It's been a while since I last visited my Retro Games Bucket List. I swear I didn't push off the last entry to coincide with some sort of arbitrary milestone (my 500th review if Backloggd's metrics can be trusted), but it was either this or Sonic Origins Plus. No, I just find it very difficult to discuss Super Mario 64 and have struggled for a while with how I want to approach it.
My apprehension doesn't come from the fact that Mario 64 and its legacy have been so thoroughly discussed, at least not necessarily. That certainly does pose a challenge, after all it is one of the most influential and historically significant games in the medium, and it's been documented to death for good reason. All I can really add is my own personal experiences with it, but that's where the real difficulty comes in, because I've so deeply linked the game to my late grandfather, and framing a whole review for a Mario game around parsing his death just sounds a little bit silly.
I could instead talk about how my first exposure to Super Mario 64 didn't actually come from my grandpa despite how much I tie it to him. When the Nintendo 64 came out, the arcade I used to hang out in had one hooked up to a big TV and roped off with velvet. Ten bucks for ten minutes with Mario, a damn good racket. The save already had all 120 stars unlocked, and the very first thing I did was jump into the cannon outside Princess Peach's castle, which takes you to the castle's roof and face-to-face with Yoshi. The next day I kept insisting to all my friends that Yoshi was in Mario 64. I was called a liar and relentlessly mocked. I knew what I saw, damnit! There's a Yoshi up there! He's gave me 100 lives!!
Anyway, I really hate Yoshi games for some reason.........
It's snowing out, and there are elk roaming in my grandpa's backyard - his house is large and remote, the massive fenced off satellite dish he gets TV from is bordered by miles and miles of pure nature. I'm playing Dire Dire Docks, and by that, I mean I'm mostly drowning to death over and over again, but the music and atmosphere is serene. Grandpa laughs warmly when I die, then he offers some advice, but mostly he just watches and lets me figure it out, as he did whenever we played games together. I don't know it at the time, but I would never be there again.
Ah, yeah, that sounds kinda dumb. But the most insightful thing I have to share about Mario 64 isn't some hot nugget of development history, or a unique perspective on its mechanics, how Mario handles or the way its levels are designed. As much as I would love to tear into it as I would any other game, I can't. Every time I try to write about how important the game was for establishing analog controls or the way it shaped the next several years of 3D platformers, I just get lost in a nostalgic haze, thinking about how much fun I had on the title screen alone, molding Mario's face like that scene from The Hundred Days of the Dragon. Mom walking in, asking "what the hell are you playing," and grandpa answering very curtly, "Mary-oh." I'd correct him. He'd never get it right. To the grave, it was "Mary-oh."
Nowadays, the scene around Super Mario 64 is still lively, though its greatest contributions are so codified in the medium that you'll likely take them for granted. Instead, it lives on more fervently through trite analog horror and speedruns which may or may not be influenced by stray cosmic particles. It occupies such a weird space; one I would've been far more fascinated by as a child. "L is real" captivated me, if you told me back then that every cart was personalized, my eyes would be as wide as saucers. I'm pretty dumb, but I was straight stupid in the 90s.
Super Mario 64 felt like an impossibly huge game to me. Peach's castle was large and full of secrets, and though I eventually got a Nintendo 64 of my own, I could only explore Mario 64 when visiting my grandpa. It was a strange omission from my collection, yet that always left me excited to play more when I visited his house. How much further had he gotten? What cool new things could he show me? What new games did he have, did he get any more promo tapes? The last one had a couple of guys put Mario's head in a damn vice, that was pretty fucked up!
There's a reason Mario 64 was the last game I wanted to get to in my bucket list, as the whole impetus behind making one in the first place was a form of retreat. It felt somehow appropriate to close the whole thing out with it. I really appreciate everyone who stuck with me as I went through my list, reviewing classics like Contra Hard Corps and hot liquid shit like Aero the Acro-Bat. I promise I'll get back to reviews like that soon.
