Uhh... guys... The World Ends With You is the GOTF
Hmm... I'm... alright with this.
(Actually have no clue what my absolute favorite game ever would be (I'm absolutely terrible on settling on things like that and am constantly changing my mind between a billion things like TWEWY, various Kingdom Hearts games, various 3D Marios, Yoshi's Island, Kirby Mass Attack, Kid Icarus: Uprising, and all kind's of other things). But in any case, TWEWY definitely is not a bad choice at all and is way up there for me).
Street Fighter Alpha 2, Mario Kart DS,
Kirby Mass Attack, Tekken 3, Tetris DS, Mega Man 6,
Cave Story. You know, games with gameplay to them >
...Marry me. :3
Yoshi's Island exists too.
Super Mario Sunshine is excellent *prepares for rage*
Yoshi's Island is indeed awesome.
As far as Sunshine goes though, well, since you're prepared for it... >:3
-Far too many shines dedicated to blue coins gotten by doing stuff like just running back and forth and collecting shines.
-Due to having to work with the mechanics of FLUDD, they had to put water everywhere, which resulted in there being much lower diversity in the levels compared to other Marios.
-And the thing that bugs me the most: To unlock Corona Mountain, you have to beat all the Shadow Mario levels in each area. However, each of these levels are the last "episodes" of each area, and you can't get them until you beat the previous episodes. Meaning each time you play the game, you have to get at least those exact same ~50 Shines every time. Coming after 64, which gave you tremendous flexibility in which 70/120 stars you wanted to get to access Bowser in the Sky, and being followed by Galaxy which gave you an even more flexible 60 star quota to fill, how stringent Sunshine is which which Shines you need to collect to complete the game is really off-putting, especially when compounded with how there's lower diversity in the level design compared to 64/Sunshine to begin with. Compared to the comparative toyboxes that 64/Galaxy are, Sunshine just feels really limiting.
To be fair though, Sunshine definitely does have some great level design and fun missions and definitely still is an absolutely brilliant game all the same (and like you, I definitely loved the Mecha Bowser fight.
And stuff like that mission where you have to clean that sea monster's teeth, while a completely silly idea for the level, is the exact type of silliness and off-the-wall thinking that I love from Nintendo, as it's just brilliant somehow turning such simple things like that into ideas for a 3D platformer stage to me).
I just really dislike how much it limits the players hands with what they can do and the choices they have for beating the game compared to 64 and Galaxy--it just felt constraining coming off 64 and left a bad taste in my mouth, and so I just can't put it on top of my 3D Mario list at all and just much prefer the 64/Galaxy formula where they basically let the player do what they want, and find their own path to the final Bowser fight, especially as that adds an extra layer of replayability that keeps the games fresher for longer for me as they let you mix it up each time you play them, instead of following the same path every time.