It is a truly exceptional and influential ROM hack, and it ages exceptionally well. It set the standard of quality for new, complete Mario games on the SM64 engine, and despite some annoying stars, it feels easily as accomplished as the vanilla game in terms of level design. There now exists many versions of this game, even one that is compatible with the N64 console of you own an Everdrive, and it feels as much like a fantastic add-on to SM64 as SMG2 feels like a fantastic add-on to SMG1. An excellent place to start if you have an interest for SM64 ROM hacking and don't know what to play first.

Imagine playing this when it just came out in 1996. At this point, the entirety of your 3D gaming culture is limited to shooters such as DOOM or Star Fox. If you were an avid gamer, maybe you played the primitive Jumping Flash, but for most, a platforming game that broke into the third dimension was barely imaginable.

First moving Mario in Peach's courtyard must have been a surreal and unbelievable experience for the gamers who had the chance to live this exceptional era. Learning to move Mario with your 360-degree joystick, moving the camera with the C and R buttons, learning to sideflip, backflip, triple jump, wall kick with the game's exceptionally responsive control scheme is a truly unique experience for new players even nowadays.

As a matter of fact, no other Mario game (except, maybe, SMW if you consider 2D games) has ever had controls this responsive and complex. I've been playing this game on and off since 2013, and speedrunning it since 2017, and I always find myself impressed by its advanced tech: speed kicks, slide controls, backwards long jumps, dustless movement and lag reduction add so much to the game which which has virtually no skill ceiling. How the hell did they do it so well for their first ever 3D game effort?

The camera is a common point of criticism by unexperienced players, which is understandable; the camera controls aren't communicated well with the player. However, when one learns to master all different camera modes, the camera feels excessively responsive and free, and you will face very few awkward situations, even less than in modern 3D Mario games with more fixed camera angles.

The core game's levels feel somewhat unfinished, which is the only thing keeping me from giving this a perfect score. Don't get me wrong: levels like Tick Tock Clock, Bob Omb Battlefield and Hazy Maze Cave are some of the most creative and beautiful level designs I've seen in 3D gaming and it still stands very well to this day. However, some of the levels feel limited and a large part of the castle is uncannily empty, with very few enterable paintings in contrast to empty ones. I've heard that the game was initially supposed to have twice the amount of stages, but they had to cut down due to time limitations (can't find a source that proves that but I believe it). As a result, the levels can feel as if corners were cut, and will maybe leave you desiring for more. The incredible and perpetually growing ROM Hacking scene of the game can leave you entertained and fill this longing for new and more complex levels. Kaze Emanuar's incredible console compatible ROM hacks push the limits of what is possible with the Nintendo 64 and with the game per se. This game unintendedly grew to have one of the most amazing modding scenes in all of gaming, with thousands of creators making new levels, retextures and gameplay updates for the game. Somehow, anything is possible in this game. Avid gamers even managed to reverse engineer the entire source code of the game, making this one of the most well-understood video games ever.

Still, the vanilla game holds no boring missions and will print itself in your memories with some of its unforgettable moments. There are so many ways to play this, even with an unmodified game cartridge.

I strongly recommend playing this on original Nintendo 64 hardware. Playing this the authentic way with either an OEM controller or a Hori Mini Pad on a CRT television is one of the finest gaming experiences one can live. Still, Emulator (Mupen and Project 64 especially) and Wii VC stand up very well. Just have some respect for yourself and don't play on Wii U or Switch.

It is inexplicable how influent this game is in the world of gaming. All 3D platformers and a vast majority of third person 3D games owe their success to the developments of SM64 in movement schemes and camera controls.

Doesn't do anything new; It Takes Two ports pre-existing ideas from some of the best video games games in history to a cooperative context and massively succeeds in doing so. It indeed clearly takes significant inspiration from Nintendo games, especially Super Mario Odyssey's transformations and its aesthetics is sometimes comparable to 3D Zelda dungeons, sometimes to Pikmin, sometimes it plays like Mario Kart, sometimes it plays a bit like Metroid... it's extremely diverse in its playstyles and inspirations, yet surprisingly, it succeeds in everything it attempts to do. The beauty of its environments is jaw-dropping (especially for an Unreal Engine game), the gameplay (incl. 3D platforming movement, which isn't an easy thing to master) is smooth, and everything it tries works so well with co-op. My girlfriend and I felt engaged from the beginning to the end, and I especially fell under the game's charm in the latter half.

Its ultra-linear progression sometimes make the levels feel rather hollow, giving not much reason to explore new environments. Furthermore, its fast pacing and perpetually changing gameplay makes it feel a tad unfocused and elusive at times. Writing is also extremely cringe-worthy at times--although Dr. Hakim's incredible personality completely fixes that. I would have hoped for each section to be a little more fleshed out and to have more collect-o-thon elements in it.

