that if the blue coins are necesary, adding a counter for them at the start of each shine sprite mission would really help a lot
“BLUE COIN SHMOO COIN!!!”
-Arin “Video Game Boy” Hanson from Game Grumps
From Hollow Knight to politics and gambling. Just what I expect in my Mario videos. Subscribed
to be fair they did prove they learned their lesson with this with how they handled the same coin mechanic in odyssey
Not really. Blue coins are more comparable to the numerous superfluous and non-story required moons scattered throughout Odyssey in both frequency and placement.
The issue with this video is that blue coins *are* entirely optional, yet Ceave consistently treats them as mandatory throughout the video for completely arbitrary reasons. Its funny that he compares Shines to Moons in Odyssey, only to reveal that he typically only collects 500 moons in an Odyssey playthrough instead of the full 880. So, for one of these games fun, optional collectibles to reward exploration are fine -- even if they don't make you compelled to collect every single one -- yet for the other game its suddenly a problem? Its completely inconsistent logic.
@@BaronSterling While not every moon is a home run, most are unique and all contribute towards getting to the next kingdom. The biggest exception being the ones from Toadette.
Every blue coin feels like a repetitive chore. There are only a handful of different challenges to get them yet there are 240 of these things? you could literally scour the whole game looking for the last coin and it's just not fun
"my humble dominion"
Honeyyy, Ceave did it again!
That idea of letting players know that they don't expect or even don't want their players to collect or do everything is really pertinent to a lot of different things in different games.
Odyssey is a great example, there's like 6 different places in the game where you could be completely satisfied and feel comfortable not going any further.
Ceave video: *exists*
Everyone: "Hoo-ray!"
Hoo-ray!
1:41
If u aren’t Hoo-Ray gang y r hear bro
1:06 when you are a doom fan but your channel is family friendly
Thanks for the likes guys
Ugh I love these videos so much. Please keep bringing your design opinions to the table. Even as a professional designer myself, there’s just too much I learn from you!
The framing part is exactly the problem I've always had with them. It always feels like I HAVE to get them all to "complete" the game, and this is made frustrating when certain coins only appear during specific shines, which means if you happen to be missing some, you're almost definitely going to just be pulling up an online guide and scrolling through all 100+ of them to figure out which ones you're missing.
I have a somewhat similar issue with the 100 coin shines in sunshine specifically, because in some levels, it feels like there's only BARELY enough coins to get you there, with a lot of them disappearing WAY TOO QUICKLY after they pop out from an enemy or, say, a watermelon. It's annoying when you spend so long gathering up coins, only to realize you're screwed and have to restart the level or choose a different shine that has more coins spawning.
Ceave: *mentions Hollow Kinght*
Me: *immediately freaks out, and starts very intensely jamming to the calm music*
Y e s
Naturally
I find it extremely irritating that you never collect the underwater blue coin
Many of these issues have been fixed in Mario Sunburn, such as removing the save prompt after collecting a blue coin and being able to collect shines in any order. (Plus a lot of other quality of life improvements such as skipable cut scenes and not being booted out after collecting a shine, just to name a few). After playing Sunburn, I could never go back to vanilla Sunshine ever again.
"I need to do chores... but blegh, I don't want to. -_-"
...
"I would like to spruce up the house, though. Heck, it'd be fun."
I love his face when he says lets do this
"they are brilliant. i also hate this system." i laughed so hard
Amazing how almost every single flaw of the blue coins is fixed with Odyssey's purple equivalent.
Looks like Nintendo realized what went wrong and made a point of fixing it in future games.
I did feel my face twitching a little at the mention of "beating the game" as the same action as "100%ing" it. You've beaten the game when you collect enough Shines to beat Bowser and finish the story. Getting all 120 Shines is distinctly not the objective of the game or its story. It is optional content for completionists, and so are the Blue Coins. The Blue Coins are not mandatory content in Sunshine. In fact, they're only mandatory if you've already decided to complete another larger optional task
I completely agree. As a completionist botw was absolutely terrible and unfulfilling getting all the koroks. I just 100% sunshine today for the first time and it was fulfilling and fun. Can't believe his solution was to make it less of a "big deal" and even relate to one of the worst completion experiences I've ever had in gaming being botw.
