Super Mario 64

Overview

While Super Mario 64 has been extensively picked apart in every single way, the game still holds up as not only one of the best Nintendo 64 games but also one of the best games around, ever. There are two older versions of this review, one can be seen here and here.

Review

I was introduced to Super Mario 64 sometime around summer 1997, and while I was a bit young for it, it left a profound mark in me and the association with the annual Christmas vacation only left positive impressions. Over 25 years later I can still say that Super Mario 64 is one of the best games I've personally played and still deserves all the praise it got in its 1996 release.

In many ways, it is THE definitive Nintendo game, full of color and life and secrets and the last in the line of Mario games could just BE Mario without gimmicks, while still allowing all the weird and wonderful things they could add to the game, instead of the highly sanitized and gatekept world the Super Mario universe is today.

I must admit I rarely got a chance to play Super Mario 64 as it was intended. Played the opening on friends' N64s, had a really badly done emulator circa 2000 (half the items were invisible and you could forget about it using sound), and I think I finally managed to play it in 2008 with a Wii and its Virtual Console. There are many ways to play Super Mario 64, though some are obviously better than others.

Despite Super Mario 64 meriting high praise, like many games, you can start seeing where the shine starts to fall off. To get 100% completion requires, among other things, a 100-coin run for all 15 main courses. Some of these are quite easy (Cool, Cool Mountain has 150 coins, half of which are in the slide) while others require some precise life-or-death controls or permanently missable areas. I had to rely on some notes for myself on beating Wing Mario Over the Rainbow but it's not something really worth saving. It's a difficult level if only for the fact that it will dump you outside the castle if you fall or fly out of bounds, and if you need help with it, it's recommended you take a look at this YouTube video. The early courses like Bob-Omb Battlefield are large and detailed (yet not TOO large), while others are highly abbreviated and much simpler.

The Nintendo 64 was not as successful as the PlayStation when both were on the market and got a fraction of the games it did, but it was games like Super Mario 64 and others by Nintendo and its partners that still made the Nintendo 64 an unforgettable console.

Player Notes

There were two major points I played Super Mario 64 where I had actual control of the system, once around 2007 with the Virtual Console and then in 2020 with the PC port. It was only with the PC port where I was able to achieve 120 stars (entirely legitimately). I had rated this game as "Great" (5/5) in the older version of the site.

Port & Rerelease Notes

While Super Mario 64 was released in 1996 in Japan and the United States, a second version was released in Japan in 1997, Super Mario 64: Shindō Pak Taiō, which had Rumble Pak support and implements most of the changes made in the international versions. It was also released with Chinese text for the iQue Player, a version of the game released for the Chinese version of the Nintendo 64.

As far as others go, one of the launch titles of the Nintendo DS was Super Mario 64 DS, the Nintendo DS port of the game. There is an ongoing debate going on over how much of an improvement, if any, Super Mario 64 DS was, and using the "when you were 12" argument. Guess what? I WAS 12 when Super Mario 64 DS premiered at E3 2004, then known as Super Mario 64 x4. What I WANTED was the experience of SM64 I never had, and adding multiplayer with Yoshi, Wario, and the rest just seemed like icing on the cake. Well...that all faded away when I discovered that first of all, the new Nintendo DS couldn't play classic Game Boy games, so there went the idea of playing Pokémon Gold in grand style, second of all, the multiplayer was scrapped on final release, and then the actual game had so many changes from the real Super Mario 64 (in addition to the "four characters" gimmick, pretty much every texture was changed, as well as enemies and NPCs) that it was hardly SM64 at all. That's not even bringing up the fact that the D-pad is no replacement for the stick...a "pocket N64" the DS was not.

Luckily, the Wii Virtual Console was a few years away, which had an authentic experience and better than what most emulators at the time could offer, and in 2020, with the game completely decompiled, ports began appearing. Meanwhile, Nintendo released the game as part of Super Mario 3D All-Stars, a Nintendo Switch title that included ports of Super Mario Sunshine (2002) and Super Mario Galaxy...but Nintendo decided to make it a time-limited release both physically and digitally. Good luck finding it. If you want to play the game "legally" without feeding the used games market, you're stuck with the Nintendo Classics subscription service (and only the "Expansion Pack" tier). Screw that.

Additional Content

I've added a page that discusses the various PC ports here.

Screenshots

Diving and swimming underwater was nothing like in a video game before.