Ah yes, this brings back memories, back when I was a dumb kid that never even got past unlocking Mario and that genuinely thought that the 64 was because there were other 63 games before it... good times.
Nintendo is no stranger to remastering and porting their games, hell, the last generation and with the Wii U to Switch transition we probably got the most amount of ports we've ever gotten; but they are far more stingy when it comes to fully remaking their previous work. When it happens it’s this unexpected event, and with the exception of maybe the Pokémon franchise, most of their series have so little full-blown re-imaginations of older titles that most can be counted with only the fingers on one hand. So yeah, it’s a big deal when it happens if only to see how it ends up turning up, so I guess it’s kinda obvious to say that when they announced a remake of Super Motherfucking Mario the 64th, for their brand new handheld at the time and as a launch title, it was indeed a pretty huge deal. Even with the original being far from a favorite for me, I’ve said in numerous occasions that Super Mario 64 is an absolute monument of a game; while saying it alone revolutionized the 3D gaming industry is a bit of an exaggeration, it was for sure the most important game for the platforming genre, one that experimented with movement like few other games had done, and to this day it holds up surprisingly well and many play it rigorously to this very day, so it’s only natural to thing that a remake of it would still be talked about to this da- you know where I’m getting at don’t you?
Everytime the SM64 or even the 3D Mario sphere is in a conversation, 64DS is almost always left aside, and results into the almost meme worthy statement that is ‘’3D Land was the first 3D Mario in a handheld (64DS doesn’t count)!’’, like, poor game needs a hug, man… But to be completely honest, for the longest time I didn’t blame anybody if it just forgot about it; just the memories of those years back when I first played it were enough to put me in a bad mood: constant falls, terrible feeling controls, almost headache inducing camera, this was not just a mere case of me sucking at games yet again, this time… this time the game was ass. And so, I really dreaded returning to it, but it was just a matter of time; it is the only remaining 3D Mario game that I had yet to beat, and with the original game behind me, it was time to, yet again, finish what I started… and right off the bat, I think by far the best compliment I give this game is that it doesn’t suck even half of what I expected.
64DS is as much a original game as it is a remake of the original Super Mario 64, and right off the bat I can say it’s a pretty faithful remake; it doesn’t have as many changes as it does additions, and so practically all the levels were completely untouched, with only some sections to accommodate new missions within the levels or simply to make platforming not such a chore as it could be in the original game, like some changes in Whomp Fortress or a ground floor being added to Tick Tock Clock, which is like encountering an oasis admist the desert. Aside from those minor alterations, all of the World Portraits and Peach’s Castle are a carbon copy of their N64 counterparts, and that translates into all the positives I said about them mostly hold up: inspired ‘’toy box’’ design, a wonderful main hub area, fantastic ambience and even pretty funny dialogue, super creative missions, and pretty simple but fun boss fights; these latter two being even greater than before thanks to the new additions made in the remake. A whooping 30 new stars were added to the game, that, plus THREE brand new characters (this game is in fact the first instance of Luigi being playable in a 3D Platformer, so it gets points on that alone), prompted the addition of new small phases and even bosses, and these new content is honestly fantastic! The new mini levels are super fun obstacle courses, and fighting King Goomba and King Boo was a really unexpected surprise, but a welcomed one that references other parts of the series I really wasn’t expecting. So yeah, this game does have a ton of stuff that is pretty good, well that’s fantastic! Maybe this was hidden gem all alon- Yeah I should stop doing this bit, but anyway, the game still blows in many, MANY areas.
