Splatoon 3 recreates one of Super Mario Sunshine's toughest bosses

Splatoon 3 has a boss that's essentially a remake of one of Super Mario Sunshine's toughest fights.

As spotted by Polygon, the familiar boss fight takes place in the later stages of Splatoon 3's single-player campaign, so here's your warning to turn back if you don't want spoilers.

If you're playing through Splatoon 3's campaign, you'll eventually need to face off against Big Man, the giant manta ray from the in-game band, Deep Cut. During the battle, Big Man disappears into the ground and you can only see his shadow, which covers the ground with paint. When you blast the shadow it divides into smaller and smaller manta ray shadows. Sound familiar? If not, let me regale you with a story of the horrors of The Manta Storm on Sirena Beach.

In 2002's Super Mario Sunshine, you square off with an evil shadow stingray that leaves a trail of paint and splits into more stingrays when you blast it with water. The stingrays themselves and their paint are electric-charged, so you have to blast them away from a good distance less you take damage. It's an absolute nightmare of a boss fight. To this day I remember struggling a lot with it on Gamecube as a kid, and I recently beat it again on Switch after no less than five grueling attempts. 

Basically, this new Splatoon 3 boss fight sounds like almost a mirror-image of the Mario Sunshine fight. Instead of blasting a shadow with water, you're blasting it with paint, which sounds like it would only make the situation in Sirena Beach worse. I haven't had the chance to play it myself yet, but as Polygon notes, both boss fights feature the same yellow and blue color scheme.

Check out our Splatoon 3 review to see what we think of the threequel.