Thanks to Sequel Difficulty Spike, Super Mario Sunshine has enough of these to make getting 100% Completion the most infamous part of the game, turning an otherwise top-notch Mario experience into a complete nightmare. The ones most likely to turn you into a Shell-Shocked Veteran are as follows:
Bianco Hills
- Episode 6 - The Secret of the Dirty Lake. A significant step up from the previous Hillside Cave Secret, entering this secret has said dirty lake obstructing the most obvious way in, with Mario either having to take the unhealthy lily pads that expire within a period of time, or jump as high as possible from the windmill. One particular cryptic part of the level requires Mario to wall jump off a platform to the side; not even a triple jump is enough to make it to the platform. The final stretch of the level involves navigating a field of platforms that flip periodically, requiring Mario to act quickly lest he fall into the abyss.
Ricco Harbor
- Episode 6 - Red Coins on the Water, due to the loose controls of the surfing bloopers and abundance of obstacles in the way. If you hit any sort of obstacle just once, it's an instant death and you're sent all the way back to Delfino Plaza to do it again from the beginning. And even better, after collecting all eight red coins, the blooper doesn't go away, meaning you need to navigate back and make a surprisingly difficult jump to reach the Shine Sprite while still on the blooper. It's entirely possible to crash and die trying to get the Shine Sprite, which forces you to collect all eight red coins all over again, and the cutscene of the Shine Sprite appearing can also really disorient you and make it extremely easy to crash almost immediately after. And don't think you can cheese the level by using the turbo nozzle either, as it's unavailable until episode 7.
- Episode 8 - Yoshi's Fruit Adventure, where you have to squirt juice onto jumping fish to reach a series of platforms, is so frustrating that one online FAQ simply states, "I dunno, haven't finished this level." The secret to beating it is that Yoshi's juice after eating a durian will turn enemies into platforms that move sideways, but eating a coconut will make its juice turn enemies into platforms that move upward. But since this is likely the first time players have made platforms with Yoshi juice, and the required coconuts are hard to find, the whole endeavor becomes much more challenging than it should be. Also, this intended method often serves as a Guide Dang It! moment due to being completely arbitrary, unintuitive, and the necessary Yoshi abilities being useful only for this specific level. Worse yet, Yoshi will always require a durian to hatch in this level, and the only way to get one is from the fruit dispenser not far from his egg (the reason why this is the only time Yoshi asks for a durian is because the durian and pepper are the fruits that make Yoshi purple, whose juice's platforms move horizontally. The fruit machine does not yield peppers). The problem is that there is that you must climb on top and ground pound one of the buttons on top of the dispensers and there is a greater chance that you will get a completely different fruit instead, meaning it can take a long time to even get a durian if you're especially unlucky. However even if you get one, heaven-forbid that there's a fruit in the way of the dispenser, or else the durian will bounce off of it into the lower platform behind it, out of Mario's reach, meaning that you have to repeat the cycle over again, making the simple act of hatching Yoshi alone a frustrating hair-pulling experience. And if you fall off the platforms, you have to do that whole routine all over again. If you thought you could just bypass the whole thing with the Rocket Nozzle, there's an Orange Juice Generator on top of the Shine's cage that has to be dissolved with Yoshi's juice. However, said cage has some very odd collision, meaning if you ground pound just right on one of the corners, Mario clips through the corners of the cage, cheesing the whole rigmarole. Oh, and if all that wasn't enough, there's a glitch that can cause the durians to be sent flying halfway across the map regardless of how light Mario kicks them, making it next to impossible to kick one over to Yoshi.
Gelato Beach
- Episode 4 - The Sand Bird is Born, a notoriously difficult level even by the game's standards. You not only have to collect 8 red coins, but you must do so on a moving bird made out of sand with flapping wings which, combined with the game's wonky physics, is very easy to fall off of. And when it turns sideways, good luck getting to a safe location in time.