First, let’s address the elephant in the room, and no, not that one; the controls. Look, 64 DS was born as a way to showcase what the DS could achieve graphically first, there’s no denying that, but saying that the team simply slapped the game into the system without consideration is also a gross misjudgment. There tried, like, REALLY tried, they made the camera far more responsive and useful than it ever was in the original, they added the whole touch screen support thing to give the 360 movement, there really was attempt, but that’s what it was, an attempt. The D-Pad and the eight directions it can provide just don’t adapt to the complex and 3-Dimensional environments of Super Mario 64, they make the once so fluid action of just moving and jumping so much complicated and unreliable, and coupled with the fact that every action and button feels so cramped considering this a fairly complex game, it results in never truly feeling like you are in total control of ANY of the characters, and even if some sections were changed or made easier to accommodate that, that’s the equivalent of shooting the game with a shotgun and putting a band aid over the wound; that’s just trying to make less painful something that it didn’t have to happen in the first place. Controls are not the only thing that is problematic tho, the squad is here to also be kinda mid! I… do not really understand why there are more characters here, like, the idea IS really cool, but considering that the original game only had Mario to begin with and how it’s implemented, it’s once again a case of solving a problem that wasn’t there on thee first place. The Power-Ups are now grouped together in the singular Flower-Power-Up, which has an different effect on each different character and that, plus the fact that stars are made exclusive to character’s specific capabilities, like Wario’s super strength or Mario’s wall jumping, it does the total opposite of stream lining, it complicates once so simple and fun missions and turns them into a slog that in some cases you have to wait to even beat! Now granted, the fact that there are the hats that let you turn into another character does prevent this from becoming a DK64 situation, but it still can be a pain to get to were the hats are before getting the start itself, and if it just so happens that the start requires Yoshi, the you gotta exit the level and change into him, and oh, what’s that, there are black bricks outside Peach’s Castle? Welp, time to change into Wario! Oh? There are bars you cannot get through? Well, you better change into Luigi to grab the invisibility power-up you scoundrel! And would you look at that, you need to wall jump in this specific area! Time to change into Mario and get over it! Oh wow! Black bricks! Time to head back and- you get the aggravating picture…
And you know, this wouldn’t be half a problem if at least playing as all the characters felt unique and fun in distinct ways, and yes, in a way they do, so you’d think tha- WELL THINK AGAIN BUCKO. Yoshi feels fine enough, the flutter jump is pretty useful but overall he’s severely limited compared to the rest of the cast; Mario is as he was in the original, only worse because of how everyone controls now, and actions before super cool are now borderline impossible; Wario is a gross parody of its own character, it makes sense for him to be the strong one that has the shortest jump, but for him to be so goddam slow and barely acrobatic make him a slog to control, especially when swimming, and just giving him a couple of bonuses instead of a moves like the shoulder-bash and the dash so to make him faster in exchange of being harder to control and making him similar to his Wario Land self is a huge missed opportunity; and then there’s Luigi who is… who is just fucking insane. His backflip makes many of the challenges completely inconsequential, that and other abilities like his run and floaty jump make him by far the best character to play as and makes the rest completely obsolete. Is this terrible balancing and turns the game into essentially Super Luigi 64 but not in a fun or charming way? Absolutely! Do I found this hilarious as hell and love that is Luigi the one that’s so broken? Absolutely!
But the worst part, even if it’s not the worst thing with the game itself, it’s how hellbent it is to just refuse to make changes to the base game. As I said, there are some very minor changes to the levels and stars turned into character specific missions, but that’s it. All the problems I has with the original game are still present here, mainly having to repeat entire sections for different missions, something that was not only left unchanged, but it even plagues the new levels as well… and in spite all of that… it’s still fun.
How. How does the plumber fucking do it. Super Mario 64 DS is by far my least favorite 3D Mario, is the one plagued with the most design flaws, and doesn’t quite reach the same highs as other games in this particular sub series… but it was still fun. It has bad stuff, but nothing I’ve said I would qualify it as terrible; there is still a fantastic game here, with flaws on top of it as well as new good stuff. As absurd as it sounds, maybe it’s a game that with a true remake it could be even greater that the game it remade in the first place, but right now it has too much stuff holding it back. Nevertheless, it’s a great time, and it’s attempt that does succeed in a bunch of things, and for that only it deserves my outmost respect.
