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[fester]

this was a great game and I didn't mind using the thumb strap.

Long live the thumb strap.

I've been trying to find a video that shows this in action with Mario 64 DS but coming up empty. Anyone have an example they could point me to?

 

[TheCongressman1]

this was a great game and I didn't mind using the thumb strap.

Long live the thumb strap.

Love the thumb strap. It's the best way to play Metroid Hunters. Mario 64 though? I just played with the Dpad.

 

[dreamcastmaster]

I bought this on the Wii U VC and I'm about 70 stars in. Controls are unchanged from the ds version meaning that while you can use the analogue stick to move Mario, it's emulating the d-pad and movement is not analogue. This can feel a bit weird when you instinctively move the stick lightly to sneak up on a piranha plant and Mario breaks into a jog after a while as it's the equivalent of holding the d-pad down for all that time. Outside of this sneaking issue however, control feels pretty good. I found the gamepad too big to use the touch screen for movement while having access to the buttons.
The controls can't be remapped at all unfortunately so moving the camera controls to the right stick isn't possible. This also means that the triggers (zr and zl) can't be used for l and r either. Also the only supported controller is the gamepad, no pro controller support here.
The screens can be arranged in every way imaginable- playing the mini games with the gamepad held vertically is very comfortable and I've wasted way too much time playing luigis picture poker this way!
It's a real shame that full analogue controls weren't added as this could have been the definitive version of Mario 64, however the game is still playable and I'm not regretting my purchase.

Great, thanks for taking the time to write a detailed explanation.

 

[Toadthemushroom]

No.

DS version is better than the N64 version. Even by a good margin.

Has more star and 4 charter.

Madness. The new content didn't add to the game, it took away from it. And the alterations made to the level designs either served to water down the exploration and challenge, or were made to fit around the compromises of controlling Mario with a D-Pad.

For example, some pieces of level furniture were made bigger (or was Mario smaller?), the Balloon Mario Powerup allows you to sidestep smart pieces of level design that would once demand you mastered the wall jump. The new characters and their unregulated physics and moves mess around with a game whose levels were made wholly around Mario's diverse moveset, too.

One thing that stuck out the most to me, a decade on, was that bit in Snowman's Land where you have to *boing!* off one of the flower enemies to reach a far-off platform, but what's the point when you can just switch to Luigi.

This is more subjective and not game-design related, but I think the re-made visuals, while truer to Mario artwork in 2004, lack the charm of the original texture and character work, which was definitely made to fit the limitations at the time. Of course, the visuals *had* to be remade to some degree given its nature as a DS launch title, but it really changes the feel of the game.

Not necesscarily, there's a significant amount of good new content in 64 DS.

Some of the added content is alright, but the problem is that content doesn't exist in a vacuum, instead it sits alongside all the other alterations and compromises this version makes. It's still good, and I enjoyed it, but 64 DS is not a version of Super Mario 64 I would want to lose myself in, unless I had no way of playing the original anymore.

Edit: Forgot about the minigames, which were added content, and do exist in a vacuum. But they were included with New Super Mario Bros.