20 Years Later, Does Super Mario 64 Hold Up?

[AndreGX]

Making the argument that a 20 year old hasn't aged well is reasonable, BUT...

"Not very good to begin with."

How do the reviews not instantly refute this? Mario 64 was genre-defining, and established conventions still being used today. You can't argue something was never good by looking through a lens crafted 20 years later (and is largely shaped by the very games 64 inspired)

 

[Salty Rice]

Still love it to this day. Holds up pretty well.

The camera can be iffy often but besides that its still a great game.

 

[Truner]

Super Mario 64 used to be my favorite game of all time. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild changed that just recently, but I'll never look at Super Mario 64 as a game that isn't good. It was the first and last game to have such a versatile Mario in it. The physics, the weight, the moves coupled with the then-massive worlds made for an excellent playground that didn't even need objectives. A lot of times I'd just turn the game on to play around with it. Not one Mario game after it managed to pull that off and besides that, they all resorted to in-game gimmicks. The one true gimmick of Super Mario 64 was the analog stick on the controller and it was masterfully built around it.

Of course when I first played it, I hated it, finding it way too hard for some reason (and I have no idea why I was that retarded). It was only in the past ten years that I found appreciation for the game. As much as I want to remember the fantastic childhood memories and put on the nostalgia goggles, I don't have that luxury.

 

[Fishsnot]

Using the N64 pad this was almost platforming perfection.
Such a great game and another interesting tidbit: did you know that Mario 64 is Gabe Newell's favorite game of all time?

 

[Kage]

I don't want to speak bad about it because this game was magical like nothing else...

But no it hasn't aged as well as something like OOT.

Some of the stars are really simple and only require a small task to obtain. Compare that with how long the courses could get in Galaxy or 3D World. For example on the first world, 6th star I believe all you have to do is run over to chain chomp and ground pound a few times on his stump to get a star. Second world, final star again all you need to do is get in a cannon near the start and shoot to an area right above it. Very simple tasks which wouldn't cut it today. Some of the star descriptions could be quite obtuse too.

Obviously this was new ground at the time so it's understandable. They seem simple now but exploring these huge worlds in 3D for the first time as a child it never felt like they were small tasks.

 

[jb1234]

Absolutely. As practically everyone else has pointed, only the camera significantly dates the game.

 

[Biggersmaller]

With a total lack of context for what a 3D platform could entail in 1996, I was initially blown away...then gradually disappointed as I realized Mario 64 wasn't 8 worlds with tons of unique stages filling each one.

So no, today I don't I celebrate backtracking through small levels - though I still have great nostalgia for the "HOLY FUCK" feeling I had when I first saw it at Target.

 

[NuclearCake]

Yes. The game has a terrible camera and some worlds are kind of bad. But it is still the best 3D platformer of that generation simply due to how fun it is to control Mario and the freedom that the game gives you. Honestly when it launched there was nothing like it and in that brief time period it was unquestionably the best game ever made.

 

[THErest]

I don't want to speak bad about it because this game was magical like nothing else...

But no it hasn't aged as well as something like OOT.

Some of the stars are really simple and only require a small task to obtain. Compare that with how long the courses could get in Galaxy or 3D World. For example on the first world, 6th star I believe all you have to do is run over to chain chomp and ground pound a few times on his stump to get a star. Second world, final star again all you need to do is get in a cannon near the start and shoot to an area right above it. Very simple tasks which wouldn't cut it today. Some of the star descriptions could be quite obtuse too.

Obviously this was new ground at the time so it's understandable. They seem simple now but exploring these huge worlds in 3D for the first time as a child it never felt like they were small tasks.

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Your examples are from literally the first level. Of course the tasks are simple. There's a difficulty and learning curve, thankfully, since it's the first game of its kind.

 

[Deleted member 3815]

As someone who has zero nostalgia for the game I can safely say...yes it does as the mechanic is solid, Mario movement is fun to control and collecting Stars isn't a chore, getting 100 coins on Tick tock clock was annoying.

The only thing that holds the game back is the camera being wonky.

 

[Slappy White]

Gameplay still feels ok. The camera stinks. And it looks pretty rough but it holds up better than a lot of early 3d games. It's funny to me how Mario 64 looks way better in how I remember it from 20 years ago than Odyssey does to me now.

