Super Mario Sunshine and Ecological Disaster - Hark, the Phantamanta!
Every year around scary season, GwG offers a menagerie of thoughts on some of our favorite video game monsters.
Edcel Javier Cintron Gonzalez, Contributing Editor
Recently, the scary design of video game monsters hasn’t been on my mind as much as what the monster represents and does, especially when it causes devastating damage to the game environment. While I was thinking about this, my nostalgia kicked in and invited me to relive some of my favorite moments with my favorite game from the Mario franchise: Super Mario Sunshine. People may argue how a lot of the monsters in this game were repeated in the different stages of Isle Delfino, but there were quite a few monsters that made an ecological impact on the island.
For example, we have the piranha plant gatekeepers who cause structures and people to sink to their doom through the goo-like substance they produce. And let’s not forget how Gooper Blooper caused massive oil spills on the island’s port, causing them to lose resources and money since they would not be able to ship products to other parts of the world. Super Mario Sunshine has aged well, considering how we are living in the Anthropocene, and we are the ones responsible for the drastic changes the planet is going through. Therefore, I’m talking about the monsters or bosses in Super Mario Sunshine as examples of how ecological damage create an impact in our livelihood and environment. From all these monsters, one has stood out to me as a warning of what could have been Isle Delfino’s end: Phantamanta (originally known as “the Manta”).
Similarly to most of the monsters in Super Mario Sunshine, Phantamanta can emerge from the goo-like substance, sink buildings and people who are covered by the goo, and is weak to water. A lot of these enemies have adapted transformations and different mechanics to keep up with Mario’s different power ups, tools, and abilities depending on the game in the franchise. Super Mario Sunshine provides a unique, tropical game experience where the player is no longer in the Mushroom Kingdom jumping on Goombas. We are instead in the middle of an ecological crisis where Isla Delfino is losing its natural sunlight. This also causes an economic crisis, since with no sunlight, crops and fruit will not grow and tourists will not want to go spend their vacation on a beach that is covered by a shadow all the time.
When I’m thinking about the battle against Phantamanta, what stands out for me is the size, the amount of goo it produces, its ability to separate into smaller versions of themselves which complicates the battle, and the fact that its goo produces electricity which can paralyze Mario for a short time. Usually, we would expect boss battles at the end of a level, as a sort of marker that the player completed every other objective in the level except the epic conclusion.
In this case, the player encounters Phantamanta at the first level of Sirena Beach, “The Manta Storm.” Here, Mario and F.L.U.D.D. find the beach and the area covered in yellow and green ink. Compared to Mario, the ink stain is enormous. The player has the option to start cleaning the beach and save the local Pianta and Nokis. As the player cleans the area, many of the locals thank Mario for saving them. Others tell Mario that they avoided the monster by hiding under a gazebo, which implies the shadowy form of the monster itself. Customers of the hotel are angry because they have nowhere to stay, and employees worried about job security because of the hotel’s disappearance. It’s not until the player talks to the owner of the hotel that the player finds out about the Phantamanta. This monster is described as a paper-thin creature who floats on the surface of the land, almost like a shadow. It has the ability to cause infrastructure to disappear by soaking it in its electric green and yellow ink. Imagine having that kind of power in Splatoon 3, where the main objective is to claim your turf by filing the area with ink. This part of the battle is interesting because it reminded me of Polygon’s description of the Big Man boss fight in Splatoon 3, where the charismatic manta ray “disappears into the ground and you see a light shadow of a giant manta ray appear on the ground that covers the floor with paint.”
Talk about video game nostalgia! Phantamanta is so powerful that it managed to dematerialize the only hotel chain on Isle Delfino. On top of that, Phantamanta can bury people in ink, much like the other goo-like monsters in the game. I wonder if the citizens of Isla Delfino have a natural resistance to electricity or if the Phantamanta’s goo paralyzes its victims first and then buries them in its ink.
The player has the choice to reduce the ecological impact of the battle itself. Since Mario needs to talk to the owner of the hotel for Phantamanta to appear, the player has the option to clean the electric goo first before the battle. This will help the player avoid the electric goo as much as possible while shooting water to the boss. This can also be taken up as an environmental choice for the player to clean and restore the polluted land before battling Phantamanta. This decision is important given how Phantamanta divides itself into smaller versions of itself when it takes damage from F.L.U.D.D. Phantamanta is particularly dangerous because its ability to pollute the island is made more diffuse as you try to kill it, like the way that issues related to climate change get harder to imagine solutions to the deeper you look, or the way that I could never clean up all the garbage in my town because more garbage is constantly taking its place. This also makes defeating the monster more of a hassle because Mario has to make sure to defeat every single Phantamanta in the area while also avoiding the manta itself since it can damage Mario, and the endless trail of electric goo.
Once Phantamanta is defeated, Hotel Delfino emerges from the ground and Mario is left to solve the many mysteries inside the hotel. Phantamanta’s ability to bury people and buildings with its electric goo still intrigues me. I think it is the thought of how this monster leaves no path for people to walk on the land…well, unless you are an Inkling or Octoling.
I wonder if maybe, just maybe, Mario fights Phantamanta in the first level of Sirena Beach as a way to save the land from being erased from existence. What would happen if the whole level got encased in the electric goo? Would the ocean near Sirena beach get contaminated the same way the oil spill happened in Ricco Harbor or the Gulf of Mexico around the Deepwater Horizon site? While Super Mario Sunshine has some fearsome bosses and monsters that may overshadow Phantamanta, I still consider this to be one unique monster in the Mario franchise, not just for its game design and battle mechanics, but also the possibilities of the environmental damage this monster could have caused for the ecological and infrastructure of Isla Delfino.
For more creature features, read Christian Haines on the rats of the Plague Tale series, Nate Schmidt on the creepers of Minecraft, and Don Everhart on the abstract terrors of Tetris: Effect Connected.
