Last night, Super Mario Sunshine finally made its long-awaited debut on Nintendo Classics, making the original, untouched GameCube version of the game available for the first time since it released over 20 years ago. I've started playing it, being my second playthrough of Sunshine following my first playthrough in 3D All-Stars back in 2020, and despite some incredibly crusty looking cutscenes, I'm having a great time. Sunshine is such a bizarre entry in the Mario series, and though it's not my favorite 3D Mario, I can greatly appreciate its quirkiness.
That being said, for a while now I've had a strong gut feeling that whenever Sunshine arrived on Classics, its soundtrack would land on Nintendo Music. And wouldn't you know it, that's exactly what happened.
At 9PM EST sharp last night, the exact same time it was released on Classics, the soundtrack was, in fact, added to Nintendo Music, filling in one of the last major remaining voids in the mainline Mario catalog on the app. From what I can recall, I think this leaves 3D Land, New Mario Wii and New Mario 2 as the only mainline Mario platformers yet to appear on Nintendo Music, not counting remakes/rereleases like Mario All-Stars or the Mario Advance games.
Nintendo's really been leaning into Sunshine lately, likely in celebration of its arrival on Classics. Between the new Summer 2026 art based on the game they put out a few weeks ago, and getting both Sunshine's full soundtrack and its Mario Kart World remixes this week, it's pretty cool to see Sunshine getting a bunch of love.
