tl;dr one of my favorite games of all time and the one that solidify my love for games in general. Still flawed and bugged in a lot of areas, but honestly probably one of the most important 3d titles of all time right next to quack(Quake) and elder scrolls.

When I was 5 I remember playing this for the first time. Mind you it wasn't my first title but rather my 4th title I ever played in my life up to that point. Something about this game back then that gave me a feeling that could be summed up in one word, "Explore". Mario 64 is very similar to how I felt playing mario world, there wasn't a crevice on that screen I didn't want to know more about.

As I went through each and every level and played through and mastered this game by the age of 10-12 I quickly realize something playing this title. My exploration appetite wasn't being quenched at all. I still wanted to see more. I felt as if there was more here that i was missing. Like another part of the game I didn't see prior.

This same feeling stuck with me a lot as a kid when I played videogames. I always felt that the devs had more in store for me and that there was something I was missing. Alas many of the games I played in that era really did not at all have more content in store for me to enjoy. In fact only 1 game did that and that was funnily enough diddy kong racing, but i'll cover that whenever i get around to writing that review some other time.

Mario 64 to me is a solid 3d platform and if i'm gonna be honest was definitely not the best of it's time in terms of variety and content. Hell not even in level design, many of it's competitors that took the stage after 64 blew it out of the water in several of the compartments I just talked about.

64 flaws are very prominent under a lens of critic. The platforms themselves being bland weird stone blocks that would fit a test level more then a mario game. Some levels having certain stars be a pain in the ass even if you're a grown adult. Some levels themselves felt incomplete or too small to really engage the player in any real meaningful way.

The charm honestly from this game comes less from the levels themselves and more of discovery said levels. Such as the mirror ice level which required you to notice something different about the mirror room, the sand level requiring you to take notice of a strange wall (Or be like a lot of players accidentally bumping into it after chasing the stupid fucking rabbit), or jumping into paintings small, large, or notice the differences on how you enter the level changing the environment.

Another thing that sets mario 64 apart is definitely the way that it controls and the open ended design of the levels. Most of the stars are designed around doing a specific task, but by no means tell you how to do it. This is basically the most open ended mario game to boot and if you really wanna see what you can and can't do in this game, look at a speedrunner. Those autist will show you why this game will never stopped being played by them. The controls also are so spot on that it allows these chads to do these feats.

Then there's the recent Pc port that I won't cover too much here, but basically allows you to make the game 10x better then it was on the original platform. As well as add 10x moar content then the original title and even added features that they always wanted to implement. Like split screen multiplayer as well as online multiplayer being as simple as clicking discord and playing said game.

I honestly think this is super important title that everyone should play atleast once. Just so then you can get an idea of what gaming was like in this era and why we should probably return to it.