I’ve wanted to play Super Mario 64 ever since I was a little kid. For almost all of the years I’ve been alive, I’ve heard the same phrases used to praise Super Mario 64 over and over again. Whenever someone talked about Super Mario 64, they always mentioned how it revolutionized video games as a whole with its jump from 2D to 3D, how much freedom the game gave you, how great the controls were, and how most of their childhood memories associated with the game were spent roaming Princess Peach’s Castle. Because of this constant praise, I kept getting more and more excited to play Super Mario 64, and now that I’ve actually played it, it didn’t live up to any of my expectations.
At least 90% of my time spent playing Super Mario 64 was spent getting frustrated with the game rather than having fun with it. While the controls on land are mostly great, Mario has a tendency to slip as he’s landing on the ground, and while that isn’t a problem in most cases, it makes jumping onto thin or small platforms incredibly annoying. The other methods of controlling Mario, such as swimming and flying, are janky and feel like they’ve been made to work against their levels rather than with them. Speaking of which, many of the levels in Super Mario 64 are straight up not fun to play, as making even one slip-up causes the player to instantly die. This, combined with how the levels feel as if they punish letting the player approach levels creatively and instead reward sticking to the most obvious path, makes me wonder how so many people have championed Super Mario 64 as a game of freedom.
While I do respect Super Mario 64 for how innovative and revolutionary it was at the time, I barely had any fun with the game itself, and while I do know that 3D Mario games have gotten better with the releases of the Super Mario Galaxy duology and especially Super Mario Odyssey, I can’t imagine someone picking up Super Mario 64 and having just as much fun with it as someone did back in 1996.
At least 90% of my time spent playing Super Mario 64 was spent getting frustrated with the game rather than having fun with it. While the controls on land are mostly great, Mario has a tendency to slip as he’s landing on the ground, and while that isn’t a problem in most cases, it makes jumping onto thin or small platforms incredibly annoying. The other methods of controlling Mario, such as swimming and flying, are janky and feel like they’ve been made to work against their levels rather than with them. Speaking of which, many of the levels in Super Mario 64 are straight up not fun to play, as making even one slip-up causes the player to instantly die. This, combined with how the levels feel as if they punish letting the player approach levels creatively and instead reward sticking to the most obvious path, makes me wonder how so many people have championed Super Mario 64 as a game of freedom.
While I do respect Super Mario 64 for how innovative and revolutionary it was at the time, I barely had any fun with the game itself, and while I do know that 3D Mario games have gotten better with the releases of the Super Mario Galaxy duology and especially Super Mario Odyssey, I can’t imagine someone picking up Super Mario 64 and having just as much fun with it as someone did back in 1996.