Super Mario 64 (Review)

Super Mario 64
Platform: Nintendo 64
Released June 23, 1996 (JP) September 29, 1996 (US)
Directed by Shigeru Miyamoto
Developed by Nintendo
Included with Switch Online Expansion Pack Subscription
Listing at Mario Wiki

Mario, the fearless hero to end all video game heroes, sucker punches sleeping enemies, and it’s seriously the most hilarious thing. The piranha plant death animation is probably the best in the entire Mario franchise. “WHY?!”

As a kid, I got a Nintendo 64 for my 9th birthday in July, 1998, and that’s when video games became my obsession. Well, technically basketball was already my obsession, but I didn’t want to play basketball at all. I just wanted to watch extremely tall people play the sport at a high level. It sure wasn’t because “my” team, the Golden State Warriors, was hot at the time. We were terrible back then, but that worked out for me because it made me a fan of the sport itself first and foremost. I’ve never understood why basketball clicked with me the way it did, but for whatever reason, I was totally hooked. I guess the video game obsession is equally inexplicable. I’d previously gotten the original PlayStation with Crash Bandicoot for Christmas in 1996, and, you know, I enjoyed it fine. Played Crash a lot, at least when the PlayStation was new in my house. Then it sort of drifted to the background, like most of my other would-be interests, and I had so many of those. Card collecting. Legos and K-nex. Then my parents took me shopping before my birthday and they had a Nintendo 64 kiosk, and for whatever reason, gaming finally clicked. This despite the awkward N64 controller, doubly awkward for a soon-to-be 9 year old with small hands. But, something about the analog stick (once I figured out how to hold the controller) and the fully 3D environment just GOT me this time. This wasn’t Crash Bandicoot, which really only gave the illusion of being 3D. The game that Toys R’ Us had in the kiosk was like a doorway into another world. But, that game wasn’t Mario 64. It was Banjo-Kazooie.

I’ll get to this eventually.

Fast forward to around mid/late October-early November of 1998, and I had gotten every single Jiggy (puzzle piece), music note, and even Mumbo token. I had squeezed Banjo-Kazooie for everything it had to offer, and I didn’t feel accomplished at all. I guess I was convinced that once I finished 100% of the game, it would just load more content or something. It didn’t, and I was heartbroken. It wouldn’t be inaccurate to say I was practically in mourning. How could there be nothing left? THIS WAS A WHOLE NEW WORLD! WHERE’S THE NEW HORIZONS TO PURSUE?! I was sad to the point of being listless. It freaked my parents the f*ck out, because I wasn’t that type of kid, so they took me to the mall to get a new game, thinking, no joke, “maybe it’s got a sequel!” when it had just come out a few months ago. Hey, they were new to this phase of my life too! Well, the guy at Gamestop (or maybe it was Software Etc. or perhaps Electronics Boutique back then) asked if I had Super Mario 64. I didn’t. The only other game they got me on my birthday was Mario Kart 64, which I think had spent maybe an hour in my N64 compared to the hundreds of hours I spent with Banjo, which basically taught me how to play games. I swear to God, the clerk said something to the effect of “well, if she liked Banjo-Kazooie, she’ll LOVE Super Mario 64! It’s the same type of game, but it’s way better than Banjo!” Boy, was he wrong.

I distinctly remember thinking the first level was so empty-feeling and boring.

For whatever reason, Mario 64 didn’t “do it” for me. I was just really bored with it. It felt smaller. Emptier. Less alive. The stars weren’t as satisfying to get as the Jiggys had been, and there were more Jiggys than Stars. The only thing that the clerk wasn’t wrong about was Mario 64 being the same type of game as Banjo. You know how I’m always talking about shared DNA? Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie could be siblings, and that’s made me wonder for a long time if my opinions of the two games would have been different if it had been Mario 64 that I played first and not Banjo. It’s not inconceivable that, had I been a little older when the Nintendo 64 came out, it would have been it and not Banjo-Kazooie that I played on a kiosk and told my parents “this is what I want for my birthday.” Or, maybe if I had played the Nintendo 64 kiosk and not the PlayStation kiosk that was running Crash, I would have asked for that for Christmas of 1996. I’ve thought about that a LOT over the years. They were right next to each-other, but I didn’t even touch the N64 kiosk. I think the Nintendo 64 controller intimidated me. It looked so big, unwieldy and complicated. Whatever was the reason, Banjo hooked me and Mario 64 bored me. Had Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time not been the next game I got after Mario 64, I might not be here today. It was Ocarina that let me (and my parents) know that Banjo wasn’t a fluke, because it utterly hooked me in the same way Banjo did, and gaming was here to stay.

