Listen, it was never THAT good, it's pretty nice, but it shouldn't be put on the pedestal people put it on. Aside from the bad camera, which is absolutely reasonable thinking of the games release, which makes me repeat my first to takes, it is very fun and gave the base for the next generation of jump and runs, but that was it imo. With out the speedrunning community, the game would be long dead.
It aged like milk, but cheese is not something you hate, so there's that. The game can't be really criticized, because all flaws can be refuted by the age of the game. However, when you ignore release, it is not that masterpiece people make it out to be.

🏅91%

Super Mario 64 is a revolutionary step forward in this franchise. This is my first time playing it, and I was not disappointed. There's so much to love about it, but I had a few complaints I'll get out of the way before the great stuff. So the obvious one is the camera. It was a nightmare to control, especially as the game went on. It cost me many lives and the angles were wonky. Then you have the levels in the latter half of the game where the level design gets a little worse and it starts feeling more gimmicky to sell strategy guides. Last, there were a few cheap deaths I would find throughout.

Other than those things, I had such a great time with this game! It is able to spin the concept of the series by instead of just reaching the ends of levels, you'd complete these missions to get stars in these imaginative 3D worlds that don't really run out of variety. You are thrown into Bob-Omb Battlefield that shows you the basics of the game through awesome missions, and then get to see Whomp's Fortress for more enemy encounters and Jolly Roger Bay for swimming and more imaginative star missions. It's masterfully paced and the difficulty ramps up perfectly as the player gets more accustomed to the gameplay.

Speaking of gameplay, it is so immersive and just invests the player into the game so well where it is hard to stop playing. It is very addictive through this creative gameplay and never stops giving you something new. Then you have the secrets, which just makes the game go above and beyond. It was already revolutionary for video games, but adding the secret stars and locations up the gameplay to where it feels like you have to explore all the worlds to see what the game is offering. Some of the best parts of the game are in how fun the mechanics are, where you could spend a while outside Peach's castle trying to master all of Mario's moves like the triple jump and other moves like it. Then you have awesome sliding mechanics where when you get the penguin race or the secret slide star in the first few minutes of gameplay, you want to play more from how fun it is. The game also just tells a better story than the others of gathering these stars to restore the power, you aren't just finishing levels. You are doing more, and it leaves a super satisfying ending when completed.

Visually, it also looks great. While it didn't age too well in its graphics, they still look great and add charm to the game. The soundtrack is also something great with the main theme being iconic, but the underwater music is so soothing and leaves a landmark in video game history of making underwater levels actually enjoyable. Super Mario 64 is not just a groundbreaking achievement in gaming history, it is a super entertaining Mario platformer that I already want to replay. An absolute must play video game!!

(Note: I played the PC port, which adds a few bells and whistles like widescreen and 60FPS)

Super Mario 64 is one of the most influential games of all time. You don't need me to tell you that. I've been a Mario fan for almost my entire life, but this was an entry I missed out on. I grew up in the Wii/DS era and didn't have the DS port of the game to play as a kid. I wouldn't first experience this game until I got it on the Wii U Virtual Console. I think I played it for maybe an hour or two, and got frustrated by the controls. I could appreciate it for what it was, the foundation for some of my favorite games of all time. But nothing more, a foundation.

I wouldn't seriously attempt another playthrough of the game until 2020's Mario 3D All Stars. Where I got maybe halfway through the game, and gave up. Again not really grasping the controls, and getting frustrated with some aspects of the gameplay.

It would have ended there, were it not for my girlfriend Julie. Who loves this game to death. She kept urging me to play it and eventually I did. I was determined to beat the whole game on stream. Which I did.

Background out of the way, now time to actually talk about my experience with the game.