It wouldn't be in the game as a secret and encourages you to get them if they didn't want you to collect them. Everytime I bought a shine with blue coins it felt rewarding. Botw only gives you crap.
@@AndroidHarris I feel like Nintendo didn't expect or want people to finish the game, of course some people are going to but let's look at some of the things they did.
.Put 900 koroks each qith their own puzzle with no conceivable way of finding them on your own even with the dlc korok mask
.Put 120 around the map although these are definitely more advertised with ways to track them
.Max every single set of armor which needs basically everything in the game
.Doing every sidequest which means finding every quest npc and complete all their tasks like collecting a whole bunch of different weapons
.Giving absolutely nothing from 100%ing the game, not even a picture with thank you on it
I also feel like trying to 100 percent botw is a bad way to play the game since it feels like it goes against the game's main goodpoints.
@@arandominternetuser4507 it shouldn't be in the game if they didn't want you to finish it.
I play games mostly for an amazing ending not necessarily the beggining. I dont understand how completing botw goes against games main goodpoints is it because they dropped the ball on everything that isn't the main thing. I'm also in progress to 100% skyrim right now. Are open world games just not supposed to be completed and if so should I avoid these types of games mostly as a completionist?
@@arandominternetuser4507 a game series I love completing is the kirby series as usually they have the best rewards. Not only is there a cutscene most of the time but there is also brand new bosses. Like getting all the rainbow drops in dreamland 2 allows you to fight dark matter which is a tough boss that brings the ending so much more epic. As well as games like super star ultra, triple deluxe, and return to dreamland having new bosses in the true arena. Whether it be new forms like Marx soul or sectonia soul or even bosses from the ex mode HRD3 boss. Kirby usually gives great incentives for completion. There are a couple exceptions but my favorite was the true arena in planet robobot remaking a classic fight as the final boss as well as making it entirely new based on the story and new movesets. Kirby also has rewards like squeak squad ghost ability being able to possess and control any enemy after completing all the ghost medals. A fun addition that adds so much fun yet isn't crazy. If botw gave something like the bike for completing everything that would be on the level of some kirby rewards.
So I think all games should take the time to give that fun or epic reward if you complete it like kirby does.
Just imagine completing botw and getting a new rune that you can just have and play with or after you do all sidequests, areas, and korok seeds you can fight a nightmare version of ganon like the other dream fights but he has a new phase after dark beast and with entirely new moveset. That would be fun or epic completion rewards.
@@AndroidHarris I feel like completing a game this big isn't very fun especially with the lack of reward although I don't know much about skyrim so I can't comment much about that also, in my opinion exploration is Botw biggest strongsuit and if your hunting for something like koroks I don't think you'll much of anything new since you've probably already seen a lot of what the game has to offer. Doing 100% of an open world is definitely not for the faint of heart.
School: Here are 240 homework exercises and they are mandatory
Sunshine: Here are 240 blue coins and they are mandatory
I would rather collect the blue coins XD
Some of the best teachers I ever had sometimes gave options regarding homework. For example, here's 15 problems, do at least 10, with a chance for (albeit reduced) extra credit.
@@racoonwhocannotbekilled9999 At least the homework usually tells you where the problems are.
@@zeeteepippi275 searching for them is half the fun tho?
My maths teacher would lets us do atleast 2 problems out of 5, and still write in her paper that we did the homework.
"Political communication theory" - Three words I wasn't expecting to hear when I clicked this video.
But you pretty much summed up all but one of my problems with the blue coins in Sunshine, as well as why I never got all 120 shines in this game.