Super Mario 64 is a great game. Bad camera, and it's gotten trendy to write off other parts of it that are antiquated, even despite the fact that for what it doesn't get right, it was still one of the first to do it. But I can't go in on that, even if I see a lot of those rough edges, too. I'm just too emotionally invested in it.
My apprehension doesn't come from the fact that Mario 64 and its legacy have been so thoroughly discussed, at least not necessarily. That certainly does pose a challenge, after all it is one of the most influential and historically significant games in the medium, and it's been documented to death for good reason. All I can really add is my own personal experiences with it, but that's where the real difficulty comes in, because I've so deeply linked the game to my late grandfather, and framing a whole review for a Mario game around parsing his death just sounds a little bit silly.
I could instead talk about how my first exposure to Super Mario 64 didn't actually come from my grandpa despite how much I tie it to him. When the Nintendo 64 came out, the arcade I used to hang out in had one hooked up to a big TV and roped off with velvet. Ten bucks for ten minutes with Mario, a damn good racket. The save already had all 120 stars unlocked, and the very first thing I did was jump into the cannon outside Princess Peach's castle, which takes you to the castle's roof and face-to-face with Yoshi. The next day I kept insisting to all my friends that Yoshi was in Mario 64. I was called a liar and relentlessly mocked. I knew what I saw, damnit! There's a Yoshi up there! He's gave me 100 lives!!
Anyway, I really hate Yoshi games for some reason.........
It's snowing out, and there are elk roaming in my grandpa's backyard - his house is large and remote, the massive fenced off satellite dish he gets TV from is bordered by miles and miles of pure nature. I'm playing Dire Dire Docks, and by that, I mean I'm mostly drowning to death over and over again, but the music and atmosphere is serene. Grandpa laughs warmly when I die, then he offers some advice, but mostly he just watches and lets me figure it out, as he did whenever we played games together. I don't know it at the time, but I would never be there again.
Ah, yeah, that sounds kinda dumb. But the most insightful thing I have to share about Mario 64 isn't some hot nugget of development history, or a unique perspective on its mechanics, how Mario handles or the way its levels are designed. As much as I would love to tear into it as I would any other game, I can't. Every time I try to write about how important the game was for establishing analog controls or the way it shaped the next several years of 3D platformers, I just get lost in a nostalgic haze, thinking about how much fun I had on the title screen alone, molding Mario's face like that scene from The Hundred Days of the Dragon. Mom walking in, asking "what the hell are you playing," and grandpa answering very curtly, "Mary-oh." I'd correct him. He'd never get it right. To the grave, it was "Mary-oh."
Nowadays, the scene around Super Mario 64 is still lively, though its greatest contributions are so codified in the medium that you'll likely take them for granted. Instead, it lives on more fervently through trite analog horror and speedruns which may or may not be influenced by stray cosmic particles. It occupies such a weird space; one I would've been far more fascinated by as a child. "L is real" captivated me, if you told me back then that every cart was personalized, my eyes would be as wide as saucers. I'm pretty dumb, but I was straight stupid in the 90s.
Super Mario 64 felt like an impossibly huge game to me. Peach's castle was large and full of secrets, and though I eventually got a Nintendo 64 of my own, I could only explore Mario 64 when visiting my grandpa. It was a strange omission from my collection, yet that always left me excited to play more when I visited his house. How much further had he gotten? What cool new things could he show me? What new games did he have, did he get any more promo tapes? The last one had a couple of guys put Mario's head in a damn vice, that was pretty fucked up!
There's a reason Mario 64 was the last game I wanted to get to in my bucket list, as the whole impetus behind making one in the first place was a form of retreat. It felt somehow appropriate to close the whole thing out with it. I really appreciate everyone who stuck with me as I went through my list, reviewing classics like Contra Hard Corps and hot liquid shit like Aero the Acro-Bat. I promise I'll get back to reviews like that soon.
Super Mario 64 is a great game. Bad camera, and it's gotten trendy to write off other parts of it that are antiquated, even despite the fact that for what it doesn't get right, it was still one of the first to do it. But I can't go in on that, even if I see a lot of those rough edges, too. I'm just too emotionally invested in it.