Nintendo announced that Super Mario Sunshine will be added to its GameCube Classics app on August 13, 2026 Engadget. To play it, you'll need a Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscription, which costs $50 per year Polygon.

Super Mario Sunshine first came out in 2002 as the follow-up to Super Mario 64. The game was last available on a Nintendo Switch through the 2020 Super Mario 3D All-Stars collection Engadget. Nintendo later removed that collection from its digital store, so the game has not been available to buy on the Switch since then.

The GameCube Classics app launched on June 5, 2025, and it only works on the new Switch 2 console nintendo.com. It offers a selection of older GameCube games from the early 2000s through a paid subscription.

Nintendo's product page also lists Pokémon Colosseum as coming soon to the GameCube library nintendo.com. An Australian Nintendo site additionally lists Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness as on the way nintendo.com/au. Neither game has a specific release date yet.

Before these GameCube additions, Nintendo will add two games — Zero Racers and D-Hopper — to its Virtual Boy Classics app on August 4 Engadget.

Instead of letting players buy older games one at a time, Nintendo has shifted toward bundling them behind a subscription. Think of it like Netflix for classic Nintendo games: you pay a yearly fee and get access to a library of titles, but you don't own any of them individually.

There's an extra catch with the GameCube app. It only works on the Switch 2, the newer console. If you still have the original Switch, you can't access these GameCube games at all. Nintendo is using its older game library as a reason for people to upgrade to the newer device.

The path Super Mario Sunshine has taken is also worth noting. The 2020 3D All-Stars release was a limited-time offer tied to Mario's 35th anniversary, and Nintendo removed it from the store as planned. Now the game is coming back through the subscription app rather than as a one-time purchase. This means Nintendo is steering players toward paying regularly for access to its older games, rather than buying them once and keeping them forever.

The broader context here is how quickly Nintendo can fill the GameCube app with games people actually want to play. The initial lineup was small. The addition of titles like Colosseum and Gale of Darkness shows Nintendo is working through well-known games from that era. A big question is whether other game companies will let their older titles join the app too, which would determine whether it becomes a large, lasting collection or stays limited.

Worth flagging: the shift to subscription-only access means you no longer get to keep these older games. If you bought 3D All-Stars before it was removed, you still own it and can play it anytime. With the subscription approach, the moment you stop paying, the games go away. That's a real change in how players think about owning classic games, and it's something to keep in mind as Nintendo's retro library grows.