The only other thing I don't like is that, despite being "required", there's no way in-game to see how many blue coins are remaining on a stage, so if you're not keeping count of how many blue coins you've collected in each stage from the moment you start the game, you have to search every shine in every level to try to find where you've missed them. There's no way to know if you're searching in the wrong level, or if you've just missed the blue coin tucked away in a corner somewhere.
And people wonder why I hate collecting korok seeds in BotW...
@@Chad_Eldridge Except that there are waaaay more than needed. There are so much, one doesnt have to actively korok hunt to reach something between 300 to 600 in a casual playthrough. With DLC it gets even easier thanks to Korok mask (this should have been the last reward at 450 in the base game in my opinion).
@@pflaumi123
There's a lot of reasons why they're not fun to collect. In my casual playthrough, I was actively looking for those seeds in every possible corner I could explore, even in the big empty expanses where there didn't seem to be much to explore, and even by the time I got to the end of exploring every location on the map, I only barely got the required amount to get maximum inventory space. I was walking and climbing over every space I could reasonably explore, not going too fast so that I wouldn't miss a seed, constantly blinking my stasis rune to find any standout location or object, and even after actively looking for them, I didn't get all of them. Sure, they're marked on your map when you get those seeds, but you can only tell if they're marked if you zoom into the map all the way; you don't have the option to zoom it all the way out and only see where you already got those seeds. Even so, what's the value in knowing what seeds I've already gotten? I'm trying to look for seeds that I haven't obtained yet, and in the big expanse of Hyrule, just knowing where not to look doesn't help much, especially when there's some seeds that are right next to each other but it's not very apparent. The game also doesn't tell you how many korok seeds there are; you have to look that up on the internet. So if you don't know how many there are, you have to just explore as much as you're able until you discover when enough is enough, with no indication on how good of a job you're doing. The korok mask itself you have to pay extra money for just so you can get an indication on where other korok seeds are, even though the game has a built-in sensor mechanic that lets you take a picture of things and make it easier to find them. Why can't you just take a picture of a korok and use the sheikah sensor to find them? But even with the korok mask, it's not nearly as useful as the sheikah sensor. The sheikah sensor indicates if you're close or far (hot or cold) from your desired item once you reach a certain vicinity, which counts for both horizontal and vertical directions relative to your position. The korok mask, on the other hand, only creates sparks when you're in the vicinity, with no other information given at all, practically telling you "eh, it's around here somewhere, I don't know," which is hardly helpful at all. It's also annoying that it takes the form of a hat that you need to wear in order to gain its simple benefits, when sometimes you want to make climbing easier for yourself by wearing the full climbing gear set, but you also need the korok mask to know if a seed is nearby when climbing a bunch of walls. Trying to just collect the minimum amount of seeds needed for max inventory upgrade is made needlessly difficult because of a lack of information given within the game and is made inefficient by map features that could have been easily implemented. But even when I tried to use a guide from the internet to get the other 459 seeds that you don't need (which I only did for the sake of curiosity on what collecting them all would be like), it's still made annoying because some seeds are so close to each other that the seed JPEGs are right on top of each other, making it easy to not realize that there's two seeds in one spot instead of just two. Just the sheer amount of seeds there are can make it very easy to lose track of which seeds you have or haven't gotten, especially because you're not allowed to zoom out and see a bunch of seeds at once on the map and so many locations on the map look too similar to each other because of the simple textures. All of this could have been so easily changes with just some tweaks to the menu design and giving more information to the player, but so much of it wasn't because it helps pad out game time. But even if these features were available and made actively collecting these seeds so much more efficient with a lot more clarity and overall being less time consuming, actually obtaining the seeds isn't interesting enough to be a fun experience for even half of the 900 seeds. Too many seeds are obtained through a very basic puzzle like "look at this rock pattern and fit another rock into the missing spot" or "spot the difference between these metal cube structures and fit the extra box into the missing spot" or "look at the difference between these trees and make them all look alike," all of which have a small chance of puzzling a player at first glance, but has no challenge afterwards because they're practically copy-pasted dozens of times across the overworld with little to no variation. The only ones that are worse are the "pick up a rock" or "get close enough to sparkles and press A" because they're either in extremely obscure locations (even after actively looking for them in every nook and cranny) or in extremely obvious locations once you realize how many are on the tip of a tall place like a house or a mountain or a hill. The only ones I got continual and consistent enjoyment...