 

[MrSaturn99]

There are certainly some rudimentary aspects to it, but the controls alone make it a blast even today. Even after Odyssey it remains the most open Mario.

 

[HardTimesFamilyPride]

The camera is shit. Some of the graphics are ugly. The difficulty curve can be all over the place. Some worlds are flatout not fun. A lot of the stars are a grind. It's repetitive.

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Yeah, agreed with this. I replayed it recently with the intent of getting 100% and was so ready to be done with it by the 64th (lol) star. Still has its great moments though and the controls are solid.

All in all, for me it's a game whose cultural impact will always affect people's opinion of it.

 

[Fuchsia]

Camera is a problem. Gameplay holds up big time though. I go back and play it about once a year. The sheer fluidity of mario's potential movement in that game is insane. When you get it down, it's ridiculously fun.

 

[Ukyo Of Atmos]

Without question. Yes. Ahead of it's time.

 

[Solobbos]

I played it for the first time on 2012, and the controls & camera made me quit after twenty something stars. IMHO the game doesn't hold up.

 

[qaopjlll]

Mario 64 was such a disappointment for me from the outset. After playing Crash Bandicoot, I was expecting a similar type of experience full of tricky jumps through challenging obstacle courses. Instead, I got a game where the terrain was a breeze to negotiate, enemies posed no danger whatsoever, and level hazards were non-existent (although I suppose you could consider the atrocious camera a hazard). It turned what was a hardcore platforming series in 2D into something more akin to an adventure game, and a mediocre one at that.

 

[Kage]

Your examples are from literally the first level. Of course the tasks are simple. There's a difficulty and learning curve, thankfully, since it's the first game of its kind.

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True, but it carries on later into the game. For example shifting sand land, simply flying around a small area and ground pounding 4 pillars.

There was some challenge to the game and tick tock clock from what I remember really put platforming skills to the test but that doesn't change the fact that a number of levels were small and had some simple objectives by todays standards which is what I'm saying stops it from fully holding up to the test of time. Even the more basic stuff in later Mario games took longer to reach/complete.

 

[Akela]

As someone who never played it when it first came out - to an extent.

Compared to more recent Mario games, Mario has some quite slippy controls with the momentum sometimes acting a bit wierd. It's quite easy to fall off platforms if you're not careful.

As people have mentioned, the camera can sometimes be a bit awkward - it's not a free moving camera in the way a modern twin stick third person game is, and the game can sometimes be a bit random when it allows you to control the camera or not.

But one of the biggest issues with the game is the environment - there's areas (like outside the castle) where it sill holds up reasonably well, but in many other areas the environment is so primitive looking it looks like Mario is jumping around a empty CG void rather then the Mushroom Kingdom. I would go so far as to say that graphically it has probably aged the most out of all the major 3D games released in the mid-late 90's.

 

[lingpanda]

I'll letcha know when the inevitable HD remake happens for Switch ;)

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Don't tease me like this.

 

[Eszik]

I would go so far as to say that graphically it has probably aged the most out of all the major 3D games released in the mid-late 90's.

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I'd say any PSX game that tried to look "realistic" has aged graphically much worse than Mario 64. Tomb Raider looks awful today, even MGS1 doesn't look great at all. Hell, OoT's textures look really bad today. Mario 64 uses much less textures than other games of that era and it helped him age well IMO.

 

[Rebel-TT]

***This thread is posted on behalf of Rebel-TT, via the Adopt-a-User Thread***

Let me preface this by stating that I've yet to even touch Mario Odyssey and it is one of my most anticipated games of perhaps the past decade.

Here goes: After seeing many lists of the best Mario games of all-time featuring Super Mario 64 at the top, or very near to the top, I simply cannot understand: I'm of the opinion that Super Mario 64 has aged terribly, and perhaps was not very good to begin with.

While the controls are outstanding and navigating the world is undeniably fun, and I grant you that the game was a landmark title that demonstrated the potential of 3d gaming and the analogue stick like no game before it, I believe the core game design failed for one reason, repetition.

Prior to Mario 64, collection in Mario games was optional, and every level, even if themed to fit a world, was different from the one before it.