I think control wise, this is one of the best Mario games in that department, when it works. It's frustrating because I don't know how much of it is just the game being inconsistent or if I just haven't mastered the controls. Even by the end of the game, I still was accidentally diving instead of air kicking. In a modern mario control scheme, these two actions would be mapped to two seperate buttons. But the N64 controller just didn't allow for that at the time. (Unrelated but play this game on an N64 controller if you, either an original or the Switch one, you'll thank me later). This causes a lot of actions to be mapped to the same button. Another game from this era that suffers from this problem is Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast. Having one "action button" for multiple abilities. The difference is that you have to stop and cycle through them. This isn't exactly feasible for a game like Mario 64, but it is something that crossed my mind. In a perfect world, the two actions would be mapped seperately. Then any action you perform would be deliberate. This was the cause of most of my blunders in the game. Accidentally doing x when I meant to do y. Is this the games fault or is it mine? I think the answer is a bit of both.

Another good example of this is simply turning around. Going from facing forward in this game to backwards Mario will either do a 180 on the spot, or like a arc sort of turn. It's kind of hard to explain in text but if you've played the game I think you know what I'm talking about. What's worse is that I don't know if it's actually something that's inconsistent, because then tricks like cannonless wouldn't be able to be pulled off as consistently as they are? I'd love it if someone more knowledgable than me could explain this one to me.

Last thing I didn't like, and that has to do with the levels themselves. When you die in Mario 64, 99% of the time you have to start that level over. I can only think of a small handful of levels that I came across that had checkpoints. This means that if you spend 10 minutes getting to a star, but mess up at the very end, you have to do all of that over again. Not a big deal in the games opening levels, where part of the games charm comes from getting to repeat areas faster and faster each time. Whether it be with shortcuts or by going in areas you aren't supposed to. But towards the end of the game, there's a level called "Rainbow Ride". A level where you do nothing but ride slow moving carpets over a bottomless pit. These are essentially autoscrollers in a 3D platformer. I know "carpetless" exists but I was playing through this for the first time and I wasn't going to look up a guide on how to do that.

However I did find my way around the levels quicker and quicker. And I'd say that's where this game shines. It's movement feels SO GOOD. And I think that's why people look past some of the jank. Once you master the way Mario controls, which isn't that hard to do by the way - just try some of the tricks and don't be afraid to mess up. It'll come eventually.

I haven't mentioned the camera, which is one of peoples biggest complaints about the game. Honestly, I didn't mind it. You just have to remember that it moves in "grids" is kind of how I think of it? Like there are only a set number of camera angles that Lakitu can view Mario at. Having Lakitu as the literal cameraman was honestly a genius way to teach this mechanic in 1996. I think the only time I can think of when the camera screwed me over was during the final Bowser boss fight. It automatically zooms out when you get further away from Bowser which is supposed to help you keep track of him, but in the final fight it makes it hard to see his attacks.

And what a final fight that was. I hate that this is the game that started the trend of "mario the bowser boss fight the same thing everytime but slightly harder" but at least this game ACTUALLY has the fights get harder and feel different each time. I know some of it's because of it being new to me, but Bowser fights 2 and 3 felt pretty intimidating the entire time.

The soundtrack is obviously awesome it's a Mario game. I guess I wish there were more songs but ya know it's an N64 game they could only do so much. Like Bob-Omb Battlefield is awesome but its also the theme of FOUR levels lol. But again 15 levels in an N64 game is pretty impressive. Even some of the smaller levels like Wet Dry World still have enough going on mechanically to be interesting.

And that's really all I have to say. I know I complained a lot but I really do like this game more a lot more than I dislike it. I'm going to go back and 100% it too. I'm really glad that I finally gave the game a second chance!

If you're wanting to play this game but are worried about stuff like the controls or the camera. Honestly I think you should give it a fair shot before you knock it. But if you really don't like it, then get the PC port and install a few mods. You can get some that fine tune the controls and the camera to your liking. Don't let other people gatekeep how you experience the game for the first time. Either way I think you should get the PC port anyway, the widescreen is nice and you shouldn't let nintendo gatekeep your save file behind an online subscription that's going to go away one day.