Anyone else throw the baby off the ledge during the next star? Just me?

In terms of how close the two games are, it’s stunning to me that Banjo-Kazooie doesn’t use Mario 64’s engine. Hell, as far as I can figure, it didn’t use a single solitary line of code from Mario 64. That’s insane, because they’re really close in so many ways. Movement. Jumping. Level design mentality. The look. The silliness of it all. The camera. You’d swear they were made by the same people. Something I could NEVER have appreciated as a 9 year old newly obsessed with games. Mario 64 is the greatest prototype in gaming history. And it really is kind of a prototype. It had a fraction of a fraction of the content Miyamoto wanted. Now granted, that’s true of basically every game he’s ever done (he wanted Mario to ride a flying dinosaur in the original Super Mario Bros.) but the scale of what had to be cut from Mario 64 is kind of mind boggling. Oh, don’t worry about Nintendo restoring the cut puzzles. You’ve probably already played them, since a lot of the puzzles and concepts that were cut from Mario 64 were moved over to the game that was developed side-by-side with it: Ocarina of Time! Mario 64 was the prototype that led to that too. The ultimate proof of concept for what a 3D video game can be. Where every possible lesson was learned. And it feels like a prototype too, especially with its most notorious shortcoming: the camera.

If I could have kept the camera like this for everything, I honestly think I could finish with 100+ stars in a couple hours.

Most of my play session this week was spent fighting the camera. The N64 lacking a second analog stick and instead having four “C” buttons came with a hefty cost to gameplay. Buttons just aren’t that great at operating a camera. I’d say that, 75% of my time, I was using an angle that I settled for because it was the best of several terrible options. Every time that I heard that “nu uh” noise when the camera couldn’t be moved any more, I wanted to f*cking scream. Hell, just getting the damn camera to sit still so I could time when to enter Tick Tock Clock was a struggle. It kept wanting to slowly pan over so I couldn’t see the minute hand. And then there’s the instances where I barely landed on the edge of a platform and it was like Mario couldn’t decide if he stuck the landing or was still falling, and the camera started to have a seizure. Or all the times where I just started sliding because the tiniest amount of contact with any slope caused Mario to slip, so I tried to move the camera around to get a better sense of depth and I couldn’t because there wasn’t enough room. Mario 64 often feels like a game that’s barely working, and in many ways, that’s actually the case. Remember, it only came out when it did because Nintendo’s president told Miyamoto and his team the game was good enough and they needed it NOW for the launch.

When I saw this camera angle, and how far back this specific segment is shot from, I nearly fainted. Who knew this game could be so cinematic?

But, now that I’m 35 instead of 9 and no longer hoping for a Banjo-Kazooie expansion pack, I can kind of see Mario 64 for the masterpiece that it is. Well, at least as far as proof of concept templates go. Hell, on those terms, Mario 64 might actually be Tetris-levels of formulaic perfection. Everything I loved about Banjo-Kazooie is here. A wide variety of levels and ambitious set-pieces. The sense of exploration and discovery. Moments of triumph, and high anxiety. Even a sense of vertigo so immersive that you can practically feel the wind on your skin. It’s not just Banjo-Kazooie, either. Every 3D platformer or adventure game built off the same basic formula that Mario 64 created. When I started replaying it, I expected to feel THAT. The prototype element. What stunned me is how much of it held-up. The sense of exhilaration whenever I grabbed a star, or sense of accomplishment when I nabbed the sixth and final “stage” star? I didn’t expect that to linger, but it did right up until I nabbed star #106, which was the final star on Rainbow Ride and the last of the ninety stage stars I needed. I even considered whether I wanted to get all 100 coin stars, but then I remembered that I didn’t love every stage and the thought of having to play them until I nabbed enough coins, even with save states at my disposal, sounded boring.

