It's my opinion that to fully appreciate what this game is you have to be a little obsessed with the whole Mario 64 mythology that has been built up throughout the years. Lost builds both real and fake, never ending reports of players finding eerie and unfitting elements in such a classic game that pretty much always has eyes on it, the rise of analog horror fueling a new wave of atmosphere and nostalgia focused content - everything plays a part in it.

I often see the argument that the new generation of internet users is "making horror not scary", pointing out how the Backrooms now resembles the SCP Foundation and blaming them for the mascot horror trend that has produced some less than stellar cash grabs. While I personally don't enjoy the "personalization AI" theory and many other concepts that are a bit too far off from reality... so what?

I think that, when faced with a company such as Nintendo, who has the tightest grip on what Mario is and how you should be experiencing at every second of their games with the sole intent of fueling more dollars into their bank accounts, the boldest thing you can do is create something that is cringe. Something that doesn't make sense - or rather, only makes sense to you, at a certain mindset and point in time. Become unmonetizable. Make Mario have the hyper realistic bloody eyes if you want. It's your game.

In a climate where games preservation pretty much /has/ to overlap with piracy to be effective, I think making a rom hack like this that takes elements from real old SM64 builds and combining them with fanmade concepts and rumors old and new is fantastic. It's taking this game that is held to such high standards as "the beginning of 3D gaming" or whatever and getting weird with it.

After 20+ stars of playing, it becomes impossible to differentiate what is real, fake, old or new. It's eerie and comforting and nostalgic and innovative and any other feelings that it makes you feel. It can always be "that deep". It's oddly exciting to get to play something that wasn't ready to be shown to you. Some of the maps even kill you after a certain amount of time to prevent you from seeing the unfinished content. I think that's awesome. Games don't come out of thin air ready, they go through multiple iterations and what you get from the store is the cleanest, most sanitized and marketable version.

I think Mario should run through 5 identical castle lobbies until he goes through 3 fake paintings in a row and eventually reaches a huge cake with an equally huge star - which is actually a quicksand trap that kills him instantly. I'm glad someone else agrees.

As Super Mario 64 was played by so many children, it is fitting that B3313 feels akin to a child's nightmare. But this ambitious romhack is more than that. Elements of all eras of Mario 64--its development, the final game, the insane folklore developed around the game's strange, primitive atmosphere in the past few years--are entangled into this sprawling expression of the Mario 64 fan's dream. The atmosphere is rarely outright scary, but never too welcoming either.

Byzantine in its construction, the unknowable nature of B3313 is its greatest asset. After awhile you might get bored of trying to find new areas, but the run back to try to reach something cool you found is unique and dream-like in itself.

The 16 consecutive hours I spent playing this for the first time are among the most remarkable game experiences I've had in awhile, and that was version 0.7, before it was updated with an insane amount of new areas, more atmosphere, and branching out in every direction. B3313 is something that could only exist now and among the most remarkable romhacks to ever exist.

Most of the levels in this ROM-hack have awful level design and look like they took 10 minutes to make. A level (the empty castle with only the bob-omb painting room) in this hack is even downright plagiarized from a hack called sm64.z64. (at least, that level was present in the version of the hack I played at the time I wrote this review. I don't know if it's still there in the final release.)
You might say "oh the personalization AI is making the levels, so they are meant to look bad!", but honestly I think that's a stupid excuse to justify this hack being good just because you like the idea of a "malicious AI that messes with your video game". I'm not going to lie when I say that I like that idea too, but this hack terribly executes every aspect of it. I'm not immersed at all. It doesn't even feel "personalized". It feels shoddy.

The custom songs in this hack are have terrible instrument choices and melodies that are unpleasant to listen to.

Some of the assets used are inaccurate to the Super Mario 64 Beta (as an example: the HUD), and the custom textures used in the levels. While I know that this is a trivial issue to most people, this is a big part of what ruins the feeling of this being the "real" beta to me.

And lastly, I'm not sure if this is still true or not, but the big issue that used to or is still plaguing this ROM-hack's coding process is that it uses ROM Manager instead of the fan decompilation of Super Mario 64. Basically, it uses archaic tools which makes it harder to implement ideas into the ROM-hack, which might explain why some things are the way they are.

There could've been so much more done with this idea. But sadly, the Super Mario 64 beta community is filled with a bunch of jerks (Trust me when I say that there are a lot of edgy bigots and racists in the Super Mario 64 beta community, as I had been pretty active in this community even before the gigaleak happened) that don't know what they're doing.

Anyways, where the frick is Wario !!! /hj

i went into b3313 completely blind expecting some stupid generic mario 64 creepypasta rom hack bullshit and instead got one of the weirdest, most surreal, and dream-like experiences ive ever gotten out of a video game. everything from the music to the level design feels like some tripped up mario fans fever dream. things like the placement of the stars feel like they were just put out in the open for no reason. the maps are all so open and i kept on finding myself in places i felt like i wasnt supposed to be in. even weird technical junk like clipping through walls added to the not-quite-uneasy feeling the hack gives off. even though it does contain some spooky creepypasta stuff, its used just sparingly enough that it manages to stay interesting and doesnt feel overused or anything. the real meat of the game is exploring the castle, but a lot of painting levels have some of my favorite areas like the eel graveyard, dry town, or bob-omb battlefield during its "quiet war". every time you find a branching path youll make a mental note that youll want to check out the other path later, but by the time youre done with what you were already doing, youve usually forgotten how to even go back. its insane. im positive that i missed a ton of notable areas even after sinking almost over a day into it. b3313 definitely shouldnt be viewed with a gamer mindset. the platforming and gameplay isnt super tight and fun/challenging or anything like that, but i dont think it should be either. if you want more mario 64, there are more than enough hacks to hold you over, but this hack in particular takes total advantage of the game it was built on and really just mystifies me more than anything else, which is a breath of fresh air. if youre gonna recommend this to a friend, dont tell them anything about it. dont show them a map, or tell them where to go. just let them get lost