I think people often mistake something being revolutionary with it being actually good. I appreciate everything this game has done for the industry, but I think it's aged very poorly.

Mario moves like a slug and is so imprecise which makes what should be simple levels become infuriating.

The level design is top tier, the music is great, and the look of the game is iconic, but the clunkiness of everything ruined my experience.

Despite being almost 30 years old, this game manages to be amazing and fresh, which is reflected on the huge speedrunning community surrounding it. The controls are so precise, fun and well done and the fact that they pulled this off in C with no engines or frameworks does not cease to impress me. Besides that, everything else about this game is amazing and is more than worth it to try it out.

First of all: the graphics. It's the first thing we see and the techniques they used are interesting. Using sprites of circles for round enemies like the snowmen and bob-ombs might sound weird but it fits well the overall style of the game and is in my opinion one of the things that makes this game feel so fresh. The 3d models are also impressive because of the amount of details and personality they gave the characters like Bowser and Mario himself.

Regarding the gameplay, for me the best parts were platforming sections. I can't praise the controls enough. There's a specific star that in order to get to it you need to do a series of jumps and it's so rewarding to get it, just top notch game design. The level design is also interesting. Instead of having a bunch of levels with different themes like a usual Super Mario game, here we have around 15 levels with 6 stars each. A clever way to work around the limitations of that time, but paired with the great level design the game keeps you looking for clues on how to get the other stars when you start a level.

Honestly, there's so much to talk about the game design that I don't even know what to talk about and if I'd even finish this review so I advise anyone to just play the game and see it for yourself, I assure it's amazing.

To the surprise of no one, the one thing that didn't age well is the camera. Some sections are rough because they feel very claustrophobic and the lack of camera control is way too annoying at times. Since the controls are fantastic, the camera is just something that could be improved but it's not that big of a problem.

Overall a game that's so good you can't stress it enough. To me, the best mix of challenge and fun in the Super Mario games I played (I'm not counting Yoshi's Island as a Super Mario game) and it makes me excited to play Sunshine.

While I had spent years watching various Super Mario 64 content (Speed runs, let's plays, Half-A-Press videos), I had never taken the opportunity to actually play it for myself. Then, when Nintendo released the Super Mario 3D All-Stars collection in 2020, I completely passed over SM64 in favor of playing Sunshine for the first time and completing Galaxy for what had to be the 10th time. I finally got around to sitting down and completing Super Mario 64 this past week, and I may have a relatively controversial opinion about it...

It's good.

The thing about playing classics for the first time decades after they were first released is that it's difficult to put yourself in the mindset of someone who was playing the game when it was released. That being said, you can tell from playing it that Super Mario 64 had such a monumental impact on Mario games, platformers, 3D gaming, and video games as a whole, and its influence should never be overlooked when discussing this game.

Playing it for the first time in 2024, however, the shortcomings and limitations of the game are a lot more prevalent. First off, the camera is abysmal. It was clever and all to give the camera a character in order to contextualize it within the gameplay, but controlling it is an absolute chore, and led to more than one irritating death on my part. The controls are slippery as well, it sometimes felt like there was no rhyme or reason as to why Mario was going a certain direction, and it was even worse while airborne. The controls and the camera made some stars that should be simple end up taking several attempts and a decent amount of my sanity (I'm looking at you, Pyramid Puzzle). As for a complaint that isn't a result of hardware limitations, I also felt like the game stumbled across the finish line in terms of Course quality. Wrapping up your adventure with Tick-Tock Clock, Tall, Tall Mountain, and Rainbow ride really made me want the game to end a lot sooner than it actually did, especially after such a strong start. If I hadn't made it a goal to complete every course, I would've skipped the last third of the game the second I got 70 stars. However, in spite of all those things, Super Mario 64 keeps a pretty good score from me because, while it has its bad parts, the good parts are so. darn. GOOD.

The sandbox/exploration aspect of the majority of the worlds is just plain fun and engaging. There's rarely any wasted space in these courses; if none of the stars send you down a certain path or to a certain area, there's additional secrets to be found there. You're rewarded for learning the course layout in order to complete stars and missions faster, and, while I really disliked the 100-Coins stars at the beginning of the game, by the end, I felt like I knew each course inside and out, because I HAD to in order to collect every coin possible. The power-ups, while a bit annoying to unlock, do a great job at shaking up the gameplay and adding some variety into each course. The myriad of bosses across the courses make each area feel alive and give a decent challenge to conquer before taking on the rest of the missions. And above all else, the soundtrack for this game is BEAUTIFUL. It might be my favorite soundtrack of any Mario game (Behind Galaxy 1 & 2 of course).

