A Hoffy Review:
Super Mario 64
Developer: Nintendo EAD
Publisher: Nintendo
Release Date:
Nintendo 64: USA: September 26, 1996, AUST: March 1, 1997
Virtual Console: USA: November 19, 2006, AUST: December 7, 2006
Genre: Platform
Rating: E (ESRB), G (OFLC)
Platform: Nintendo 64, Virtual Console
Players: 1Hoffy reviewed the Nintendo 64 version of Super Mario 64.
Call me old fashioned, or just plain old, but there's something about the games of the past that just seem to tickle a certain something in this "aged" gamer. If you were introduced to gaming at a young age, you will, like me, have a game that shines vibrantly in your memory. There was something about taking control of the characters on the screen that enticed the young imagination, and conjured excitement with the thought of exploring a real, living, breathing, 3-D world as if you were really there. As such, I was lucky to play Super Mario 64 at the age that I did. Given, there are more primitive games out there which I could have played and in turn received similar feelings of adventure, but none are quite so magical as Super Mario 64. Something about going to your brother's friend's house at the age of six and seeing a semi-familiar plumber dressed in red explore an uninhabited castle, and approach the ominous final frontier of an evil demon turtle, only to be halted by an endless flight of stairs... I'm possibly getting ahead of myself here. I was recently lucky enough to find the time to play and finish this masterpiece for, I think, the fifth time. Join me on my trip down nostalgia lane, will you?
Oh what have they done to you, Bowser?!Gameplay: 10.0The key thing to understand about playing Super Mario 64 in 2009 is that - though it holds up extremely well - everything the game did in the '90s has been tried, tested, examined and refined by future developers. One need only look to Nintendo's 2007 Wii release
Super Mario Galaxy, and it's clear that the gameplay mechanics of the N64 game have been much improved on. Hell, even Rare's 1998
Banjo-Kazooie perfected a lot of the things Mario 64 did, not to mention every other notable third-person adventure that has been released since the plumber's debut into 3-D. And while it's important to remember that it was Mario 64 that lay the foundation for all console platformers and third-person action/adventure games to come, it's perhaps more important to appreciate exactly where Mario 64 came from, how well the project requirements were realised, and how well the game stands up today. Friggin' brilliantly.
"Super Mario 64 is a game that meets the player's expectations, and does what they expect it to do, while surprising the player all the same, and rewarding them on their intuitiveness and ingenuity."Super Mario 64 was released as a launch game for the Nintendo 64, and has since been ported - to be downloaded - to the Wii's Virtual Console for 1,000 Wii Points. The game was also remade as a launch game for the Nintendo DS in 2004, complete with extra content. Shigeru Miyamoto, the game's director and all-round game-designing legend, had this vision of translating the Mushroom Kingdom into 3-D, and as such, it can be concluded that in many ways Super Mario 64 was sort of the developer's playground; a test stage for Nintendo, as they worked through the challenge of designing their first third-person 3-D adventure game.
Pictured: The coolest thing ever: The Metal Cap.Luckily, Miyamoto-san is a smart man, and his outstanding directing and vigilant attention to the player's experience was enough to grant the game with exceptional control. Control; that's where Super Mario 64 excels. Not just in the presence of all kinds of jumps - standard jumps, double jumps, triple jumps, side flips, back flips, wall jumps, long jumps; to name them all - not just in the vast array of melee attacks, swimming styles (though somewhat clumsy by today's standards) and other basic actions, but in the clear-cut design of making a game that meets the player's expectations, and
does what they
expect it to do, while surprising the player all the same, and rewarding them on their intuitiveness and ingenuity. If Mario turns around a sharp corner, the camera should bloody-well follow him. Sure, there are C-buttons there to control the camera, but why leave that to the gamer? Genius, Miyamoto-san, genius! Mario 64 is about including a wealth of enemies, each with their own methods of attack, behaviours and weak-points, that show up regularly to keep the game fresh. It's about perfecting Mario's physics, while still leaving in some room for intentional discrepancy - Mario slips and slides around at the conclusion of a sprint, but only a little bit, as he's always done. Players learn to become Mario, learn to handle his jumps, learn about his world, learn to take down foes, learn to traverse tricky platforms, learn to fly and swim under conditions (partly due to the somewhat-clumsy implementation) and learn to expect the unexpected in the Mushroom Kingdom. "Oh, a cannon, I bet if I just jumped in and aimed...", "Maybe if I could grab and hold onto that mesh on the ceiling, I could get past the quicksand...", "Well I need to walk on the sea floor, so I'll just put on this metal cap and make myself heavy...", "I'll just stomp on this flower enemy, oh wait, now I'm whirling through the air! Maybe I could use that to..." The game does what you expect it to do, while still bringing the surprises. Super Mario 64 isn't the perfect game, but it affirms everything a perfect game should be.