@@pflaumi123
...from were the seeds that required me to do a race from a tree stump or perform some archery or rock basketball or rock golf or be audibly attentive to the environment to find where a flower teleported to, and I even got a smile on my face when getting a seed made a reference to a past Zelda game, like shooting an eye to get a reward. Those ones had some challenge in regards to timing and speed, where the other seeds were extremely basic puzzles or were just basic acknowledgements of "hurray, you looked in a really obscure location and find nothing else here." But even then, if there's going to be 900 collectible items, there needs to be so much more variety than what the game has as is. Some might say that the enjoyment from getting these seeds is from simply exploring the vast world of Hyrule, but I'd argue that's only really fun when you are exploring an area because it looks interesting or you heard a rumor of what's going on somewhere or there's a material there that you need. That thrill of exploration isn't really obvious when you're looking in a basic nook or cranny in some rock cleave or some small hole or the top of a hill which all look so alike that it's incredibly repetitive. If it weren't for korok seeds, why would someone look at a random spot in a rock wall or the dirt or some bush or some tree? If there needs to be secrets put into these locations, it'd be better if they were filled with rare weapons that you could find somewhere else but aren't needed for any upgrade, or, better yet, making these locations not so obscure that even a thoroughly-combing completionist could easily miss. Even just having those locations be colored something bright or lit up so that it stands out a bit more would make it easier to locate instead of having to observe every single polygon present. While we're at it, why not give some reward for the players collecting twice the amount of seeds necessary for a full upgrade? Sure, you can argue there's supposed to be more than enough korok seeds for a casual player to find what they need for max inventory upgrade, but if you're going to have Hetsu encourage players with "there's a lot more seeds out there, and if you get them all, something good will happen," you should at least give them some reward that makes it worth their trouble and not give them a literal piece of crap as a way to tell them "you just wasted your time, and I don't care." You could argue "well, Link's Awakening didn't require you to get all the secret seashells in order to get the seed upgrade," but that game (GameBoy version) had 26 collectible items and you only needed to get 20, after which the rest were turned into rupees or arrows, and even so, that game had its own problems with the obscurity of those items. BotW has more than twice the necessary amount of seeds, half of which give absolutely no benefit to the player. Some might argue that the journey is more important than the destination in this case, which I'd argue isn't always absolutely entirely true because the destination is still important. If you're led to think "maybe I'll get something out of this" and you're given nothing, that's a promise left unfulfilled. Why not gain a cool item that makes the journey easier afterwards as a way to prove how hard you worked? Why not gain a cool new ability that makes you want to keep playing? Why not something interesting that serves as a reminder of a good memory? But even then, the "journey is better than the destination" quote doesn't make sense here because the journey sucks too. It's so long, so arduous, so repetitive, and doesn't even bother to give you a reward at the end that makes you think "well, maybe it wasn't entirely a waste of time." Some might argue "but this is a game that's not meant to be completed 100%, it's a lot like Undertale in that way," but that makes absolutely no sense at all. First of all, Undertale is a game that reflects everyone's personal choices and has dozens of different routes and endings based on the player's personality. Trying to 100% it just to see what characters might say under different conditions doesn't quite fit that experience because those different routes are meant to reflect what might be possible for any given player. You can try to 100% it if you love it that much, but it's too tedious for it to make the experience any more special. Undertale is in its own unique circumstance in that regard. Secondly, saying "it's not meant to be 100%ed" goes against everything that makes a video game a video game. It's an interactive medium that allows people to make their choices on how they progress and experience in the environment and the story that a particular game provides. It's because of this that it's the developer's job to make certain that as many of the possible choices that a player can make are made as enjoyable as possible. 100%ing a game is a possible choice, a viable choice, that should be valued. Completionists are the type of people who want to experience everything that a game has to offer because they want to squeeze as much fun as they can out of a game. They love a game so much that they're willing to invest a lot of time to get every penny's worth. That love should not be treated with copy-pasted, overly obscure hidden collectibles that don't add anything to the game or a menu system that makes collecting those items needlessly inefficient and confusing and difficult and especially not insulting them with a piece of poop to tell them that their method of playing a game meant nothing to the developer besides a padded out playthrough.
