'If we add the development period for this engine to the overall development time, the development of Super Mario Sunshine took a relatively long time. In a 2002 interview, Shigeru Miyamoto, one of the game's producers, opened up about Sunshine's rather short development cycle.

After a development time of around 18 months, Nintendo released Super Mario Sunshine in Japan on July 19, 2002, with a western release the following month. With the PlayStation 2 selling gangbusters from the very beginning, and Microsoft throwing their hat into the console ring with the original Xbox, Nintendo could not afford to be as patient with the GameCube as they probably would have liked. Rushed development cycles were a common theme with the GameCube. Despite some of its more bizarre game design choices, many people still hold Sunshine up as their favorite 3D Mario game. In the intervening years since then, we came to learn just how troubled the development was and how rushed it came out the door in order to help sagging GameCube sales at the time. It’s been 20 years since Mario’s lone platforming title was released on the ill-fated Nintendo Gamecube.

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