Thank you so much for playing my game…
Nintendo is no stranger to remastering and porting their games, hell, the last generation and with the Wii U to Switch transition we probably got the most amount of ports we've ever gotten; but they are far more stingy when it comes to fully remaking their previous work. When it happens it’s this unexpected event, and with the exception of maybe the Pokémon franchise, most of their series have so little full-blown re-imaginations of older titles that most can be counted with only the fingers on one hand. So yeah, it’s a big deal when it happens if only to see how it ends up turning up, so I guess it’s kinda obvious to say that when they announced a remake of Super Motherfucking Mario the 64th, for their brand new handheld at the time and as a launch title, it was indeed a pretty huge deal. Even with the original being far from a favorite for me, I’ve said in numerous occasions that Super Mario 64 is an absolute monument of a game; while saying it alone revolutionized the 3D gaming industry is a bit of an exaggeration, it was for sure the most important game for the platforming genre, one that experimented with movement like few other games had done, and to this day it holds up surprisingly well and many play it rigorously to this very day, so it’s only natural to thing that a remake of it would still be talked about to this da- you know where I’m getting at don’t you?
Everytime the SM64 or even the 3D Mario sphere is in a conversation, 64DS is almost always left aside, and results into the almost meme worthy statement that is ‘’3D Land was the first 3D Mario in a handheld (64DS doesn’t count)!’’, like, poor game needs a hug, man… But to be completely honest, for the longest time I didn’t blame anybody if it just forgot about it; just the memories of those years back when I first played it were enough to put me in a bad mood: constant falls, terrible feeling controls, almost headache inducing camera, this was not just a mere case of me sucking at games yet again, this time… this time the game was ass. And so, I really dreaded returning to it, but it was just a matter of time; it is the only remaining 3D Mario game that I had yet to beat, and with the original game behind me, it was time to, yet again, finish what I started… and right off the bat, I think by far the best compliment I give this game is that it doesn’t suck even half of what I expected.
64DS is as much a original game as it is a remake of the original Super Mario 64, and right off the bat I can say it’s a pretty faithful remake; it doesn’t have as many changes as it does additions, and so practically all the levels were completely untouched, with only some sections to accommodate new missions within the levels or simply to make platforming not such a chore as it could be in the original game, like some changes in Whomp Fortress or a ground floor being added to Tick Tock Clock, which is like encountering an oasis admist the desert. Aside from those minor alterations, all of the World Portraits and Peach’s Castle are a carbon copy of their N64 counterparts, and that translates into all the positives I said about them mostly hold up: inspired ‘’toy box’’ design, a wonderful main hub area, fantastic ambience and even pretty funny dialogue, super creative missions, and pretty simple but fun boss fights; these latter two being even greater than before thanks to the new additions made in the remake. A whooping 30 new stars were added to the game, that, plus THREE brand new characters (this game is in fact the first instance of Luigi being playable in a 3D Platformer, so it gets points on that alone), prompted the addition of new small phases and even bosses, and these new content is honestly fantastic! The new mini levels are super fun obstacle courses, and fighting King Goomba and King Boo was a really unexpected surprise, but a welcomed one that references other parts of the series I really wasn’t expecting. So yeah, this game does have a ton of stuff that is pretty good, well that’s fantastic! Maybe this was hidden gem all alon- Yeah I should stop doing this bit, but anyway, the game still blows in many, MANY areas.
