There aren't many titles that can claim to be one of the most revolutionary video games of all time, but bragging about it doesn't get you many friends, so Nintendo simply let the critics and consumers praise Super Mario 64 to the heavens and just sit back and bask in the glory.
I was not a Nintendo 64 kid. Somewhere in the mid to late 1990s I played GoldenEye at a friends house and have no real memories of the game, the console, or the house itself, but I did have a mesmerising ice cream float - my first ever, in fact, and I'm getting off topic.
I didn't have an N64 and was perfectly content with having a PlayStation instead, and so these monumental giants of video game history that have been developed by Nintendo have simply gone unplayed, even in the decades since their release.
Super Mario 64 is no exception, I've not played it. I've seen it. Maaaany many times. Slowly, quickly, very very quickly, very very glitchy. But I've not gotten my hands on a three-pronged controller to find out how it handles, and how it changed everything.
Limber up your larynx, because we're gonna get all 'Woo, whey, wah-hoo!' as we hunt down a bunch of stars in order to save Princess Peach.
Again.
Frustrations
Having never owned an N64 in my childhood, I haven't got one kicking around to dig out and fire up, but P2's eager eyes spotted one for sale with a bunch of unboxed games and wouldn't you know it, I'm able to play Super Mario 64 on a television.
Unfortunately, either the cartridge has seen better days or my TV doesn't know what to do with input signals anymore because the colours on show are not the bright colours that I'm expecting to see, but washed out and barely recognisable. The game is playable, but it's not a looker. Luckily, emulation is an excellent alternative.
Fun Times
Super Mario 64 takes the Mario franchise into the third dimension, and that means everything gets a makeover. 'Makeover' is perhaps the wrong word, though, as this is a revolution, damn it. New console, new controller, new weird analogue stick thing. The 'How To' on making video games is getting rewritten in a new language, and a fat Italian plumber is spearheading it.
The game starts outside the Princesses castle, a safe environment where you can learn to bounce and slide and swim around a three-dimensional space. Movement and the freedom thereof runs right through this game, and Mario has an arsenal of moves at his disposal.
Jumps, double jumps, triple jumps, backflips, side flips, punches, kicks, crouches, crawls, sneaks and swimming are all performed using a key button and a modifier, essentially, and in the heat of the moment, they all feel quite natural - sneaking, for example, is performed by eeeever so slightly moving the analogue stick, because of course making Mario move delicately would require the player to move an analogue stick delicately...
Still, run around the castle for a bit and get used to them, for as well as introducing a whole new language of movement, Super Mario 64 gave the video game world a whole new way to see all those moves.
Further Frustrations
The camera in Super Mario 64 is delightfully explained in-game as being controlled by Lakitu, hovering around Mario in his cloud and documenting events. It's free to control, adjusted with the C-buttons to swing around and zoom in and out relative to Mario, allowing you to get a feel for your surroundings before you bounce through them.
Unfortunately, it shows its age and limitations when played in 2017, and is not a fun free camera system to use, often swinging right back to where you moved it from, especially when I was emulating (but then, I was using an Xbox 360 analogue stick to mimic an N64 set of C-buttons, so it's not going to be the best solution - but it is the solution video games would find and settle on to improve the situation, which must be some kind of irony).
There are some circumstances where no amount of moving the camera will help, and while you can centre it on Mario with the touch of a button, you sometimes need it to be hovering in some kind of middle ground that you just aren't able to achieve, requiring you to get good at the game instead.
Just what is the game, anyway?
Further Fun Times
Super Mario 64 centres around the hunt for stars that will allow Mario access to more and more areas of the castle, which Bowser has locked up in order to make your task of rescuing Princess Peach much more laborious.
Stars are found by completing a bunch of tasks in each level, both generally, such as collecting 100 coins, and specifically, like defeating a mini-boss, reaching a certain place or completing a fetch quest.
Each time you enter a level, you'll be able to go for a different star, and collecting a star will kick you out of the level, which allows you to jump back in and aim for another star. It doesn't sound brilliant, to be honest, but technical limitations are what they are and this is the way we do things - one star at a time.
At any point where you have enough stars, or when you can't make any progress in a level, you can opt to explore another area of the castle - which if it isn't obvious by now is the central hub that connects all these levels - and walk through any door for which you have met its star requirement, and hop right into a different level entirely, with its own unique challenges.
Levels are varied in theme, from grasslands to deserts to winter wonderlands, but are often structured as happening around a mountain peak, where Mario will be travelling up and down as well as side to side and forwards and backwards.
Further Frustrations
Its a great use of space and emphasises moving in every which way, but it absolutely sucks when you have to track back up a mountain because you missed a jump and fell down the side of it, or worse still, you fell off into the infinite-void and were kicked out of the level, losing a life and having to restart it from scratch.
These are problems that we have since moved on from, but they put a real dampener on things when replaying them when you aren't at all skilled, and you make silly little mistakes. I can play Super Mario 64 on a TV that I can't properly see, with a controller that feels a little sticky and sluggish, or I can emulate it on a PC that I can properly see, but with a controller that is so sensitive I can't even pull off half of the moves unless it's by accident.
Further Fun Times
I played Super Mario 64 until I could feel it starting to get a little too tedious for my liking, but in that time I raced a slow Koopa up a mountain, shot myself out of canons, surfed on a shell, stomped on the back of a sentient paving slab, slid down an ice bridge while racing a penguin, returned a missing baby penguin to its mother, all while navigating up and down and around 3D levels, bonking enemies on the noggin and interacting with signposts.
It's safe to say that this game spreads itself out into new territories, all in an effort to get this new-fangled freedom of movement across to the masses.
Final Word
Failures aren't fun, and too many in too short a space of time is what called it quits for me on this occasion, but I finally felt what it was like to play Super Mario 64 in person, and it was good. It was really quite good.
I challenged you to name a more elegant move than Lara Croft's handstand, and while Mario's wobbly handstand doesn't cut it, comparing the overall move set of the two characters shows that Ms Croft has as much grace as the pitch drop experiment.
Mario is swift and speedy, but not ridiculously so. He's a little floaty and I'm not always sure of what he'll do at any given point, but controlling him in Super Mario 64 is like controlling an example character in a textbook. This is what you copy because this is what works.
This game deserves to be remembered and replayed for many years to come, but I for one am thankful that developers took what worked and fixed what didn't with this Mario formula. Super Mario 64 is still, unquestionably, a must play video game, and it's likely that you've done so already, unlike this PlayStation peasant over here.
For all the praise Super Mario 64 has, though, I'm not too sure I'll be as swift and speedy to get back into it. Its limitations stick out to me a fair bit, but that's what 20 years will do to you, I suppose. I've barely dipped my toes into the water when it comes to experiencing the trickier levels and challenges the game has to offer, but then there are so many challenges that you don't have to complete them all, and can do them in an order that suits you (assuming you've at least done something towards unlocking a level, of course).
I look forward to seeing how Nintendo themselves improved upon their classic. I don't look forward to falling off yet another icy mountain, however...
Fun Facts
No matter what the lighting conditions were in a level, floating objects would always have a shadow directly beneath them, Mario included, in order to help players determine their position in three dimensions - a necessity for jumping onto a specific point, like an enemies head. This really was brand new to gamers, and keeping it easy would result in making it successful.
Super Mario 64, developed by Nintendo EAD, first released in 1996.
Version played: Nintendo 64, 1997, also via emulation.
Version watched: Nintendo 64, 1996 (Numerous, recently including sonicpacker, Hobo Bros, Matthewmatosis)