Super Mario 64 Retrospective

Perhaps the most over-analyzed game in history, but I may as well take a crack at it while I'm still young.

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Super Mario 64. Nintendo 64. KingK. Review. Critique. Retrospective.

[pyrrhickong]

I feel like a lot of Mario's issues can be contextualized for the time. The "leaving the level" syndrome allows for, say, someone working who grew up with Mario and was entering adulthood (something that had never occurred with Mario or, Hell, a video game period before except MAYBE Donkey Kong Country) to enjoy Mario by trying to figure out an objective, getting the star, and putting the controller down. I do not think that Mario 64 was a game designed for a single sit-down playthrough, and I feel like Nintendo compensated for this by making stars individualized and giving the player ample time to play around with controls and explore. Hell, it's why the outside of Peach's Castle is so massive and contains everything from things to scale to wall jump opportunities to slopes to introducing the game's water physics and ideas right off the bat.

I do feel as if that's something that has been lost to time (and frankly, Banjo-Kazooie does the whole "tutorial to 3D movement" better anyway), but I feel like Mario 64 was designed as Nintendo's answer to the times in 1996 - how to foster to their kids that had gotten older, and how to make things simple for new kids. Mario was an absolute force then, but he wasn't "evergreen" or "invincible" like he was at the time that 64 DS came out, and I feel that Nintendo adapted to what it('s Japanese) fanbase craved at the time and designed the game around it. Trying to teach players to get out of levels and save through the pause menu would require further tutorializing, and Mario 64 made essentially everything other than "how to beat Bowser" and "how to use camera" learnable at the player's leisure. And I feel that "do it and explore at your own pace" mentality is why the original release remains so special to so many people, beyond just 'moving in 3D'. Or at least why we hear about Mario 64 more than, say, Crash Bandicoot or Doom as "the joy of learning the third dimension".

As always, a pleasure to watch.

[andrewhanson]

My mom figured out Blast The Wall when I was 6 years old. I stayed home sick from school and I remember asking her to help me. First time she ever played a video game.

[Finalblue]

"I prefer the DS remake controls"
Oh boy, those are some fightin words

[luchinazo]

Holy shit I never thought that the 3rd rolling ball in bob-omb battlefield may be the corpse of king bob-omb

[kurtdewittphoto]

Walking into Blockbuster and playing Mario 64 for the first time was such a memorable and magical experience.

[XX-sptt]

I find leaving the stage after finding the star gives an extra sense of accomplishment.

[Caio]

"I had the pleasure of growing up with it on my Nintendo DS"
You're way too young to have this deep of a voice.

[rodrigopacheco]

Wow, I literally finished the game yesterday for the first time, there couldnt be better timing than this. I can safely say, without nostalgia goggles, that Super Mario 64 is still a great game that stood the test of time and is still a joy to play.

[AllianaCordova]

If I remember right, in the DS version, you didn't need to switch out terribly often because levels would suddenly have caps to turn into the other characters temporarily to use their specific cap powers, sometimes preventing you from needing to actually go to the rec-room to switch off to the other character.

[programity]

In regards to you talking about players mostly wanting to do clean sweeps of stages:

I would have hated that as a kid, when I first played SM64. I absolutely played a stage, got one or two stars, and then immediately went running around trying to find a new stage. The fun was navigating the world, and seeing what was around the corner.

I still play it this way, tending to pinball from one stage to the next.

If the game forced me to - or strongly persuaded me to - do all of the stars in a stage before accessing the next, I would hate it. That sort of linearity is probably the only thing I dislike about the Mario games that came before this one.

[Wraiven]

I remember being TERRIFIED of that eel in JRB. I HATED that level because of the eel and did everything I could to never have to go there. I still get the creeps when I see it.

[TheBeird]

That ending credits music . . .gets me emotional every time.

[RealGaming]

18:23 - YES. THIS. Back when I was a young little Real1, I had 119 stars and lacking that one. Internet was unheard of for me back then and none of my friends knew how to get the star. Eventually I saw a gaming magazine that had a text snippet on the cover that gave me uncontrollable euphoria. "How to get all the stars from the first seven worlds of Super Mario 64".

But then a new problem showed up. That magazine was on the shelf behind the counter of that tiny store so I couldn't read the it, and I didn't have any money to buy the magazine. So I had to wait for my weekly allowance of 20 SEK (approx 2, 5 dollars back then). But then when I got it, that wasn't enough! The magazine was 35 SEK. So in the end I had to do the dishes for a few days to get the remaining money.

So, I eventually got the magazine, and shortly after I could finally reach my goal.

The happiness was real. I still have that exact magazine, and its so thoroughly read

[monkonyx]

My favorite memories from these games was everybody coming together and sharing what they found with each other

[kashinimeyo]

Personally, I feel like the levels booting you out after completing a star, wasn’t padding at all. It was to make the game generally consistent across all star completions since some stars do require a level reset. It would be far more disjointed to have only a handful of instances of being booted out- people would think that it was a glitch. But this boot out system also promotes people to explore in a much more non-linear fashion. I think they did take advantage of being able to compress files by not having all star avenues available in order to overwhelm this system by constantly having to code for the possibility of all stars being attainable at once. You are allowed certain non-linear freedoms, but not all of them at once because that would be too much code for a system to handle 120 star completion possibilities all at once. You can’t even really compare banjo kazooie to Mario 64 because there’s an additional 2 years worth of trial and error banjo kazooie had on top of already having a frame of reference Mario 64 pioneered for them.

[NigBickDoomguy]

>an excuse to use Dire Dire Docks in the background

I am thankful to be subscribed.

[graalcloud]

I feel bad for you that you didn't get the full revolutionary Mario 64 experience in the 90's. I like the DS version too but playing Mario 64 when it was new was an indescribable joy that I don't think newcomers will ever get to feel. I was 5 years old when I first saw the game and I literally froze up in awe, my jaw completely dropped and I could not stop staring. The jump from SMB to Mario 64 was just too unreal, it felt like a dream.

[JCorvinusVR]

I'm pretty sure the 'booting you from the level' was a workload management decision. Letting the player stay in the level increases the complexity of the state tracking they have to do to prevent things like sequence breaking for the missions. It's much easier from a design and programming standpoint to just clear the memory and start from a known good state.

[theftking]

You say the DS version has a "lack of aliasing", but it actually has a lack of "anti-aliasing". The DS version has aliasing in spades.

[StefanIson]

The towers on Shifting Sand Land can be run up, no need for the flying cap (similar to the walls with arrows in the last Bowser stage).

I find that SM64 controllers are like an instrument, easy to pick up but hard to master, having enormous depth for those who want it, as speedruns clearly shows.