Backlog Game Reviews 39: Super Mario 64 (N64)

 

 

  Hey there, and welcome to Backlog Game Reviews.

 Today let's take a look at Super Mario 64. It was first released on June 23^rd, 1996 in Japan, it came to North America on September 29^th, 1996, and on March 1^st, 1997 it made its way to Europe. It was a huge success and went on to be the best-selling N64 game of all time, selling 523,000 units in North America. It received almost endless praise from reviewers, and set the standard for how 3D games should play. Let's take a look and see how this beloved game holds up today.

 Princess Peach's invitation to Mario.

 

  The story begins with Mario receiving a letter from Princess Peach. In it, she says that she's baked a cake and would like Mario to come to the castle. But, upon arriving at the castle Mario is greeted by a mysterious voice telling him no one's home and to go away.

 Mario arrives at the castle.

 

  Mario explores the empty castle and comes across a Toad, who tells Mario that the princess and everyone else in the castle has been trapped in the castle's paintings and walls by none other than Bowser. He's also stolen the castle's power stars and has given them to his minions inside the castle paintings. The only way to stop Bowser and save everyone is to retrieve the stolen power stars. And so Mario sets off on a new quest to save the princess, once again.

 You enter most stages by jumping into paintings throughout the castle.

 

  The story in this game is just like past Mario games, very simple. But, that doesn't mean what little story the game has is bad. It's a little bit more unique than other Mario games. Instead of just kidnapping the princess, Bowser has her trapped in a painting, along with the Toads. This is also integrated into the gameplay as all of the stages are inside paintings or walls that Mario has to jump into. Mario 64 is an example of a simple yet entertaining story.

 The first boss in the game, King Bob-omb.

 

  While the story hasn't changed much the gameplay sure has. Unlike Mario games before it, Super Mario 64 isn't a linear 2D platformer. All of the stages are wide-open 3D sandboxes. Every stage has seven power stars that you can collect, and every level has six missions that will reward you with a power star upon completion, while the seventh star is obtained by collecting 100 coins without dying.

 The mission select screen.

 

  Most of the time you can collect the stars in any order, but there are some stars that you can only get by selecting certain missions. For example, stars that require you to beat a boss can't be completed when another mission is selected because the boss will only appear on that mission.

 Koopa the quick will only show up on his corresponding mission.

 

   This gives you a huge amount of freedom in terms of how you approach a level. If you want to collect all of the stars in order you can do that, if you want to go off and explore on your own, you can do that too. There's no set path that you have to take.

 One of the castle's secret areas. Make it to the end of the slide to get a star.

 

   Super Mario 64 is a good game that's still fun to play to this day. Mario controls really well and it's fun just running around. The amount of different tricks and jumps Mario can pull off allows you to overcome obstacles in just about any way you can think off. The difficulty is just right, it never gets really difficult, but it's not all that easy either. And it's full of unique missions that keep the gameplay fresh.

 Surfing around on a Koopa shell is one of my favorite things to do in this game.

 

   While this game is a lot of fun, it's not perfect and has its fair share of problems. The camera being one of them, it's a bit of a pain. Super Mario 64 was one of the first fully 3D games so I can't criticize it too much, but you'll be spending a lot of time stopping and adjusting the camera.

 Mario vs Bowser round 1. You'll fight Bowser three times throughout the game.

 

   As said before the game does have good variety when it comes to mission objectives, but every stage has a collect eight red coins mission. This might be a nitpick, but you can only collect so many red coins before it starts to get old.

 In this stage you have collect all eight red coins before you run out of air.

 

   Another problem I had with this game has to do with the 100 coin power stars. When you collect your 100^th coin the power star will appear above you and stay in that spot. This means you have to be very careful about where you get your last coin. If you get it in a bad spot, the star will get stuck in a hard-to-reach or almost impossible to reach area. If you mess up trying to retrieve the star and die then that means you have to collect all 100 coins over again. This could have easily been avoided by making the star appear in a predetermined location.

 The star will appear wherever you got your 100th coin.

 

   Even with these flaws, Super Mario 64 is a very fun game, and I can easily recommend it to fans of 3D platformers. It's not a perfect game, but it's a game you should definitely check out sometime.

 Getting a star other then the 100 coin star will boot you out of the stage.

 

   There's nothing to really complain about when it comes to the presentation. The music is very memorable and catchy. The only slight downside is that some songs are used in multiple stages. The graphics look really good as far as early N64 games go. Everything is a bit blocky, but it doesn't look bad.

    That's all I have to say about Super Mario 64. Due to it being one of the first 3D platformers it has its problems, but it's still a lot of fun to play. If you've never played it before you should give it a try sometime.

    Thank you for reading! The next review will be over a Famicom game. I hope to see you again here at Backlog Game Reviews.