First, let’s address the elephant in the room, and no, not that one; the controls. Look, 64 DS was born as a way to showcase what the DS could achieve graphically first, there’s no denying that, but saying that the team simply slapped the game into the system without consideration is also a gross misjudgment. There tried, like, REALLY tried, they made the camera far more responsive and useful than it ever was in the original, they added the whole touch screen support thing to give the 360 movement, there really was attempt, but that’s what it was, an attempt. The D-Pad and the eight directions it can provide just don’t adapt to the complex and 3-Dimensional environments of Super Mario 64, they make the once so fluid action of just moving and jumping so much complicated and unreliable, and coupled with the fact that every action and button feels so cramped considering this a fairly complex game, it results in never truly feeling like you are in total control of ANY of the characters, and even if some sections were changed or made easier to accommodate that, that’s the equivalent of shooting the game with a shotgun and putting a band aid over the wound; that’s just trying to make less painful something that it didn’t have to happen in the first place. Controls are not the only thing that is problematic tho, the squad is here to also be kinda mid! I… do not really understand why there are more characters here, like, the idea IS really cool, but considering that the original game only had Mario to begin with and how it’s implemented, it’s once again a case of solving a problem that wasn’t there on thee first place. The Power-Ups are now grouped together in the singular Flower-Power-Up, which has an different effect on each different character and that, plus the fact that stars are made exclusive to character’s specific capabilities, like Wario’s super strength or Mario’s wall jumping, it does the total opposite of stream lining, it complicates once so simple and fun missions and turns them into a slog that in some cases you have to wait to even beat! Now granted, the fact that there are the hats that let you turn into another character does prevent this from becoming a DK64 situation, but it still can be a pain to get to were the hats are before getting the start itself, and if it just so happens that the start requires Yoshi, the you gotta exit the level and change into him, and oh, what’s that, there are black bricks outside Peach’s Castle? Welp, time to change into Wario! Oh? There are bars you cannot get through? Well, you better change into Luigi to grab the invisibility power-up you scoundrel! And would you look at that, you need to wall jump in this specific area! Time to change into Mario and get over it! Oh wow! Black bricks! Time to head back and- you get the aggravating picture…
And you know, this wouldn’t be half a problem if at least playing as all the characters felt unique and fun in distinct ways, and yes, in a way they do, so you’d think tha- WELL THINK AGAIN BUCKO. Yoshi feels fine enough, the flutter jump is pretty useful but overall he’s severely limited compared to the rest of the cast; Mario is as he was in the original, only worse because of how everyone controls now, and actions before super cool are now borderline impossible; Wario is a gross parody of its own character, it makes sense for him to be the strong one that has the shortest jump, but for him to be so goddam slow and barely acrobatic make him a slog to control, especially when swimming, and just giving him a couple of bonuses instead of a moves like the shoulder-bash and the dash so to make him faster in exchange of being harder to control and making him similar to his Wario Land self is a huge missed opportunity; and then there’s Luigi who is… who is just fucking insane. His backflip makes many of the challenges completely inconsequential, that and other abilities like his run and floaty jump make him by far the best character to play as and makes the rest completely obsolete. Is this terrible balancing and turns the game into essentially Super Luigi 64 but not in a fun or charming way? Absolutely! Do I found this hilarious as hell and love that is Luigi the one that’s so broken? Absolutely!
But the worst part, even if it’s not the worst thing with the game itself, it’s how hellbent it is to just refuse to make changes to the base game. As I said, there are some very minor changes to the levels and stars turned into character specific missions, but that’s it. All the problems I has with the original game are still present here, mainly having to repeat entire sections for different missions, something that was not only left unchanged, but it even plagues the new levels as well… and in spite all of that… it’s still fun.
How. How does the plumber fucking do it. Super Mario 64 DS is by far my least favorite 3D Mario, is the one plagued with the most design flaws, and doesn’t quite reach the same highs as other games in this particular sub series… but it was still fun. It has bad stuff, but nothing I’ve said I would qualify it as terrible; there is still a fantastic game here, with flaws on top of it as well as new good stuff. As absurd as it sounds, maybe it’s a game that with a true remake it could be even greater that the game it remade in the first place, but right now it has too much stuff holding it back. Nevertheless, it’s a great time, and it’s attempt that does succeed in a bunch of things, and for that only it deserves my outmost respect.
Thank you so much for playing my game…
2 Comments
@BlazingWaters Couldn't have said it better; I do belive that with a more refined control scheme and changes to the pacing and how characters are handled, this game could be beyond amazing, as it is, it's just cool and fun. Also, I was aware of the fan-made fixes before playing, but I wanted to complete and judge the game the way it originally released, tho if I ever get to revisit it, it'll be with one of those fixes; even if it doesn't change some of the issues with the game beyond the controls themselves, I still want to see how much changes with fully analog movement.
BlazingWaters
7 months ago