Super Mario 64

aged like milk if you want to play a mario game play galaxy or odyssey (odyssey remakes sm64 world so it is like a remake + new game)

I recently played a 120 star run of Mario 64 with minimal guiding. As I was playing through the whole Mario series, this game was one of my most anticipated (behind Mario Galaxy), and certainly showed up to meet my expectations.

I think people often can dismiss this game for its rudimentary graphics and often frustrating camera. The graphics are bright and cheery, and fit the Mario aesthetic quite well, besides being noticeably low poly. In terms of the camera, it's a different beast that you have to learn to control using the rudimentary camera features provided. It's not hard to maneuver the camera in a favorable position in 95% of scenarios, but I had trouble in small and enclosed areas, one of note being a spot in Tiny-Huge island that I consistently plummeted into the void on due to camera awkwardness. In the moment, it's easy to get angry at the camera and mentally overstate how much of a damper it is on the enjoyment derived from Mario 64, but camera moments are quite hard to come across if you're adept at controlling it.

There's a simple magic about this game that reminds me of playing old Roblox games (before the site went to shit). The castle is very well designed, with so many rooms and spaces to explore. Perhaps my favorite is the Tick-Tock Clock room which has a quaint little night sky effect on the walls and ceiling, centered by a big, wooden clock right in the middle. There's also bonus areas that break up the standard painting levels quite nicely. Catching Mips, the princess slide, flying cap levels, and switch levels are all fun side attractions. The actual level design is also stellar in a lot of cases. Whether you're exploring one of the best first levels of all time in Bob-omb battlefield, hopping into a volcano to grab a star in Lethal Lava Land, or even climbing up the insides of a clock tower, there's so many amazing experiences you can have in this game, and even cool mechanics explored, such as Wet Dry World's fluctuating water levels, and Tiny-Huge Island's size-changing pipes. The 6 (plus 100 coin star) in the levels encourage exploration of the levels and really showcase how much care went into designing what were some of the first 3d game environments. Consequently, sometimes the levels can feel a little empty while you're hunting down that elusive last star, and some levels such as Hazy Maze cave have aged a bit worse than the others.

For being one of the first 3d platformers, Mario controls amazingly. Longjumps, kicks, dives, rolls, groundpounds, wallkicks, triple jumps, slides, backflips, side flips, ledge grabs, and even slide kicks will aid you as you progress through the game. Access to such a large variety of moves can feel overwhelming, but it's pretty easy to get a hang of it and I was even able to pull off some cool tricks by the 2nd level. Mario 64 would not be as nearly as fun as it is without the refined moveset at your disposal.

Despite all the praise I gave above, I only consider this a 9. Mario 64, revolutionary as it was, is outdated, no matter how much its hardcore fans sometimes deny. The camera controls, first and foremost, and the sometimes empty and ugly parts of levels as well. There's also some parts where I don't think I would have figured out how to do, such as the way you get to the red switch level, or getting into the 3rd floor of the haunted mansion, but overall, these criticisms are a minor detractor from both an amazing and iconic landmark game.

Well, I do love being a contrarian online, so it somewhat gives me pleasure in saying this Nintendo masterpiece is overrated in this review even if I can acknowledge the achievements it’s made for 3d platformers over the years.

All my complaints here mainly come from it being outclassed by later 3d platformers as admittedly it was the first of these to transition from 2d games. As such, the camera angles and control scheme might’ve been revolutionary for the time but have since become passed due to games such as Spyro and banjo Kazooie perfecting the formula for both of these features, again this was the blueprint for those games and thus can't have its accomplishment taken away from it as a result. One thing that would've always annoyed me was how you were kicked out of a level whenever you collect a star, this would be like banjo Kazooie kicking you out of a level every time you collected a jiggy or f**k forbid Spyro kicking you out whenever you rescue a dragon or collect an orb. It breaks the flow of the gameplay heavily especially if you're in the middle of finding a bunch of items which of course you have to do so again as your progress is reset whenever you're booted out of a level. Another aspect of this game that was quickly outclassed was the graphics, I'm sure they blew everyone's minds back in the day but now, they just look like clunky polygons vaguely resembling the Mario characters and the mushroom kingdom. It's not too big of a deal considering what this game has to offer, however I'd stick with a remaster if you want to check out any version if this game. One final disappointment is the absence of Luigi, I get that his name isn't on the cover, however I think we can all agree that he really does complete the cast with his presence even if it's because he's in the shadow is his older brother.

So yeah, that's my thoughts on this revolutionary game, it's not terrible by any means and I can't take away what it's done for gaming, I just prefer so many other games over this.

Similar to the relationship between Yoshi's Island / Super Mario World, this game was superceded by Super Mario Sunshine in every way, but there's a dedicated, but neurotic fanbase around this game that has its blinders on when it comes to 3D platformers. It seems like the newer generation of gamers would rather spend endless hours deconstructing a simple platformer rather than playing the platformer and moving on with their lives.

Hard to believe this is one of the first major 3d platformers. The movement mechanics are just so refined. Later Mario releases watered them down a lot, which is good for beginners, but worsens things for advanced players. It's a lot of fun to build up momentum with side-flips, long jumps, belly flops, and wall kicks, and jump over some "impassible" wall to get some star in 5 seconds. It seems like over time, the developers at Nintendo started putting in more and more restrictions to stop you from "breaking" their game, which is a shame. After all, beginner players won't be able to do all these tricks anyway, so they'll still mostly have to run around the whole level as the designers intended.

I really want to love this game. I respect it highly for what it did and meant. But its just not that fun to play imo. I think design wise its genius. Short arcade-like bursts of gameplay (getting a star). Free to choose which level to enter. And the camera being an actual physical character object in the game is absolutely genius. (Making the third person perspective more understandable for newcomers to 3d games.) But just the levels are not that fun. And especially the controls are just so annoying. Slippery, floaty and very sensitive. And where I complimented the IDEA behind the camera, the camera actually just sucks. A lot of the time it clicks to rails, where its hard to see literally anything. Depth perception is bad, especially when the platform you want to jump to, is not in frame and its impossible to get it in frame, because the camera is doing its absolute best to nullify any of your camera inputs. I mostly had 2 main thoughts while playing this game. 1. "Design wise, this is genius, today, but especially for its time. 2. "Please let me just finish this game so im done with it."
I got the exact number of stars you needed to enter the final level. Finished it and was done with the game. To (probably) never touch it again.
That being said. I think this is a genius game. Just not to my liking. And I can completely understand people who adore this game.