In Super Mario 64 however, completion was the name of the game. I believe the design to be based on hardware constraints: how can a designer, using the limited memory available and the few brilliantly laid out levels give the player more to do? The answer was not what I expected or wanted. Many levels required retreading of the EXACT same pathways with little or no variety to get to the same endpoint. And collecting 100 coins for a star is the busiest of work.

Two of the more egregious examples include: navigation to King Bob-omb in the first world, and navigation to the flag for the footrace with Koopa the Quick; and the navigation to the underwater cavern at least three times for different stars in the Hazy Maze Cave.

Super Mario Sunshine evolved the concept as far as it could go - to my dismay - and I for one couldn't believe how great Galaxy was after these two preceding games because of the endless variety it offered, with few worlds featuring retreading in the vein of Super Mario 64 (mainly the beach levels in Galaxy 1).

Now Odyssey is upon us and I'm somewhat dreading a return to the Super Mario 64 formula, even though I trust these developers with my life and enjoyed the miniature puzzles the Koroks presented in Breath of the Wild.

For me, Mario variety is the spice of platforming life. And Odyssey seems to have it in spades based on the limited bits I've seen.

TL;DR/Summary: Question then is, playing Super Mario 64 today, do you think it has aged well, and freeing yourself of the burden of nostalgia, was it ever really, TRULY a great game? If anyone here has played it for the very first time, what's your opinion? How do you think it should stack up to the majestic Galaxy games, or even the amaze-balls 3D World, today? Was it simply too repetitive for its own good?

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Thanks so much!

 

[Dernus]

Personally I don't think it has aged well, I played and beat it when it came out originally and went back to it a year or two ago and didn't end up finishing it.

 

[Rebel-TT]

Holy shit, where have the past 20 years gone?

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I'm asking myself this too!

 

[samthebreadman]

Oh my god absolutely. Not even blind-sighted by my rose-tinted glasses. To me what makes Super Mario 64 so memorable and fun up to this very day is how darn responsive the controls are and the sheer number of moves Mario can do with just a few button presses. Odyssey somewhat rivals that though with the punch and dive being notable omissions.

 

[Zellia]

It has been surpassed (by Galaxy 1+2) and parts of it are a bit wonky nowadays, but 64 is still a terrific game and a joy to play even today. Yes, it has mostly held up very well.

 

[Khanimus]

My girlfriend and I popped it in last week. It's aged worse than I last remembered. The camera and controls in that sunken ship level are just awful. That said, it's still better than Sunshine. Haven't started Odyssey yet, but Mario Galaxy 2 and Mario 3D World are still the best 3D games they've made.

 

[JLP101]

Replayed it a few years ago, easily one of the best 3d platformers ever made. Some parts of aged but on the whole, its still an amazing game.

 

[Lost]

Of course it holds up. The moveset and it's fluidity plays a large roll in that.

 

[Rebel-TT]

Making the argument that a 20 year old hasn't aged well is reasonable, BUT...

"Not very good to begin with."

How do the reviews not instantly refute this? Mario 64 was genre-defining, and established conventions still being used today. You can't argue something was never good by looking through a lens crafted 20 years later (and is largely shaped by the very games 64 inspired)

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I actually didn't enjoy it so much at launch. I thought reviews were that high because of the controls and world that could not have been realized before, in spite of flaws that made it less than fun at times.

 

[Blayde]

I'm not sure about playing it myself, but for some reason ive been addicted to watching speed runs on twitch for the past few months. Maybe just due to odyssey hype, idk. I tend to find a stream and watch it while trying to fall asleep, its relaxing somehow.

 

[Deleted member 2226]

I don't really get the comments that the gameplay holds up but the camera and control don't. That's part of the gameplay. Mario 64 was a pioneer for games of its type but all the third person 3D games from that era have aged pretty poorly. Bad cameras used to get talked about in reviews all the time; at least in the AAA games I've played this gen and late last gen, it is a solved issue (and going back to earlier games brings that into contrast—BG&E HD was my most recent brush with bad camerawork in a while.)

 

[samthebreadman]

It's like this. If this game didn't still hold up then why do we see mods of the game left and right? Not too long ago this game was patched to have online functionality...

 

[Rebel-TT]

Camera is a little iffy, but the gameplay still holds up.

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Do you think there was too much repetition in the stars? Was retreading the same pathways fun?