Actually I'm pretty sure there is a way to know if you collected all the Coins in a world, but not per level. So you should be able to see that you have all the coins in Pinna Park on the map, but the one your missing in Serena Beach could be in any of its levels for example. Either the counter is on the map screen (there is a secondary screen on the map that keeps a counter of all the shine sprites you've collected), or its on the level select itself. But its been a long time since I last played so maybe I'm wrong.
I have been a fan for awhile because of the thoroughness with which you approach your analyses. It is genuinely exciting to see that same care and critical thought be applied to a wider variety of topics. You're making great stuff and I look forward to see where you go from here! Also, great comedic timing as always!
I think part of the problem with the blue coins is that in addition to feeling mandatory, they also feel completely useless. In other Mario games, progression is tied to the total number of stars you have; you need x number of stars to progress to the next part of the castle/galaxy/world/whatever, you need y number of stars to unlock the final area, etc. In Sunshine, Corona Mountain is unlocked by beating the seventh level of every world, and while additional shine sprites might trigger the unlock sequences for individual parts of the island slightly sooner, they get you no closer to beating the game. You MUST collect the seventh shine of each world to reach the final boss; every Delfino Plaza shine, 100 coin shine, secret shine, and blue coin shine is completely, entirely unnecessary. So the blue coins feel mandatory, because if you want to 100% the game, you need to find every single one (and some of them are a HUGE pain); at the same time, your shine count doesn't matter at all, so the collectible that you get for these coins, that is supposedly the main objective of the game, don't get you any closer to the final boss.
I was watching, then 5:20 happened, and now i am the happiest seal alive
Me too, I never expected Hollow Knight to be in this video and I’m so happy that it is
"Blue coins are basically mandatory and not optional, unlike other obscure collectables."
That sums it ALL up.
They are literally optional, though. 100%ing a game is a natural impulse for many people, including myself, but it in no way can be framed as the “goal of the game.” A vast majority of people who play the game will not reach 100% even if they try to get there, and that’s absolutely okay.
@@hb-robo He makes the accurate comparison, however, with Mario Odyssey; The Moons are "100%" and the goal of the game. Coins, however are not. Coins are only used to buy clothing, barring the single moons you can buy to pad out your supply, which are a paltry 100 coins which you'll collect by accident. This goes even for the special coins which are more hidden in the stages. If the game required you to get to 100% completion by collecting all the "local" coins, and those local coins mad the game "freeze" when you collect one to save it, then those coins would be seen as a blight on the game ass well.
@@hb-robo Your shines are the main collectibles of the game. Sure, you could intentionnally ignore every single blue coins and only get shines from the main mission, but that's not fun.
@@legrandliseurtri7495 it's not fun *to you*. Mario games are always built for a huge range of age demographics, moreso than basically any series on earth- they have to be both beginner friendly and challenging in the endgame. 90%+ of players land somewhere in the middle of 100%ing the game and dropping it, that's why Corona Mountain opens so early. there is zero rational framing where blue coins can be considered "mandatory." they are an optional additional treasure hunt for people who want to explore every nook and cranny.
I'm saying this as someone who 100%s every game I can, they are filler tasks for people who want a challenge, that's it. making them convert to shines was probably a bad idea but it's the same result either way.
@@hb-robo Being optional does not excuse poor design. Remember that one man's "optional" is another man's "mandatory"; especially when the game strongly encourages you to collect blue coins from the very beginning and offers a reward for fully completing the game.
