The game received the first lead directing role for Nintendo designer Yoshiaki Koizumi following a ten-year-long apprenticeship working on various other games. Super Mario creators Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka served as producers. It was the first Nintendo first-party game after Satoru Iwata became president of Nintendo, succeeding Hiroshi Yamauchi. Developing a Mario game for the GameCube was the last request Yamauchi gave the team before resigning. In an interview about the development of "Super Mario Sunshine" with Koizumi, Kenta Usui, and Tezuka, it was mentioned that the game's development began after showing Super Mario 128 and following the critical and commercial success of , when Miyamoto conceived the idea of gameplay involving a water pump. However, at first Koizumi, Miyamoto and Tezuka thought that the world was too daringly out of character with Mario. The team also visited France and Italy for inspiration in designing the setting of Isle Delfino, named after an Italian translation of the GameCube's codename, "Dolphin". Therefore, they tried using a man-type character, but thought this was too odd and that "if there was a man next to Mario, there is a sense of incongruity." There were ten candidates for possible water nozzles, and F.L.U.D.D. was chosen because of fitting in the game's setting, though it was not one of the favorites. They also stated that several Yoshi features were omitted, such as Yoshi vomiting water fed to him. It was the first in the Mario series to include Peach’s panneria-like overskirt and ponytail and Toad’s different colored spots, and vests with yellow outlines.