 

[Rebel-TT]

I played through it with all 120 stars for the first time in like a decade the other week. The camera is more than a little iffy in my opinion. It's awkward to control and can frequently screw you over, doesn't at all feel meant for some of the more platform challenge-heavy back half of the game. Which when combined with how slippery (and occasionally sticky) Mario can be means you're pretty much guaranteed to die on accident if you aren't intimately familiar with the game. I think it's a game that honestly only gets worse the longer it goes on. Some of the levels in this game just aren't that fun no matter what star you're going after.

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Agreed.

 

[Cryptosporidium]

Mario 64 DS is superior if played on a 3DS XL

 

[Rebel-TT]

It absolutely lives up.

For the most part I don't usually subscribe to the idea of a game "not aging well" unless a game is almost literally unplayable today. To me games like Zelda 1 and Metroid 1 fit that bill very nicely, but I'm sure that's sacrilegious to some. I've tried to play those games again and again and what I find to be extreme difficulty and cryptic design ruins them for me. I respect the games and I think in a broad sense they're very good games, but they're not for me, and I didn't experience them right at release personally.

Back to Mario 64, there is nothing about that game I find dated. It's an extremely eloquent design that transcends the era it released in. Elegant design is elegant design is elegant design. For me, it's very hard to take away something like that from a game.

Mario 64 is just a masterpiece that changed the gaming landscape forever. It still plays great, even if not fully in sync with "today's modern standards", which I think is a point of contention in the first place. Newer doesn't necessarily mean better. I could make the argument Mario 64 actually plays even better from a mechanical standpoint than Odyssey does. They both feel different but they both feel great. Odyssey's refinements to the formula don't negate what Mario 64 achieved.

Mario 64 plays very smooth, it has great level design, the challenge is there, the music is incredible, the atmosphere is great, and the graphics are STILL nice to look at, especially if you appreciate it from a "time capsule" perspective.

There's nothing "quaint" about old games. A great game is a great game.

I've heard the same criticism thrown at Goldeneye or Turok 1 and I just couldn't disagree more.

Doom 4 existing and being as good as it is doesn't suddenly make Doom 1 "dated".

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I agree. Works of art stand the test of time. A Link to the Past cannot be topped. The graphics and controls are solid. But I felt like there was simply too much repetition. It bogged the game down. Pacing was off. Two or three stars per world, a la Galaxy, would have probably made for a much less laborious experience. I think it was never that great. I have no reverence for Banjo either... don't shoot me!

 

[samthebreadman]

Mario 64 DS is superior if played on a 3DS XL

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Nah. You can't top the OG. They messed with the formula too much with that edition. Plus the textures look awful compared to the N64's higher res textures.

I did like the minigames though. I'll give you that one.

 

[Rebel-TT]

First of all, I'm pleasantly surprised this thread isn't about how the controls "have aged poorly" - they haven't and I'm tired of discussing this with people, lol.

You're right in saying that the structure was a result of the designers trying to maximize the value of each asset. 3D levels were hard to build, so reusing content in this way was basically a necessity. I agree there are some egregious examples like Tall Tall Mountain where the peak literally has multiple Power Stars right next to each other, requiring you to climb the entire thing multiple times.

I can definitely see why you would take issue with this, but personally I think the actual design of these levels does a lot to mitigate the sense of repetition. Mario 64's worlds are big sandboxes, but they're not flat land; instead, they consist of intricate platforming paths that all intertwine, and they're wide and open enough to be tackled in numerous ways. The fact that Mario's movement is so sophisticated now leans into that design as well: just taking the same path over and over again will look wildly different every time as you get more and more to grips with the controls (which wasn't as much the case with the more linear and less complicated 2D games).

The non-linear setup of Peach's castle is also worth mentioning: players of the day weren't expected to do all seven stars in any given stage in one go (and in fact this isn't even possible a lot of the time seeing how certain power ups need to be unlocked within the castle first before they can be used inside the paintings to complete certain challenges). The player has enough freedom to mix things up with wildly different stages very early on and keep themselves from getting burnt out, and returning to an earlier painting is effortless once they feel up for it again.

So, while it's undeniable that Mario 64's game progression was a compromise born from technical/resource limitations, I think the overall design leans into that progression so hard and so well that it becomes a non-issue for me (EDIT: the game progression, level design and controls are actually exactly WHY it's my favorite Mario game). I think that's also why non-linear hubs and sandbox levels were increasingly less of a focus in the series as 3D assets became easier to produce.