EVERY OUNCE of a game's content should be engaging if the player is meant to play through it at some point. If that can't be achieved, you're better off discarding the bad ideas entirely such that players are not misled into doing something that will only cause them misery.
When I saw a korok and Hornet in the intro, I knew this was gonna be good.
I quite like this video. It's always nice to see people discussing the impact of game mechanics and how players interact woth those mechanics, and you have done that well in this video
You love hollow knight too? You have amazing taste in so many games ❤️
You are everywhere
Hi again
Hell yeah
Hollow Knight is Pog, i replay it currently and i SUFFER cause Pantheon
@@catzzen2014 ouch same
I can FEEL the conflicting emotions of Ceave “without touching a coin” Gaming
I didn't expect I'd enjoy it, but I really enjoy when you cut to the face cam to help emphasize points!
Blue coins might have been intended to be optional like korok seeds and moons, but were made required due to time constraints during development. (Just like how SM64 was supposed to have many more levels)
It's easy to blame time constraints for every game-design flaw of there's no better excuse to come up with.
Lowering the required amount of blue coins for the remaining shines, thereby making only a certain percentage of them required, is a decision hardly affected by time constraints.
How did we survive all that time without thought provoking content like this? So glad you're back and so active!
Personally, I love the save prompt when I collect a blue coin. It conveys the feeling that I accomplished something, that I'm one step closer to 100%, and that I won't need to collect it again.
I just completed Sunhine 100% about 2 weeks ago.
I get where you're coming from, but I feel it should do that automatically. I get the system limitations at the time didn't allow for background saving, but the blue coins should have been set up to just auto initiate a save when collected. Why did it need to pause and ask if we wanted to save? The answer was always yes. It would have been better if when collected you got a message "You collected a blue coin! Game saving..." Then as soon as it was done saving the message would close automatically.
@@13vatra You're right, that would have indeed been better.
I think it's a unique quirk of this game. Lots of older games have unique quirks like that which inadvertently makes it more rewarding.
They could have the blue coins count as coins if they disappear: just always replace them with a yellow coin after that point. As for the 100 coin missions, that handles itself: either the blue coins are the kind which are easy to get, and so could just be part of the normal run, or they are the kind which are challenging, and thus part of your reward is not having to collect a yellow coin elsewhere. It would be more like the red coins in SM64.
5:54 I never noticed the brief pause during damage as I wasn't the one playing, but I definitely picked up the feeling you get from it; I always knew that game knew how to make you feel the damage, but I didn't realize the full extent until now
Cashier: Here's your change
Ceave: Thank yo- ew, coins... Don't like those.
Made me chuckle :)
Now with the face reveal, I can imagine this so vividly
"It conpletely brings the game to a halt." VIDEO PAUSES TO BUFFER
Just stumbled across this and great video 👍 Your points were very clearly explained and presented! Game design is so complex and analysing exactly what behaviour a game mechanics encourages is fascinating.
It's really cool to watch how different concepts in gaming evolve - not only the systems themselves, but how they impact the way the games themselves are treated during different eras.
In the 70s and early 80s most games were score-based and couldn't be completed; the objective was simply to get a high score.
In the late 80s and early 90s the trend was for games to be level-based; "completing" the game simply meant beating the final level, and collectibles were simply boosts that helped you accomplish that goal but weren't specifically tracked.
The collect-a-thon era that took off in the mid-90s (likely kickstarted by the development of more advanced save systems that would allow games to keep track of all the things the players collected) marked true "completionism" as a game philosophy; players were encouraged to collect everything and getting the "true" ending of many games required it.
In the early 2000s the "open sandbox" genre began and the *scale* of games started growing, to the point where completionism would require immense time and dedication, so things instead shifted away from completionism and started developing systems to reward exploration (even if only untracked things like easter eggs) but not require finding them all to "complete" a game.
Super Mario Sunshine came out right around this transition period. Its blue coin concept was likely borrowed from exploration-rewarding systems, but its developers hadn't quite broken free of the "collect them all" mentality common in games from the late 90s.