- In Episode 8 - The Watermelon Festival, you have to guide a gigantic watermelon down a cliff and along a beach past a horde of Cataquacks, who, if they get anywhere close, will knock the watermelon into the air, popping it. Besides, they are all red in this particular episode, also costing you health when knocked to the air. The controls for guiding said watermelon are hellishly awkward, and the melon itself is ridiculously fragile, causing you more often than not to make it go sideways or accidentally pop it while trying to push it. You can squirt the Cataquacks with FLUDD to stun them, but the area is so swarmed with them that for every one you can fend off, there are always two or three more coming at you from the other side. You can kill the Cataquacks beforehand with the Dune Buds or luring them into the ocean, though, making this a little easier, but this takes a long time.
Sirena Beach
- Episode 2 - The Hotel Lobby's Secret is a particularly frustrating secret course, featuring some jumps on Winged Strollin' Stus to cross gaps, narrow pathways of collapsing sand, and a ride on a rotating cog platform whose curved edges are so sensitive that they're very likely to make Mario slip off if the side is even slightly turned forward or back. After the cog, there's a pyramid of sand blocks you need to walk down to jump to the Shine platform, where a Strollin' Stu is patrolling for fun (but could still potentially knock you into the abyss if you're not careful).
- Episode 3 - Mysterious Hotel Delfino reeks of Guide Dang It! from head to toe. To begin with, it's not immediately obvious that Mario needs to begin his journey by going into the men's room and jumping into the leak in the ceiling, with little indication that the room above it can be accessed this way! It's the beginning of a cavalcade of Moon Logic Puzzles to access the Shine Sprite in the small pool room.
- Episode 4 - The Secret of Casino Delfino, if only because the process of getting to the course itself is beyond frustrating. First, you need to play a slot machine minigame on both sides of the level, meaning it's entirely up to luck whether you get a match or not. While one of the slots can be manually changed, the other functions like an actual slot machine with no control of what it lands on, meaning you can potentially be stuck there for over ten minutes if you keep getting unlucky. Then once both slot machines have been matched to triple 7's, you need to play a tile puzzle to reveal a picture of a Shine Sprite. Problem is, the collision on the tiles is very wonky and has a tendency to glitch out: sometimes the tiles refuse to turn even when you're directly spraying them, and other times tiles just randomly turn around entirely on their own for no reason whatsoever. Again, like the slot machines, you can potentially be here for over ten minutes depending on how nice the physics decide to be. Thankfully, the secret course itself is rather easy (and you get an absolutely breathtaking sunset in the background to look at), but getting to the level in the first place is hair-pullingly frustrating. Oh, and if you get a game over in the secret course or want to collect every Shine Sprite, you have to do the slot machine and tile puzzle minigames again.
Noki Bay
- Episode 6 - The Shell's Secret. Most of the secret courses are big jumps in difficulty, but this one takes the cake. It's the longest secret course by miles, and involves a lot of triple jumps, backflips, wall jumps, and backflips into wall jumps, often over bottomless pits.
- Episode 8 - The Red Coin Fish, which requires you to catch 8 red coins swimming in the shape of a giant fish. The underwater controls are sluggish, it's extremely difficult to tell where Mario is in relation to the coins, the coins are constantly moving, and just to add insult to injury, the coins comprising the fish's body will regularly scatter outward for several seconds, leaving you with nothing to do but wait while you slowly drown. The fact that there's only a limited number of refills for the air meter in the form of the coins outside of the Red Coin Fish further exacerbates the situation. At least the music's relaxing, but even that does little to help given Mario's rapidly-draining oxygen.