Despite that, It Takes Two is an essential short game to play with somebody--whether it's your significant other, a good friend, an avid gamer, a non-gamer--it has something for everybody and I was pleasantly suprised by its quality. Never knew EA were capable of publishing an actually fun and innovating game.

Bizarre cartridge I picked up in a retro game store for $5. Surprisingly a very fine experience; glover mixes platforming, collect-o-thon and puzzle game into one very complete experience. The music, especially in the earlier levels, is very good, and the atmosphere is uncanny but charming. It feels like the controls could have used more thought and the level design more depth, as there are some very infuriating design choices here and it feels like the game is trolling you more than anything else sometimes, but that's kind of a part of the experience and it requires a lot of adaptation to get used to trying to move the ball around. However, while it is very infuriating at times, I think it's very much so worth playing for its uniqueness. Super Mario 64, Banjo-Kazooie, Super Monkey Ball and Zelda all mixed together in one big shit show melting pot. Unfortunate that the sequel was cancelled and that this company is defunct; this game could definitely use a reboot of some sort.

I'm a huge fan of platforming games, but I'm also a super artsy person. In this regard, Super Meat Boy only satisfied one of those factors: it's an incredible rage platformer with a difficulty that progresses well, but that unfortunately has an impenetrable atmosphere. The art style is very mundane and the music doesn't really always fit the mood, and that keeps me from really getting invested into sessions of the game. This being said, I only played through the main story so far, and I might keep playing this on the side to eventually get 100%, and maybe my opinion will change then.

3D World is a childhood favourite of mine, and I dipped my toes in speedrunning it when I was a teenager. However, I haven't played it in about half a decade due to having a bricked Wii U -- therefore, it feels good to finally get to play this port. This is a very solid and underappreciated 3D Mario game with excellent level design, good progression in difficulty, and a rather epic post-game (maybe the best in the entire Mario series?) which ends in the absolute hardest Mario in an official game.

This release is essentially the same game as on the Wii U, but I have some specific notes about this port:

- While the controls have been decently well ported, but it is still a game which was intrinsically built for the Wii U's gamepad, and in that regard, there is not a single controller that works as well for it. To complement the screen, they used the same pointer system that was used in the 3D All-Stars port of Super Mario Galaxy to emulate the original DS-style screen touching. It works fine, but it feels clunky and unnatural compared to how satisfying it felt to interact with the world in the original version.
- The mid-air roll--just about the only thing that was added in this port compared to Wii U--is a new move I have positive feelings for. It allows for some pretty cool trick-jumping and SMW-esque cheese. It got me out of some crazy situations and had me experimenting with the limits of movement.
- Another thing they added is Photo mode, which they seem to have almost directly ported from Super Mario Odyssey but I really could care less for it. This game does not have the same type of theatrical settings as Odyssey so the opportunity for memorable screenshots is very limited.
- Unfortunately, the only use for Stamps appears to be for use in the aforementionned Photo mode. It was more rewarding to get the stamps on Wii U in order to use them on Miiverse, but now there is really no reason to get them other than to unlock the final world.
- Finally, it goes without saying that 380 Stars/80 Stamps should more than ever be considered the de facto 100% completion of this game. The genuine 100% completion--which involves beating every level in the game at least five times--is an absolute load of horse crap. At least, on Wii U, you got rare stamps to use on Miiverse, but now that Miiverse isn't a thing, it is a pointless and excruciating endeavour (unless you're willing to spend numerous hours replaying the game 4 more times to get an extra star on your file).

I am satisfied with this port, and if you find a good deal for it 2nd hand, it might be worth playing if you are an OG 3DW player. I was lucky enough that I was lent this game, but I would still have not complained if I paid it full-price because it is a very fine rerelease considering the tools they had. I am also excited to finally play through Bowser's Fury!

There are so many good reasons why this game is controversial, and I can easily get behind both the lovers and haters of the game.

Donkey Kong 64 was supposed to be the technical masterpiece of the console, and in that regard, it certainly succeeds. Indeed, its large open spaces give a sense of freedom unlike a vast majority of other games on the N64. The DK Isles feel as immense and dense as Delfino Plaza in Super Mario Sunshine, a game from the next generation of consoles. In some regards, the size of the map and the amount of things to do in each corner you go to is reminiscent of the Zelda series, and especially in the woody areas of the game, I sometimes felt like I was playing an unintended sequel to Ocarina of Time.

The sheer size of the map is accompanied with pure beauty, too. It is an incredibly cinematic game by all means, from its hilarious cutscenes to its colourful levels. If anything, it's worth playing through the entire game 101% just to get to watch all the cutscenes, including the special ending cutscene you get after getting everything.

Its music is great, too. It has one of the most iconic theme songs in all of gaming history and the actual game's soundtrack has some beautiful moments, with Jungle Japes, DK Isles and Hideout Helm being personal favourites of mine. It makes me wish Grant Kirkhope had composed soundtracks for some non-Rareware games, as he is definitely up there with Koji Kondo.