Good comment, I hope more people notice this.
My issues with the blue coins are different:
1. Shines that are acquired through blue coins are useless, because the game requires to finish a certain set of missions instead of collecting a certain amount of shines (there are some shines that are specially tedious and I would have prefered to collect blue coins instead of those).
2. There is no tracker about how many blue coins are remaining in each level/mission. Manually keeping track of the coins is just boring.
there is a counter for how many are left in the mission though. i always see people complaining about this but you can view blue coin totals from the map.
@@shaangraham ohh I just checked it and I found it, still there is an issue with those counters: they count the number of collected coins but not the number of remaining coins. Still is much better than not having anything.
Honestly, I have never tried to complete Mario Sunshine, I got very frustrated by just finishing it, so I didn't have any motivation to complete it, but I have heard that complain more than once and I didn't see that counter during my playthrough so I assumed it wasn't there (and I indeed got disappointed after finding out that the secret shines and the shines from blue coins were useless for finishing the game).
When in the intro he puts games that have collectables similar to the blue coins... Genius.
Please don't hesitate to do more stuff like this. I'm really into this kind of content.
Excellent video, I loved the connection to Hollow Night and the concept of framing!
I knew this was gonna be a good one when I saw hornet in the intro
Is nobody going to talk about how he has a frying pan just chilling at his desk?
You haven't seen his previous video, have you?
This channel makes really good, high-quality, well-thought-out rants.
And just like that, you changed the way I look at collectibles and collectible systems. Great video!
I love how he always uses a different word for "opinion" in "my humble opinion"
There might be progress tracking related difficulties that made this difficult to implement after the fact but I bet it would feel much better to just be to make them persistent across all Shines on each stage, or at least, making it very obvious when a particular blue coin will be in one Shine and not the other. That one blue coin underwater you kept showing a clip of is a smoking gun, for sure, and even if that is an exceptional case and most blue coins are in pretty much any Shine that it is possible to collect, it's basically the exception that proves the rule. The psychological impact of even just a few blue coins that appear conditionally in a way that will inevitably compel many players inclined to collect everything to obsessively comb over every stage on every Shine even if a large part of that time and effort will be pointless, by design.
"and some require you to clean gravity off walls."
I've never played Sunshine, but it's apparently a very different game to what I'd expect.
Its a good game, but in terms of mario games it doesn't compare to 64, Galaxy or Odyssey.
Love the footage of you talking to the camera! Cool to see your face after so long
Recently I discovered this is why Pikmin 2 feels so "broken" to me, collecting treasures really puts a big stop to the already slowish pace you have inside caves.
Challenge mode fixes this issue. There's a time limit, promoting going fast, and treasures don't stop the game from going on. The problem with challenge mode is doing it casually isn't an option. Sure, it's challenge mode its not ment to be played casually, but some levels **cough cough Bully's Den cough cough** give you no time to relax.
Yeah, the Challenge mode is alright, if a pikmin 2 remaster was to be made, that would certainly help the pace of the game, handling treasure the same as 3 handles fruit.
I actually love Challenge mode, but the UI is so bland, I kinda forget which level is which without going over each individual one.
But there is a treasure radar, so you know where to find them, and you don’t need all the treasures to beat the game, you just need enough to pay off the debt, which rewards you for finding bigger treasures. And once you pay off the debt, you just have to clear the dream den.
The treasure radar doesn't stop each treasure having a small cutscene every time you collect one, which is my problem with the game since it breaks the flow of the game and while you don't need all the treasure to beat it, all treasure is counting towards the same goal, so breaking the flow of the game is mandatory.
Also correct me if I'm wrong, but the true ending only happens if you collect ALL the treasure as I remember my first playtrough the Hole of Heroes was my last cave and I had beaten the Dream Den before that.
@@Glockenspheal yeah, you are right about the last thing, I just always go to the dream den last every time.(I have beaten the game 11 times)I like how it gives each treasure a funny name though, it adds a small reward the first time you play.