Pianta Village
- Episode 3 - The Goopy Inferno. The level kicks off with the entire village being covered in flaming goop, with nothing to do about it because Shadow Mario steals FLUDD from you right beforehand, which normally only occurs in secret levels.note In order to reach the mayor and complete the level, you need to find an opening to the underside of the village and hang on a path of scaffolding over a Bottomless Pit to come back up on another end. However, said scaffolding is teeming with enemies (that also chase after Mario if they see him), and if Mario takes a single hit, he'll immediately lose his grip and fall to his death. To make matters worse, sometimes there are areas where you need to cling onto and punch scaffolds to move them, but the controls for those actions depend on whether they're horizontal or vertical, so you might end up letting go and dying when the same button activated a scaffold seconds earlier. Even once you make it back to the village proper, you still have a precarious series of jumps over flaming goop (which more often than not will lock Mario into a helpless Cycle of Hurting until he dies) before you can finally retrieve FLUDD and save the mayor.note
- Episode 5 - Secret of the Village Underside is infamous as far as the secret levels go. Just getting to it is bad enough, since you have to take Yoshi and perform a series of treacherous jumps just to get to the opening. After it starts, the level, instead of relying on your platforming abilities, relies on you talking to various Piantas who will throw you across the level. The problem being that if you talk to the Piantas from slightly the wrong place or angle, they'll hurl you into the abyss. Plus, some Piantas walk back and forth across the level, meaning you have to wait for them to slowly walk into position before you talk to them, and again, you need to watch your angle at the same time. This level has caused many a player to froth at the mouth at the mere memory of the phrase "I'm a chuckster!".
Delfino Plaza
- The Pachinko Game. You are in, as the name implies, a gigantic pachinko board, where you need to maneuver Mario to collect eight Red Coins. The difficulty comes from one single thing: the "launcher" that propels Mario into the machine makes him go so fast, it's insanely hard to get him to land where you want to. He even goes too fast for you to use FLUDD to correct any mistakes unless you somehow touch one of the openings of the machine and don't get knocked down to your doom. Even if you collect all 8 coins, you still need to get back into the machine to actually get the Shine. What also doesn't help is that if you skip the launcher by wall kicking up and out, you get flung to the right anyway due to the way the game's physics work. The cherry on the sundae is this level has hidden trick physics that appear nowhere else in the game — sometimes invisible walls will prevent you from gliding in one direction, and other times you'll be flung erratically in a direction you shouldn't have flown (You can see them in action with a cheat device and an Infinite Hover cheat, as it is impossible to fight against them).
- Lily Pad Ride is one of the most frustrating mini-levels to complete. Actually getting there is annoying enough; you have to jump on a series of slow-moving boats in order to reach a small, isolated island with Yoshi, so as to remove the barrier that's blocking your way. This is already hard by itself, because Yoshi dies if he falls into the water or hasn't eaten a fruit in a while, the boats are small, and it can be easy to miss a jump. The level itself, however, is even worse. You have to ride on a slowly-sinking lily pad in order to collect eight Red Coins, so you can obtain the Shine. The water kills Mario instantly, and the currents are too fast for you to backtrack, meaning that not only is it very easy to miss a coin, but if you do, you're screwed.note One last thing: do not assume the Warp Pipe at the end is a nice and convenient way to return to the start of the level. It sends you back to Delfino Plaza, forcing you to repeat the whole process over again. It's telling that the preferred method of trying again is to simply die (provided one has prepared thoroughly by having a lot of lives ready).
Miscellaneous
- The final stage, Corona Mountain, starts with a tricky Hover Nozzle section to douse flaming platforms and properly time jumps on other platforms that occasionally are covered in spikes. While touching either the flames or the spikes isn't immediately fatal, it might as well be, since Mario will instantly take heavy amounts of damage and knockback until he's done for. Once that's done with, there's the infamous boat segment, which uses the same boat from Noki Bay, except with much higher stakes - if the boat crashes into an object and sinks, instead of falling into regular poison water or even completely harmless water, Mario will instantly meet his demise in One-Hit Kill lava.note Even once you reach the final platform underneath the clouds that lead up to Bowser, if you want every Blue Coin in this stage, you'll have to either burn through lives (and consequently redo the level from the start each time) or keep the boat intact and very carefully make it circle around its perimeter.
