Has any other game given us something like Watch For Rolling Rocks in 0.5 A Presses? And if they haven't, could they? A lot of games when taken to their outer limits feel like breaking them; like you hotwired the machine of Pokemon Red or Ocarina of Time to spit you out at the ending. There's fascination in that, sure. But for all the non-Euclidean twists and taffy-stretching it has been exposed to over the past two-decades-plus, Super Mario 64 in a sense remains whole. You can pull at the seams of this game on a quantum level in the name of not pressing the A button and it doesn't ever really split, but rather reveals another wrinkle to tug. On top of that, this magic is achieved not through behind-the-scenes manipulation but instead through a small Italian man gleefully performing acrobatics and building up enough speed to phase through gaps between atoms.
Its place at the dawn of 3D console video games only strengthens its pull in this regard. The new dimension begged so many questions about what was and wasn't possible that it feels like we'll never hit the end of them in this single game, let alone in the medium. Equally important is the meticulous commitment to making basic locomotion feel so easy to grasp yet hold remarkable depth that people would care about it on its own, inventing convoluted challenges because they got bored of playing the game as it was designed but not of playing with the game as it is. It was always going to be The First 3D Mario Game and thus would always have a pull on people, but I don't think that accounts for just how deeply people have studied and stretched and scrambled this game. There's something deeper there.
Think about the general recognition that the stacked "mario-yahoo" sound effect of backwards-long-jumping has reached. What once sounded like something going wrong now carries a sensation similar to an older sibling asking if you want to see something weird. A signal that you are about to unravel something previously solid and follow the loose tendrils to new places. Maybe not the most emotionally resonant or life-changing type of depth, but one that feels largely distinct to video games as a medium. Though I'll never personally dip my toes in those waters I still find enjoyment in watching others diving to the bottom of this game's ocean, and in my own time spent floating in the comparative shallows.
Its place at the dawn of 3D console video games only strengthens its pull in this regard. The new dimension begged so many questions about what was and wasn't possible that it feels like we'll never hit the end of them in this single game, let alone in the medium. Equally important is the meticulous commitment to making basic locomotion feel so easy to grasp yet hold remarkable depth that people would care about it on its own, inventing convoluted challenges because they got bored of playing the game as it was designed but not of playing with the game as it is. It was always going to be The First 3D Mario Game and thus would always have a pull on people, but I don't think that accounts for just how deeply people have studied and stretched and scrambled this game. There's something deeper there.
Think about the general recognition that the stacked "mario-yahoo" sound effect of backwards-long-jumping has reached. What once sounded like something going wrong now carries a sensation similar to an older sibling asking if you want to see something weird. A signal that you are about to unravel something previously solid and follow the loose tendrils to new places. Maybe not the most emotionally resonant or life-changing type of depth, but one that feels largely distinct to video games as a medium. Though I'll never personally dip my toes in those waters I still find enjoyment in watching others diving to the bottom of this game's ocean, and in my own time spent floating in the comparative shallows.