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Very well reasoned. Thoughtful and insightful. I appreciate this response.

I admire the work of the designers absolutely. And getting so much right at the VERY start of a whole new world of gaming is unbelievable. Doesn't mean that I have FUN through everything though. And for me, that was such a change from the Mario games preceding it.

 

[Valahart]

I played it for the first time on the Wii Virtual Console about 8 years ago. And by then I already thought it had aged badly. I never got the praise for the controls in that game. Mario seems to be walking on ice all the time, he literally slides with every little walking command.

I've been meaning to give it another playthrough to check if maybe it was a controller/virtual console issue, but still haven't gotten to it.

I disliked it to the point that I finished it with the minimum number of stars and never looked back.

 

[Lynd]

It absolutely holds up, all of Nintendo's games generally do, even from that era. It holds up more than basically anything else from then.

Also, my fiancés 10 year old cousin wanted to play it recently and apparently now loves playing it on the Wii.

 

[linko9]

I think so, absolutely. The movement in 64 is much more precise, which makes it more difficult to execute, but ultimately allows you more control once you master it. For example, you can wall jump at any angle, whereas in Galaxy and later games, you snap to a 90 angle perpendicular to the wall no matter your angle of approach. I also really appreciate the more focused design of the objectives, and lack of cutscenes and dialog that slow down the action. The fact that SM64 is to this day the most popular game for speedrunning (even among younger players) shows how well it holds up today.

 

[Raijinto]

Yup, I played it fully for the first time over the last couple of years and I think it deserves every bit of praise it gets. Camera aside I think all of its key components hold up really well, even the visuals are amazing considering these characters had never been in 3D before. Sunshine elevated significantly in this area thanks to the GameCube but I don't get criticising the game for looking 'bad' by modern standards. Like obviously it does it was an N64 launch game...

 

[Rebel-TT]

Camera is a bit rough, on native hardware it's a bit blurry, and obviously the N64 controller itself doesn't really hold up.
But game play wise it holds up better then Sunshine.

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Faint praise?

 

[Phendrift]

It kind of holds up but every 3D Mario feels better to play than it

 

[Aeana]

I honestly can't think of a game that still manages to feel just as modern today so it did at the time of release. It's really just an incredible feat.

 

[Leo]

I had my boyfriend who isn't into gaming (he sometimes plays Mario Kart, Smash, and 3D World with me) play for a little bit, and he couldn't even move the character properly. It was then when I realized there is something weird with the controls in the game. I never experienced that because, you know, I grew up with it and went through the evolution of 3D games, but for someone who is used with modern controls, Mario 64 does feel... rudimentary.

Now, does this mean the game doesn't hold up? No way. I think every gamer should try to play it, it's a piece of history, and it is still very enjoyable. It might be a little too clunky though for people who have no experience with games.

 

[Rebel-TT]

Was it ever really truly great? Of course. You can't hold it responsible for future innovations and improvements that hadn't been invented yet. Was Super Mario Bros ever really truly great? See how ridiculous that sounds? Lol.

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Super Mario Bros is still great. That's my point. I have much more fun playing and finishing Super Mario Bros than I ever did playing Super Mario 64. My issue here is repetition, which few people mentioned. A later post highlighted the repeated climbs to the top of Tall Tall Mountain. I just don't feel that that's very fun or interesting. And I've always felt like this since first playing the game in 1997.

 

[ShinUltramanJ]

Mario 64 is still a great game, but it's been surpassed, and shows it's age. As far as Mario games go I'd rank Yoshi's Island and SMB3 over it.

 

[Rebel-TT]

Comparing Mario 64 to Odyssey that just came out days ago, it does not compare favorably at all. The higher framerate of Odyssey alone makes it feel so much more responsive and fun to control.

BUT, Mario 64 in 1996 was a mind blowing revelation in gaming. I can still recall the first moment I jumped into the water around the castle and my brain struggled to process that I was moving a character smoothly around a 3D environment. It was really a crazy thing to see for the first time.

So as a milestone is gaming progress, Mario 64 is an incredible landmark game. The fact that it turned out as good as it did, working on brand new hardware, with no template for how to make a game of it's kind, was and is a remarkable achievement.

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Truth.