“Why I hate blue coins”
“It’s actually surprisingly simple”
indeed
Alternate Title:Ceave trying to yell at blue coin but gets distracted by topics like hollow knight
You brought up some really novel and smart points in this video. Props
Ceave, Nicobbq, and Smashy videos released at the same time? YES!
TheAccountification
But you’re not expected to find all blue coins, either. Just like BotW and Odyssey, there is no major reward for 100%ing the game. Everyone complains about the unlocks being lame in Sunshine, but that’s exactly the point. Much like the rewards for completing seeds in BotW and Moons in Odyssey, the rewards in Sunshine are insignificant because the blue coin collection isn’t supposed to be completed. It’s literally the same principle.
Blue coins are needed to get all shines to 100% the game, but all you get for 100%ing the game is a post card and a useless cosmetic, much like what you proposed to improve the blue coin system. The game already does what you’ve said. And tying blue coins to upgrades like a bigger water meter or more health would actually have the opposite effect, because that just feels like more essential content than what’s already offered.
Sunshine essentially did what BotW and Odyssey are praised for, 20 years ago.
Well, that was unreasonably well thought out. Thank you for this.
*I LOVE YOUR VIDEOS!!!!!*
Please, never stop making content. You are amazing.
Ceave: Praises Hollow Knight for it's mechanic of freezing the game when taking damage.
2D Mario games: *Am I a joke to you?*
Oh, what timing! I just beat Sunshine this morning. Definitely going to collect all the blue coins now.
Parker coupon no!
First time
I actually enjoyed this video very much and have learned a really useful thing or two, thank you Ceave :)
To sum it up he basically explains that
“Thanks, I hate it, but kinda like it too”
I feel like a lot about the blue coins would be improved with a better system for knowing what areas have how many coins left, maybe something like the hint toad from odyssey could have been added too
This isn't even mentioning the fact that Shines are almost entirely useless in Sunshine. All that really matters is that you do all the Shadow Mario missions.
Great video by the way.
Completely agree. *There are literally 2 small changes* that would make Sunshine *way* more enjoyable. If the shines needed changed from "beat the shadow mario level" to "you have gotten this many shines", the satisfaction of getting a shine would actually exist.
· Areas with linear Episodes would still have their small stories while simultaneously rewarding you for each shines worth of progress in them
· Episode 8 / Side Shines would actually be valuable
· Blue Coins would directly reward you for completing their challenges
·You have options in case some shines feel unenjoyable
That's just from changing that *one* small thing. The other thing would just be blue coins. I don't mind how they work, the only change it needs is a Total Counter on each area + a display on each episode showing how many are available in that specific episode (preferably visible after completing episode 8, which would reward collecting every main shine in an area). Also making them auto save without a pause like in Odyssey.
Then there, from those small changes Sunshine went from being my least to most favorite 3D Mario
@@lexitik7556 To my knowledge the game never states that Episode 7 completion in every level is the trigger for Corona Mountain, it's just known. So the problem you have with that reducing the value of each Shine would have absolutely no effect to anybody playing the game completely blind for the first time.
@@lexitik7556 It should be "beat Shadow Mario levels + collect X shines". It would make no sense defeating Bowser and say, never triggering the Mecha Bowser fight.
Didn't expect to see my favorite game of all time here.
I totally agree with you on this. Aside from Sunshine's linearity, the blue coin system cemented the fact that I'll never 100% this game. Have you heard of Super Mario Sunburn by any chance? It's a rom hack of Sunshine that actually fixes some of these issues (makes blue coins collectable in more acts, and removes the save prompts). So far it doesn't make the Blue coins add to the coin counter, but I believe Red Coins now add to the total. Shine sprites are also collectable in more than just their specific act as well, and makes it so you don't need to beat Shadow Mario in every world to beat the game, now you just need to collect 70 shines total for Corona Mountain to open. Doesn't entirely fix Sunshine, but It's definitely better.