The best platformer games like Super Mario Sunshine are Super Mario Odyssey, Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Galaxy. Below are 8, each with the reason it is here — and, at the end, what filtering to platformer costs you.
Filtering to platformer means you want the movement itself to be the pleasure. It is the right filter when the thing you liked was getting from one place to another.
What you get: A game you can judge in ten seconds. Platformers live or die on the jump, and a good one feels right before anything else happens.
What made Super Mario Sunshine worth playing in the first place is covered on the full list. This page is the platformer part of that answer, and only the platformer part.
The direct descendant, with a moveset this deep and a camera that works.
The origin, and the cleanest expression of the moveset.
The best-designed 3D Mario, if you can live with less freedom.
Hub-and-levels platforming where every world is a new idea.
The best indie take on this era of 3D platforming.
Seamless open platforming from the same moment.
The best-feeling modern platformer, and full of one-off gadgets.
The other GameCube-era 3D mascot platformer, and just as uneven.
Weight. Platformers rarely carry a story you will think about afterwards, and the collectible-led ones can become checklists if you let them.
Specifically, these are strong answers for Super Mario Sunshine that are not platformer games, so they are not on this page:
The full list is on games like Super Mario Sunshine — 9 picks, no genre filter.
Super Mario Odyssey. The direct descendant, with a moveset this deep and a camera that works.
No. Super Mario Sunshine released on the Nintendo GameCube, but a recommendation is only useful if you can play it, so the picks above span platforms and eras. What they share is the genre and the reason.
Whether the move set is complete early. The great ones give you everything in the first level and spend the rest asking better questions of it; the weak ones drip-feed abilities to disguise thin level design.
Different games. 2D platformers are about precision on a single screen; 3D ones are about reading space and camera. Each pick below says which it is.
By hand. Each pick was written for the full Super Mario Sunshine list first, on what the game actually does, and this page is the part of that list that is platformer — never a genre tag lookup, which is how "best racing games like Super Mario 64" used to be a page on this site.
Or read the platformer guide for where to start in the genre generally.