Super Mario 64 review by Tyson
Overall
Buy
Super Mario 64 was the benchmark platforming game during its era and today it still holds up as much as it did back then. This game is reason enough to buy a Nintendo 64 and it’s a game that any serious gamer needs to have in their gaming library.
Gameplay
Super Mario 64 starts off with Mario getting an invitation from Peach to join in some fun at the castle. Sadly when Mario gets there not only has he found out that Bowser has crashed the party but kidnapped Peach as well. It’s now up to Mario to save the day as always.
In order to save Peach, Mario must collect power stars from the games 15 levels. As you collect a certain amount of power stars you will be able to unlock Bowser boss fights that will allow you to unlock more levels and eventually save Peach. What makes this game so good is that it gives you a certain amount of freedom that really isn’t seen in Mario games. For example Peach’s castle serves as the games hub world that connects everything together and you can jump in and out of levels as you wish. As you go into levels you also don’t need to collect every power star in a certain order although some events will only happen during certain power star segments.
Thankfully getting power stars is a fun thing to do. Each level tries to do something different when collecting each power star. One power star might have you fighting a boss or collecting red coins while another power star might have you exploring the environment to find its hiding spot. The only real downside to Super Mario 64 is that the Bowser boss fights all use the same mechanic of throwing him into spiked bombs.
It would be hard to talk about Super Mario 64 and not mention the games biggest innovation which is bringing the 2D Mario games to a 3D environment. I felt that everything just felt so much more fun when you could fully explore and interact with an environment in a way that you just couldn’t do in a 2D game. I had a lot of fun just screwing around the outside of the castle by climbing on trees and swimming in the castle’s moat.
Control
The Nintendo 64 controller really helps showcase how revolutionary the control setup was in Super Mario 64. Unlike previous 3D games during its era it uses an analog stick to control the movements of Mario. This meant that you no longer had to use separate buttons to do things like run or walk as the nature of the analog stick could take care of this.
Mario also has a huge slew of jumping moves thanks to the many different buttons on the Nintendo 64 controller and thankfully they are all easy to pull off. Very rarely did I mess up doing one move when I tried to go for another. I also liked how you could use the C buttons to modify the camera position in the game as well.
Graphics
Super Mario 64 was a hugely impressive game in its day and I still think that the graphics hold up pretty well for today. There are some really neat effects like metal Mario or the ripple effect of entrance to world 6. Super Mario 64 also doesn’t seem to have other major graphical problems that games of its day had like clipping or heavy popup as well. Nintendo really did an awesome job with the graphics of Super Mario 64 and it’s a good showcase of the Nintendo 64’s graphic capabilities.
Sound
I came away impressed with the sound and music as much as I did with the graphics. It is just awesome to boot up the game and hear Mario say “It’s-a me Mario”. The background music in each level was well done as well. I also came away liking all the different sounds Mario would make when he did various jumps or got hit by an enemy.