So far, I would vote Galaxy. It would really have to bomb in the remaining 97 stars I have to get to be a worse experience as compared to Sunshine that I actually stopped playing halfway through. I just thought it was meh.

I completely agree here. Until you beat Bowser, Sunshine is a great game and really fun, maybe just not as great as Mario 64. Of course the rest is very boring and although I had the goal to collect all Shines, I stopped shortly after I had beaten Bowser (at about 75 to 80 shines that was, if I remember correctly) but the levels itself really were not as bad as some people are making them here.

Sunshine: SM64 with a squirt gun
Galaxy: SM64...IN SPACE!

Sunshine: Stopped playing after 70 stars (oops, "Shines") or so.
Galaxy: 69 stars, not going to stop anytime soon.

The first time I ran "off" of a planet, only to wind up on the underside I knew this was better than Sunshine. Putting the game in Space gave Nintendo much more game design issues to use. On the other hand, Sunshine didn't have anywhere to really innovate the SM64 formula.

SM64 improvements
-------------------------

Sunshine:
You can squirt graffiti/mud/goo
You can hover
You can Superjump

Galaxy:
You can run under platforms
You can make sloppy jumps and the platform's relative gravity will save you (extremely IMPORTANT for 3D platformers without double jumps)
You can grab stuff by just pointing at it
You can have localized gravity (Bowser stages get lulzy with this)

Galaxy's new ideas are MUCH more innovative for platformers than Sunshine's. With these ideas, Nintendo could design much more diverse and varied levels than they could with Sunshine.

It wins right there.

Then Galaxy adds 2P support to let parents, casuals, and "I only watch gamers" types join in the fun.

I haven't played Sunshine, but Galaxy was a lot better that SM64. This could be because i only played SM64 for the first time 5 months ago (virtual console) but even then, when i think about all the Galaxy stuff (i have done 120 stars with Mario and 33 with Luigi) I feel Galaxy is superior.

And If there were no "drop and die" bits in a platformer what would be the point?...Very few things can define what a platformer actually is other than with the word platforms (although just "Mario" usually works)...and generally platforms have edges to fall from.

Well lets just say that I visit these forums enough to know that you're not the Wii's biggest fan and the fact that the console is playing host to 1 of, if not THE best game of all time (according to critics) may not be what you want to hear. Rather than being too blatant and just outright attacking the game you compare it to what is probably known as the worst game in the Mario series and claim it is not as good. If I've misinterpreted your motives then I appologise however quotes like "That isn't true. There are alot of people that actually care about Gameplay, and those people will like Sunshine better." & "Galaxy is a step backwards" give me confidence in my assertions.

You also claim that Galaxy is not as challenging whilst still having a good portion of the game to play, which being as it's the end portion will be the most difficult. I know critics don't know evertything but when so many come to the same conclusion and you disagree you have to ask yourself if you're thinking objectively, or just have unusual tastes in gaming.

I'd say Galaxy > Sunshine... the first day I got Galaxy, I just got a feeling with it, that I never had with Sunshine(even though I was more excited to play sunshine when I had it)

A roommate and I beat Super Mario Sunshine together, getting 120 stars. We had a lot of fun doing it because we simply tossed the controller to the other when we got frustrated and sticked with the stages/worlds we enjoyed. (Retro platforming for me.) The only major problem we had was with the clean-up stages because we didn't look in the manual until after many tries to find the superior spray attack.

IMO, the main strength of Sunshine has over Galaxy which has been brought up before in this thread but seems to have dropped from the conversation is that it had a more open level design than Galaxy has. Which one you prefer probably comes down to preference, (open versus linear) but I definitely prefer open.

I personally enjoy figuring out where to go as it makes me feel much more satisfaction and achievement when I actually end up in the right place. Many more times in an open game I think "hmm maybe I can do this?" and have the joy of suprising myself if it works, and if it doesn't I just shrug and try the next my next idea. Although the hidden stars try to give you bit of this experience you don't get it that often in SMG since nearly half the Hidden stars are just feed a Luma to open up an alternate path and where the game does reward you for finding some hidden nook the positive feedback you often get is much lower than when you just complete the linear levels as frequently all you receive for doing something awesome or difficult is just a a 1-up mushroom, which won't even save after you turn the power-off : (.

Nonetheless, for the reasons everyone else has stated, I think SMG is a better platformer than SMS is an adventure-platforming game. I just wish there had been more free-roaming and discovery in SMG.

/Edit: People also haven't brought up that Super Mario Sunshine brought the best Mario series power-up into 3-D -- Yoshi.  =D

You know what you're talking about, I like!

In Alot of ways Galaxy is better than Sunshine. But the I loved the levels in Sunshine/64 so much better than Galaxy. Just because you could enter any level and pretty much get any star. But in Galaxy you enter a level and get the star you picked, rarely getting others. That's only what i've noticed so far.

There isn't anything Sunshine does that Galaxy doesn't do better.