Ahem.

Like the swimming stages? I didn’t even have a little bit of fun. The swimming controls are really bad, and the sense of depth, distance, and angles were all skewed. Easily the hardest stars for me to get in this play session were any of the ones that required me to touch the treasure chests underwater in the correct order. Over a quarter-century of gaming and I still couldn’t get myself to touch the front of a treasure chest underwater without drowning. Stuff I struggled with as a kid were mostly non-issues for me today, but not the swimming aspects. I was so relieved when I realized I wouldn’t need to get in the water again. On the other hand, the snow levels weren’t as dull as I remembered. I’m surprised there were two of them, but I didn’t mind them so much, mostly because they tended to have some pretty decent stars in them. Like this one:

This snowman blows.

I literally let out a cheer when I somehow screwed up what I was trying to do (land on the penguin’s head, which is why it’s there) and overshot my target by a country mile only to realize my f*ck up had actually worked out because I was past the part where you get blown off the platform. The ice levels provided moments like that a lot, and I hate ice stages in games. Mario 64 has two decent ones. That punches its ticket to Cooperstown by itself, as far as I’m concerned, but it shouldn’t surprise me. Actually, when it was all said and done, I felt most of the stages did hold up. That’s why it pains me to stand by my belief that Bob-Omb Battlefield is a boring opening stage and possibly to blame for Mario 64 letting me down as a kid. It’s one that doesn’t feel like it’s as optimized for education as, say, level 1 – 1 in Super Mario Bros. The battle with King Bomb, where you just pick him up and throw him? Not so thrilling. The foot race with the Koopa? Pretty dull. It takes too long to unlock the flying hat. They should have pulled that out early, like the raccoon stuff in Mario 3, which happens right at the start of stage 1 – 1. I get that it was the first 3D Mario and they were afraid of throwing too much at players early. They should have had more faith than that.

I remember really struggling with the flying aspect as a kid, but at some point during this play session, it just started to make sense to me and I was able to hit everything I aimed for. I even got the eight red coins out of the stage with the flying cap switch. I know for certain I never got that star as a kid. By the way, I finished with 108. I got this one when I needed another picture of Mario flying.

The first level also doesn’t make the best use of real estate, but that’s true of most of the levels. I was surprised at how many stages have a lot of space that is so unessential towards any of the goals. There’s a level called Tall, Tall Mountain where nearly every star on it felt kinda samey. I remember thinking “you built this big ass mountain and this is the best you can do with it?” The same for Tick Tock Clock (I was kind of surprised by how small that stage felt), and Jolly Roger Bay. Far too many stars boiled down to “do the thing you just did, only go slightly further.” This isn’t Mario Odyssey, where there’s so many Power Moons that you’re practically picking them out of your ear with a cotton swab. There’s only six per stage (seven if you count the 100 coin challenges) plus one on the DS (which relies on three new characters with different abilities to freshen up the experience). Yet, I was constantly walking away thinking “why didn’t they do more with this area?”

They also didn’t really incentivize long jumps, but the most fun I had by far was from trying to circumvent the level design by going for long-shot leaps of faith. I fully admit that I wouldn’t have been inclined to do that if not for the fact that the emulator uses Save States. A lot of Mario 64 boils down to climbing higher and higher, and sometimes it feels like busy work. I think emulation makes the game better, because I would NOT have played it the way I did otherwise.

It’s like they couldn’t figure out how to wring enough challenge out of the levels they built, but they were happy with one specific segment, so they just put more stars around it. That’s why getting a star sends you back to the hub world. That really hard part that took you ten lives to get past? Now you get to do that again! That aspect is kind of the pits, but it also doesn’t feel like there’s much room to change the game. Mario 64 DS had to introduce new characters to do that. So, as fun as the levels can be, they’re also far too limited. I wouldn’t be shocked if Nintendo remakes this eventually, or even just remasters the Nintendo DS version. But I don’t want a remake of Mario 64. Even with lots of dead space in the levels, I still walked away with the impression they got everything they could out of what they built. Sure, they can add more stuff. Mario 64 DS did that, but it’s still just sort of repainting a glorified prototype, right? Gaming has come far, and it came far BECAUSE of Mario 64. Let it be.

