The recent passing of Satoru Iwata on July 11 made me do some thinking about Nintendo as a company and the major impact it’s had on my gaming life. It’s true that Iwata didn’t become the company’s president until 2002, and a lot of my fonder memories of the Big N come from the pre-GameCube era, but I’ve consistently been a big fan of the company. Nintendo has worked to innovate and bring new content to the market throughout the years – sometimes this has worked, other times it’s been a huge bomb – but I’ve loved seeing what they came up with next, and have always enjoyed Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Kid Icarus, and other first-party namestays.

For a while, I’d been meaning to put together a video showing off some of Super Mario Sunshine for the GameCube, rendered up to 2560×2112 with the Dolphin Emulator, to give an idea of what a very powerful HD remake for this game could look like. Iwata’s recent death felt like the perfect excuse to just go for it and put together an hour-long video for you all to enjoy. Really, though, it was I who had the great pleasure of playing this. It was a game I played through way back when on the GameCube and I had a lot of fun with it, but I recall its more frustrating moments (and perhaps this recollection is why I didn’t return to it until now).

Before the meat of the video begins, I have a short “thank you” note to Iwata for all that he did for us as gamers. And please stick around for the last five seconds that play after the credits – I think it’s a nice, brief little send-off.

I hope you enjoy this one, because I had a lot of fun putting it together. And thanks, Mr. Iwata, for everything you did for us!