The dialogue and character design is also phenomenal. The strong but insecure Chunky as well as the goofy but reliable Lanky are beautiful new characters that I hope get some more love in future DK games. The existing characters' personalities are amplified: DK is stupid but determined, Diddy thinks and moves quick, and Tiny is a very smart logical thinker that brings a bit of logic to the family. Not to mention Cranky Kong which is as much of a grinch as he has ever been, Funky Kong who is an absolute gun maniac, Candy's weirdly flirty dialogue and King K. Rool who is the perfect evil antagonist who will keep you on your toes for the entirety of the game. Everything is charming and wonderfully written.

The cinematic, musical and theatrical aspects of the game makes it one of the most entertaining games to watch someone else play. This is indeed why in the prime of its speedrunning scene, streamers such as Connor75 managed to be very successful and why its 101% category makes it into so many marathons, such as the Rareware 301% marathon and the 1545 relay race. Having been introduced to this game in that form of gameplay, it made me very excited to play it and made me have high hopes for it.

Unfortunately, my hopes were likely too high.
This game basically has four different 'types' of challenges: collectibles, platforming, minigames and fighting.

The collectibles here have been talked about to death. Most people complain about the sheer amount of collectibles there are, especially regular bananas. It is however not what bothers me; the real problem with the collectibles in DK64 is the fragmentation and the character barrels, which were one of Rare's worst design mistakes ever. In order to change your character, you need to enter a character barrel, and there are only a handful in each stage. For instance, in Fungi Forest, there is a tunnel that you must go through, but there are two doors preventing you from going through it. In order to open these doors, you must shoot tags with two different characters, one for each door. There is also a banana for a third character in the room that this tunnel leads to. I don't remember what characters exactly, but you get the point, and the problem is that the barrel is relatively far away from the tunnel, so you waste minutes going back and forth over and over again just to get through this tiny section. The collectibles being so deeply linked with each character (you can only collect the bananas, coins and golden bananas that are assigned to the very character you're playing), and needing certain characters to unlock parts of the level leads to so much backtracking that you'll be spending more time walking in places you already know instead of discovering new places. This makes the game's length feel artificial, annoying and disingenuous. If the collectibles were actually arranged in a way that prevented excessive backtracking, then I would have much less problems with it, but when you consider that most bananas don't require you to do anything or require you to play a bad minigame (I'll get back to this later), I find the same problems in here that I did in Super Mario Odyssey's excessive ground pound moons and repetitive minigames. Very little of the game feels like you're actually playing something exciting, since maybe 95% of all of it is just getting tedious collectibles. Even for somebody who loves Rareware-style collect-o-thons, there is just too much backtracking for it to be enjoyable.

The platforming sections feel very weird and slippery, especially with the bigger characters. Donkey moves too much with the slight touch of the joystick, Chunky just doesn't move well in platforming sections, Lanky is way too slippery to control well, and Diddy is just hard to control especially in narrow places (that one bridge inside the temple in Angry Aztec...damn it). At least, Tiny is has a decent control scheme that makes her preferable for all the platforming she has to do in the game, which is really not enough. The characters' shadows are hard to make out, which really messes up the depth perception of platforming sections. The weird controls are often credited to this being still an era where 3D platformers were new and devs didn't know exactly what to do yet, but come on, this came 3 years after SM64 and a year after Banjo-Kazooie. Both of those games have great controls and their platforming is tight and skill-based. DK64's platforming sections feel more luck-based than anything. Tedious.

The mini-games, especially the God-forsaken barrel games, have been talked about to death. They're some of the most broken, glitchy, tedious and repetitive things I've ever seen in gaming and made 101% feel like more of a chore than a game. Some of those mini-games you have to beat up to five times without any difference except maybe how fast the characters move. It is pure hell, and these sections were some of the most infuriating experiences I've had in gaming. Rarely have I screamed out of pure anger into a pillow because of a video game, but damn, Beaver Bother did that to me and many other gamers. Comes directly from Hell. Two video game testing companies are credited in this game, yet it feels like the game, especially those sections, were never play tested at all. Were they that short on time that they had to fill the game with these abominations?

Happily, the bosses in the game are creative and have a lot of character, which makes the fighting sections (except for the battle crowns which were an absolute waste of time) really enjoyable. Each boss got better than the last, and the final boss fight is the ultimate test of everything you have learned in your journey.

I must also stress that the very last level is some some of the most tense I have felt while playing a video game and it is truly an incredible experience (except for the weird Lanky shooting minigame, but whatever). The beginning and the ending of the game is bliss, the rest is tedious.

Is it worth playing Donkey Kong 64 nowadays? If you like great cutscenes, love mindlessly moving around collecting items, and care more about the aesthetics of a game than the gameplay, then it is likely the game for you. If not, just watch a 101% playthrough on YouTube and save yourself the stress. I'm glad I played it, but I doubt I will be revisiting.