This was really the only boss fight I enjoyed in the entire game, and honestly, I don’t remember fighting this boss as a kid. I hated the desert stage back then, so maybe I never got this far. And then there were the Bowser fights, all of which felt the same and none of which I enjoyed at all. I thought it was really lame that you fight him the same basic way you fight the first boss: running around him in circles until you can grab him from behind. Actually, yeah, I sort of think I hated them. They were just parts of the game I had to get out of the way to do the enjoyable stuff. BUT, all of the Bowser stages were pretty strong so I’ll let it slide.

But, almost three decades later, the positives do outweigh the negatives. It would have been so easy for them to just have stages with different themes and be done with it. But details like having it matter how high or low you jump into the painting for Wet-Dry World, or what time you enter the clock in Tick Tock Clock? You wouldn’t expect that from a first-of-its-kind experience. That’s like the type of game design that you come up with for the sequels, but here it is, in a pioneering game. This isn’t just a 3D space to run and jump around in. This is a fantasy universe with mysteries and secrets for you to uncover. The graphics might look pretty silly, and maybe even a little grotesque today, but then there’s the occasional surface texture or enemy design where I stop and think “jeez, that kinda holds up.” The humor mostly lands. The flying cap legitimately does a better job of making you feel like Superman than the actual Nintendo 64 Superman game does. Mario 64 is full of moments so breathtaking they make you forget how experimental this was.

Like this. I mean, that doesn’t look too bad to me. It also helps that the N64 emulator in the Switch Online has improved the performance and smoothed out some of the textures.

I walked away sensing that nothing was phoned-in here. They never settled for “eh, it works and it controls well enough.” They really did the absolute best they could with the tech they were given and, when they found places to go the extra mile, they probably did. From the baby penguin’s mother scowling at you if you pick up her baby after you rescued it to the lullaby that starts to play as you tip-toe next to the piranha plants, this is actually pretty layered. Could they have done more? Sure.. if this hadn’t been a launch title. Why do you think Mario games no longer come out the day a new Nintendo device does? If Miyamoto had gotten his way, they might have delayed the Nintendo 64 another year. That’s the other thing I kept shaking my head in disbelief about. THIS is the game that we got when he ran out of time? THIS? This is pretty damn refined. I played a lot of BAD Nintendo 64 games as a kid, never mind the test of time. I just made a Superman 64 joke, but *I HAD* Superman 64. It was bad, people. Space Station Silicon Valley was bad. Quest 64 was bad. Earthworm Jim 3D was bad. But this? Super Mario 64? This is a damn good video game even today in 2025.

Moments like this are getting trickier for me to do, but man, that sense of vertigo in gaming. I crave it.

God, I can’t imagine what playing this must have been like for kids who grew up with an Atari or NES. It must have been mind-blowing. For that generation, I imagine they felt the way I felt playing Banjo-Kazooie. Video games make a promise to players: a temporary journey into a world different from the one you live in, where you’re the hero and what you do matters. We know it’s make believe, but if the game is made well enough, it can bring us into that world. The controller disappears in your hand and you are that hero until the credits roll. You don’t need a fancy headset for it, either. There’s no formula for assuring the game keeps the promise, but you know it when you feel it. Mario 64 doesn’t hold-up quite well enough three decades later that the whole game is like that. It never stood a chance at that. But the fact that it still can still make good on the promise at times is maybe the most remarkable achievement in Miyamoto’s career, and Nintendo’s entire catalog. Even when the graphical limitations or the camera or the spotty collision detection do something that pulls you out of the experience, Mario 64, a gloried set of blueprints, can STILL, nearly three decades later, pull you right back in. Okay, it’s a prototype, but it’s also THE standard bearer of gaming’s promise finally being fulfilled in three dimensions.
Verdict: YES!

Do you think the little Mario decoration had to go on an adventure to save the Peach decoration? This is the sh*t that keeps me up at night.