By Darren Waters BBC News Online entertainment staff

Twenty-two years after Mario first appeared in a video game, and six since his last major outing the moustachioed plumber returns with a new digital adventure, Super Mario Sunshine.

And the importance of Mario to Nintendo's Gamecube cannot be underestimated.

The game is essential to Nintendo's fortunes

Mario is one of the few globally-recognised video game characters, known to millions of people who do not even play the games.

The character is a key weapon in the company's drive for sales and more than 400,000 copies were sold in Japan in just four days while 350,000 units passed into eager hands in the US in just 10 days.

Day-glo colours

His creator Shigeru Miyamoto is a legend in the video games world - the man who created Donkey Kong - and as such expectations around the game have been high.

Colour and fun are key features

In the latest incarnation, Mario is given a three-dimensional world of gingerbread buildings and day-glo colours in which to cavort.

Elegant simplicity has always been a feature of Miyamoto's games and in Sunshine Mario must wash clean huge swathes of graffiti from Dolphin Island in order to win his freedom.

Okay, it's not exactly mind-bending stuff but the game's graphical beauty, exuberance and charm more than compensates and will appear to a wide age spectrum.

Hovering

The game is a sequel to the masterpiece Mario 64 and the game feels more like evolution than the revolution some were hoping for.

The game is a sequel to Mario 64

Mario can certainly do more than in previous outings, as you lead him hopping, hovering with his jet wash/jet pack and skipping from one level to another.

The levels have been thought out and designed well on the whole and there is a great deal to explore, although some tasks require a frustrating amount of repetition.

Graphically the game scores highly for the detailed worlds in which you play, but falls flat for the poor quality of video sequences, which include some of the worst voice acting ever heard in a game.

Expectations

Playability is almost an old-fashioned term these days and the game has bags of it - even if poor camera control occasionally gets in the way.

If there is slight disappointment it is only because the expectations were unrealistic - Miyamoto's reputation could not lead you to think otherwise.

But the game's sense of infantile fun is irrepressible - it may not be perfect but it is a welcome return for Mario and a much needed boost for Nintendo.

Super Mario Sunshine is out for GameCube on Friday.