The 3D predecessor!
Mario was the king of 2D platforming till then, thanks to the Super Mario Bros serious, but then Nintendo decided to bring Mario in full 3D gaming thanks to the new powers of the Nintendo 64.
What ended up was one of the best platformers ever.
THE GOOD
+ very revolutionary for future 3D platformers
+ fresh gameplay thanks to the new camera perspective and 3D gameplay
+ amazing level/world design
+ awesome graphics and great looking environments
+ great controls
+ tons of new and wowing obstacles to encounter
+ tons of stars to collect
+ very challenging levels
THE BAD
- the camera can get sometimes in your way
Now, Super Mario 64 might just be one of the most revolutionary games ever. Bringing Mario into a 3D world was a risky step, yet that it ended so well was almost unbelievable. The new camera perspective and being allowed to walk around and discover new things, checking out every corner of the worlds had people sucked into the game for hours.
This game was so to speak the blueprint of most of the platformers.
The game simply looks and plays amazing. At least for it's time. Seriously, the gameplay is even good nowadays still, better said awesome, just the graphics aren't that great for nowadays. But for its time it was one of the best looking games.
The environments are detailed and very varied and looked pretty amazing back then.
The graphics are clean and sharp and the colors are strong. Animations work well and the character design looked also awesome back then.
Mario, Peach, Bowser, all had a nice look to them and looked totally new because they where in total 3D.
Even the menus looked good back then.
Now, the story might just be the only thing that didn't change to much, because there really is no real story to it.
It builds on top of the same idea that the Super Mario Bros. games had: Peach gets kidnapped from Bowser and Mario has to go and save her.
However, this time Bowser took over the whole castle of Peach by kidnapping all the Power Stars.
The stars power the whole castle, but without the stars Mario doesn't have access to any rooms, except one. That's where the journey begins. The still open room contains a picture where Mario has to jump in because it leads to a world where the stars are hidden. By finding more stars Mario always unlocks more and more rooms, also with pictures where Mario has to jump in to enter another world to find more Power Stars. There are 15 worlds with 6 stars each and than some little worlds like Bowser's 3 worlds with about 2 stars each and some hidden stars around the castle or worlds.
You can see it, there is a lot to do in the game.
The main story (getting to Bowser) takes 80 stars and takes already probably at least 10 hours.
Finding all 120 stars (the last ones get really tricky) takes than at least 20 hours.
The game is also challenging. Getting to Bowser and beating him in an epic battle is already pretty challenging, but getting all 120 stars is really challenging and will really test your skills.
But now to the most important part:
Super Mario 64's gameplay is absolutely amazing.
All worlds are designed very good and all the levels are a joy to play.
Almost no level feels like it's the same as any level before and trying to get all 120 stars is a total blast.
But really, there where so many new obstacles showed in this game back then thanks to the 3D aspect. Lots of wow-moments overcame me because I faced lots of obstacles i'd never seen coming.
Mario also has some new abilities like the long jump or the backflip, and he can now also punch and kick to defeat enemies or break open blocks. Those little additions make the game even more enjoyable.
There are sections for example that can only accessed with a long jump or maybe even with a wall jump.
This makes the level design even more interesting.
The controls also work very well. You control Mario with the joystick and pressing A lets Mario jump, pressing B makes Mario punch. And there are more buttons to press. And at the end there are the combinations of the button presses that let Mario make different jumps and other special stuff.
Fortunately the button presses and the joy stick all work very, very well.
At some little, narrow paths I found that the joy stick sometimes felt only a little bit loose, but all in all there is nothing to complain about.
If there is anything to complain about than it's the camera that can sometimes get in your way.
It does its job well most of the time, but sometimes it did get a bit weird, fixating against walls or other objects. You have the ability to turn your camera around, but unfortunately, even those commands don't always work.
Also, sometimes because of that you can look through walls.
In fact, although the graphics look amazing, the polygon may be a bit low.
However, the sometimes buggy camera is only a poor excuse on why not to play the game, and the sometimes low polygon graphics can't even belong to a minor issue of the game, because it doesn't disturb you from playing the game and everything else in the game is near masterful.
So there you have it, Super Mario 64 is amazing. It was the blueprint of almost every 3D platformer that was made after the game, but Super Mario 64 still belongs to one of the best games ever and especially one of the most revolutionary video games ever.