"These worlds are so fantastic, and Nintendo knows it."Aside from exquisite control, Super Mario 64 also boasts amazing level design... and it's a good thing too. This is a 3-D platform game after all, so true to the genre, the game forces players to jump from platform to platform in 3-D, which was an entirely new thing in 1996. Luckily, the game eases the player into the art of 3-D platforming, as the first world features a vast open battlefield with a tall mountain to climb, then slowly moves onto some other worlds featuring tall towers and narrow walkways over vast chasms, only to wrap up the game on what is perhaps one of the most delicately-and-dangerously-designed worlds in all platform games, Rainbow Ride. These worlds are so fantastic, and Nintendo knows it - they even give you the opportunity to view the entire world, flying from up above, as you don the Wing Cap, one of three power-ups in the game.
Exploding pyramids?! This game has everything!Back to platforming though, there's a lot of it, as Nintendo revolutionises the platform genre into a non-linear fashion, where the player accesses a growing selection of worlds from a central hub world, and then selects a wealth of missions within that world. Overall, there are 15 enormous stages to explore, each different in theme, and across them, 120 stars to collect. And they're not all easy either, so expect a decently lengthy playthrough with an enormous variation in content.
It's a perfect ten in this category, hands down.
"It's a testament to Nintendo's attention to the player's experience."Graphics: 8.5It takes a number of years for developers to learn their way around the hardware for these consoles, and to get the most out of the development kit. As such, Super Mario 64's graphics, when compared to say,
Conker's Bad Fur Day,
Perfect Dark,
Rayman 2 and
Majora's Mask... well, there's no comparison. Super Mario 64 was an N64 launch game, and as such the textures are particularly bland and low-resolution, the real-time shadows are simple, particle effects are plain, draw distances are poor (Tick Tock Clock) and some models (particularly Bowser's) are just retarded. But, working within their understanding of the new system, it's clear the graphic artists excelled in their ability to bring a particular taste and feel to each world. The heat is felt in Shifting Sands Land with vast, sandy landscapes and whirling whirlwinds, Dire Dire Docks is brought to life with its deep oceanic pools featuring various marine life moving about, and other worlds like Bob-omb Battlefield, Whomp's Fortress and Tall, Tall Mountain feel like they're the classic levels of
Super Mario Bros. 3 and
Super Mario World, rendered in glorious 3-D. Though these worlds possess distinct technical limitations, there's no doubt that they also possess their own distinct flavour, even today, and for that, the graphics of Super Mario 64 hold their own.
The Penguin, a significant character... for some reason.Sound: 9.0Sound was another obvious step-up from the Super Nintendo when the Nintendo 64 was released. As a launch game, Super Mario 64 showcased the "new sound" of gaming with an array of catchy MIDI tracks that played on each world. Some songs aren't quite as memorable as others, at least compared to older Mario games, though there's no doubt that they, like the visuals, brings each world to life. This is namely accredited to composer Koji Kondo's idea of introducing layers to the background music as the player moves throughout the game. Diving down to the sunken ship in Jolly Roger's Bay will introduce a set of orchestral strings (in MIDI of course) to emphasise the wonder and marvel of the exploration and discovery. The sound changes dynamically like this across the entire game; a testament to Nintendo's attention to the player's experience. Sounds effects are also decent, and it'd all be well and good if Nintendo hadn't repeated the same background music on multiple worlds. Otherwise, the tunes are still unforgettably superb and still hold up fantastically even in 2009.
"It's a marvel that Super Mario 64 still plays fantastically in 2009."Story: 5.0Recognisable hero Mario Mario turns up at Castle Toadstool one day, after receiving a letter from Princess Peach detailing that she has baked a cake for him. Not even concerned as to whether or not the cake is a lie, Mario rocks up at the castle only to be informed by a ghostly Toad that all of the castle's inhabitants have been locked up in the walls by Bowser's minions, and it's Mario duty to travel into the worlds in the walls via paintings and collect the power stars to bring back control of the castle from King Bowser. Like all Mario games, this plot is more than basic, provides little depth and character development, and progresses sluggishly, if at all. Still, Mario 64's plot is basic enough to instruct the kiddies on what they should be doing, and for the story's ability to aid the gameplay in that sense, it earns a nice, round five. Oh and by the way, and sorry for spoilers, but the cake totally isn't a lie.
oshi---Overall: 9.7
Amazing control, brilliant level design, tonnes of missions, great platforming puzzles, great tunes, themed worlds, Metal Cap.
Swimming and flying are clumsy, camera sometimes very dodgey.It's a marvel that Super Mario 64 was developed and released at the time that it was. For a developer working on their first real 3-D game on one of the first real 3-D home consoles in history, it's a marvel that Super Mario 64 still plays fantastically in 2009. But even more significant than this milestone, is that it is truly amazing that Super Mario 64 can touch the imagination of a child, inspiring them to value the art of exploration. This reviewer certainly forgives this game for infiltrating his mind and influencing his dreams in weird and wonderful ways, because there's no doubt that Mario 64 is one of the greatest adventure games ever released. It'll be impossible to forget fighting against that strong wind as I went to challenge Bowser for the last time, it'll be impossible to forget spending hours and hours on Tick Tock Clock trying to collect one hundred coins, and it will be impossible to forget climbing the hill to approach Castle Toadstool for the first time to open those grand doors - a memory I think will never leave any of us. An incredible game. Here we go, indeed, it'sa you, Mario.