At the end of the day, despite its shortcomings, I definitely regret not paying attention to Super Mario 64 sooner. It may not have aged in the best way possible, but the core foundation of the gameplay is absolutely timeless.

I have tried and tried so many times to get into this game. I tried the DS version, playing on emulation, and even semi-recently with the 3D All Stars release but everytime I find the controlls too much to put up with. I recently got a New 3DS XL and saw that someone had made a native port of Mario 64 to the system and decided I would finally see the game through to the end no matter how frustrating I found it.
I dont wanna make this one of my big giant reviews but I do have a few things I want to say.
- I did the bare minimum, 70 star run
- I found the game to have high-highs and low-lows.
- the port i played was in widescreen and I found that to be really helpful
- controls still often felt really slipery and on some later stages it got really frustrating trying to work with them.
- really cool to play this game now and see the origin of a bunch of stuff i was already familiar with in the Mario series.
- I can see why this game has the reputation it does, in 96' this wouldve blown my mind
- its undeniable that this game has aged poorly and especially after playing more recent Mario titles first, its hard to adjust

the camera thinks it knows better than the player, flipping around willy nilly, not cooperating with a god damn thing i want it to do. the two different modes are pretty much the same, and in enclosed spaces sometimes the game simply refuses to let you see ahead, such as inside the pyramid. if you’re holding the control stick in one direction, as you often do, and the camera snaps around, Mario will automatically move in that direction relative to the camera, which can easily make him fall off whatever ground he is on. it is easily the most detrimental a camera has ever been to my enjoyment of a game, but the issues don’t end there. Mario feels nice to control in a vacuum, but when you place him into these wacky levels problems begin to arise. near a wall, he’ll automatically begin to shimmy along it, slowing down significantly which can be very irritating, especially when the camera flips around against your will and causes it to happen. tilting the analog stick forward and then snapping it backward will result in Mario switching directions immediately. a pause between the switch of directions on the analog stick, however, has Mario turn all the way around, taking up much more space than the immediate snap back. on smaller platforms this can easily lead to him falling off, and feels wholly unnecessary a distinction to make. Mario will regularly bounce off walls, even invisibly ones, and when this happens without a wall kick he will transition into an uncontrollable fall state, and will move backwards. if he happens to fall onto a slope, he will start sliding, further wrestling control away from the player. Mario slips and slides far to liberally in this game. the result is a control scheme where it feels like the players greatest enemy in progression is the camera and Mario himself.
swimming is a pain in the ass, especially getting out of the water. Mario does this weird thing where if he’s on the edge of a platform he’ll spaz out an either decide to stay or fall off. it feels like nobody played the game to make sure it was fun.
the content of the game is weak too. most objectives are either repeated content, such as racing the big penguin down the ice slide after an earlier star had you going down the slide already, or are over in 20 seconds if you know what you’re doing. the challenge with these could come from the obtuse and unclear method of obtaining the star, or have you controlling Mario in a new, inconvenient way, such as the trial and error guesswork of shooting him out of a cannon. this are not fulfilling content.
the lives system carried over from previous games are more worthless than ever, simply placing you back in Peach’s front lawn.
of course, Mario 64 gets a lot right. the music is great, the levels do contain an adequate amount of variety, utilizes the third dimension pretty well, the hub is awesome and the freedom it affords the player is amazing. the movement, like i said is great when not applied to the kinds of things the game has you do. in open levels like bob-bomb battlefield and cool cool mountain, it feels great to run and jump around. the bowser stages are pretty solid too, and it certainly helps that they float in a void so there are no walls for the camera to cram up against.
however, it remains the worst 3d Mario game, and by a landslide. every other game in the series features more substantial content, tighter controls, a far more reasonable camera, and better levels to explore.

My feelings about Super Mario 64 are similar to the ones I have about Super Mario Bros. Super Mario 64 was far and away the best game of its kind in 1996, and is still fun today... and while I wouldn't say it's aged badly, per se, I would still say that it has aged. There's a lot of things I could point out in this regard, but the elephant in the room is the camera -- brilliantly state of the art for 1996, aggravatingly limited in this day and age.

Setting that aside, I do want to take a moment to appreciate some of the little odds and ends in this game. Mario's animations are charming and whimsical. There's a nice bit of environment variety, with a lot of cool bits of visual design, from the crystals in Bowser in the Dark World to the mysterious skyboxes. There's even hints of interconnectivity between the game's whole areas; while it never really amounts to much, it makes the world feel more substantial and interwoven. A lot of the 3D environments look quite impressive for 1996, too, with particular shoutouts to the downtown in Wet-Dry World, the Cavern of the Metal Cap, and Tick Tock Clock.

It's hard to dislike this game, despite how stiff parts of it feel to me as someone who played it for the first time long after it was new. That, I think, is a testament to its lasting appeal.