Mario Golf Super Rush is filled with plenty of Mario’s friends, including the trusty FLUDD. Fans will recognize the robotic backpack from 2002’s Super Mario Sunshine, where it aided Mario in power washing the slime and grime off of the tropical Isle Delfino and thwarting the evil plans of Shadow Mario and Bowser.
Since then, the Flash Liquidizer Ultra Dousing Device has made numerous cameo appearances in games like Mario Power Tennis and Mario Superstar Baseball. FLUDD has also been used for Mario’s Special Down move in the Super Smash Bros series from 2008’s Brawl onward, in which the hero charges up a mighty water blast to force his opponent off of the stage. Other titles to feature the friendly automaton include 2006’s WarioWare: Smooth Moves, where players use it to extinguish a burning building in one of Wario’s many bizarre minigames, and 2016’s Minecraft: Super Mario Mash-Up DLC, where it can be used to carry liquids and appears on Mario’s back in a playable skin.
According to NintendoLife, FLUDD just made its newest cameo appearance in this year’s Mario Golf Super Rush for the Nintendo Switch. Fans like Game Informer’s Dan Ryckert and speedrunner Samura1man noticed the unmistakable nozzle head of FLUDD atop a fence post in one of Super Rush’s golf courses and posted screenshots of it to Twitter over the past couple of days. Naturally, some fans are taking this as a sign that Nintendo is planning a Super Mario Sunshine 2, but there has been nothing to indicate this so far.
Mario Golf Super Rush just launched yesterday and has gained reasonable praise from fans and critics alike for its chaotic Battle Golf mode and motion-controlled golf action, though many felt that the game’s campaign mode was too short. Other complaints about Mario Golf Super Rush include only having four gameplay modes and missing several key characters from Mario’s mythos, though Nintendo promises to rectify this last issue with free DLC content post-launch.
While it's more likely that FLUDD’s surprise cameo in Mario Golf Super Rush is little more than a fun nod to Mario’s past games, the idea of a new Sunshine game is an exciting one for fans of the GameCube-era original. Modern players have already gotten a chance to re-live Mario’s tropical adventure as part of last year’s Super Mario 3D All-Stars collection (at least while it was still available), so if Nintendo is indeed teasing a sequel, the timing is quite apt. In the meantime, fans can hit the links in Mario Golf Super Rush, which is currently available on the Nintendo Switch.
Source: NintendoLife, Dan Ryckert, Samura1man