Nintendo originally released Super Mario Sunshine for the GameCube, but some fans have been curious about what it might resemble on the Game Boy Advance since it was Nintendo's primary handheld device at the time. Now, one fan is trying to make that idea a reality by making a piece of Super Mario Sunshine fan art that imagines what the GameCube game would have looked like as a "weird" GBA port.
Twitter user Huttaburger recently shared fan art with a similar likeness to several Game Boy Advance titles but with an obvious Super Mario coat of paint. The Super Mario Sunshine player is known for creating tons of video game fan art, and this one takes a question some Nintendo fans had at the time of what a Super Mario Sunshine title on the GBA could look like. Despite how many Super Mario titles were released for GBA, Super Mario Sunshine never came to the handheld platform. However, Huttaburger's fan art gives fans an idea of what it may have resembled.
Huttaburger's fan art shows a small Mario sprite with an even tinier F.L.U.D.D. On his back in an obvious Delfino Plaza setting. The Nintendo character is standing near the big Delfino statue in the area of the island where Mario first lands when Super Mario Sunshine begins. Behind Mario in the fan art is one of the many pools of water in Super Mario Sunshine where players can refill their F.L.U.D.D. Units in order to continue spraying graffiti off walls and hovering in the sky.
Some elements of Super Mario Sunshine's user interface are included in Huttaburger's fan art with fittingly pixelated edges. The UI includes standard coin and blue coin counters, the life meter is represented by a small sun just like in Super Mario Sunshine, and there's a small water meter in the bottom corner. According to Huttaburger, the Game Boy Advance version of Super Mario Sunshine would play "kinda like the game" but differently, which suggests it might have been similar to the Crash and Spyro GBA games.
This Super Mario Sunshine GBA fan art has reached over 12,000 people since Huttaburger posted it, and many Nintendo fans continue to lament that the GBA never got a title like this. Because Super Mario Sunshine's 3D movement is fleshed out even more with the use of F.L.U.D.D., it's currently unclear if the device would have different uses in the isometric setting. Although there are still many people interested in the concept of a version of Super Mario Sunshine on GBA, the next Super Mario title will likely be on a modern platform like Nintendo Switch.
Super Mario Sunshine is available now on GameCube and Switch.