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Your initial impressions playing Mario 64?

Okay, here goes:
First thing i noticed was that the camera was something getting used to. Pretty shitty actually. And i thought the graphics looked horrible. Same with OoT. Early 3D graphics give me nostalgia but in general it was an ugly ass mess to look at. This is the first console gen (PS4) where graphics are starting to look actually good.
But it was very cool to walk around in this 3D world.

But, i LOVED the gameplay and the music. Played it again on DS.
 
Probably not the typical response, but the first time I played mario 64 was at an N64 kiosk at an electronics store somewhere. I remember it was some demo that loaded up the first star of Bob Omb Battlefield. Had no idea what to do in the game at the time except that I was looking for a star, and the first star I saw was the one the Chain Chomp was guarding. Some kid next to me told me I had to punch it to death and I wasted like 10 minutes trying to do that, followed by 10 minutes trying to jump on the pole and ground pound it before getting killed, mostly unsuccessfully. Yea, that game really needs that opening castle area where you get used to the controls...

So my opening thoughts when first playing SM64:
"Man, the controls in this game suck, I can't jump on this pole at all. They should've just made another 2D Mario game."

I love the game now, and I loved it once I had some time to actually get used to it. But man, it did NOT impress me at first. Wind Waker, on the other hand, was another game that I first played at a store kiosk (basically dumped you into the Ghoma fight) and I adored that game from the first second.
 
It blew my 18-year-old mind. There was nothing like it at the time. It was truly revolutionary, and a fantastic game to boot. Simply controlling Mario was a joy in itself. The re-use of levels by having multiple objectives in each was brilliant. I don't know that a game has impressed me as much since.
 
I only played it after I'd already been playing a lot of Quake, so I was pretty unimpressed by the graphics. I was impressed by all the ways Mario could move through the world (climbing, different jumps, even just the running animations) and had a lot of fun just running around.
 
At first, me and my bro was like this :

wAiS804.gif


Then we popped it on as we were like :

PpIwp.gif


But as I was 17 then, I was mostly :

rsjfb.gif
 
Pretty much passed it by bc I was a 2d diehard and thought 3d games in general looked like a step down. Then again I had gotten Tomb Raider for my PC around the same time and it ran and played like a dream.

For some reason I didn't ever care to play Mario 64 past a few kiosk demos. At the time I would have rather replayed Mario All Stars again.
 
It was one of the few games that literally brought an ear to ear smile across my face when I first played it. Oddly enough, the next game to do that was Mario Galaxy. Looking back on Mario 64, it really does look like crap, but seeing it and playing it in 3D was a tremendous experience

My friend rented a Japanese N64 with Mario 64 and Wave Race 64 from some game shop a few towns over before the NA launch, so it was even more mindblowing playing it early.
 
I was gobsmacked.

Seeing Marios face being manipulated on the menu screen while standing in a shop, was just incredible.

Bearing in mind all I had seen at that point was 2d mario.

And when I played it, it was just so incredible, I honestly didn't think things could get much better....

The N64 just has so many good memories for me, I remember enjoying so many games on that console, especially local multi-player.
 
The first time I played Mario 64, I thought the game was broken. I was using the D-Pad and couldn't figure out how to move Mario. The only way I could get him to move was by repeatedly tapping B and I thought it was horrible.
 
I used to play it together with my best friend back then, taking turns. The moment we unlocked the Wing Cap, game progress stopped for us and we spent hours flying around and doing silly stunts. I remember saying "Who needs Pilotwings when you have this!?"

Of course, Pilotwings 64 was going to kill a lot of hours later on anyway. Gyrocopter ftw!

That was all on an imported, Japanese N64 though. I've had a second first impression with the PAL version of these games some months later. It felt soooo slow. Damn you, 50hz!
 
Absolute wonder and awe. I had no attachment to the series before that game, but it immediately caught my attention and I needed it.
 
Phediuk said:
Judging from that Super Mario World topic, there seems to be a widespread conception of this game as a religious experience that was universally awe-inspiring, and that it was singularly looked upon as the greatest leap in game design history.

That doesn't really gel with my experience at the time, though. I remember being disappointed by Mario 64 when I first played. The graphics were nice but didn't melt my brain or anything; there had been much better looking games in the arcade for a few years by that point, and even on consoles, Mario didn't look that much better than Jumping Flash on Playstation. I found the open-world structure confusing and didn't like having to wander around the levels looking for stars. I just wanted a straightforward action game like the previous Marios. I also didn't like how they removed features from previous games, like fire flowers, invincibility stars, and Yoshi. Crash Bandicoot was more or less what I had envisioned a 3D Mario game to be, and so I liked that game a lot more.

I'm not saying I hate Mario 64 or anything; I came to like it after I played more of it. I may even like it more now than Crash. But my first impressions of it were terrible. Also, I fully admit that I was way more into the Playstation's library in general by that point and was getting more interested in more cinematic games like Resident Evil and Tomb Raider. Mario felt a bit old hat even then.

So I want to know what other people thought about Mario 64 when it was brand new.
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I love Jumping Flash but what the actual fuck.
 
Wow, Mario actually puts keys in locks and opens doors now! There's a whole castle to explore! *30 minutes later* I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing.
 
I was completely in awe. I was 17 at the time and had been gaming since NES (well a little Atari before that) and haven't had that kind of experience with a game before or since. The move from 2d gaming to 3D gaming was just incredible.
 
I thought the game was fun. I mean, I was 5, so I had nothing else to compare it to. I don't even think I gave a shit about graphics till the ps2/gcn/Xbox era.
 
I was 10. it was amazing. obviously the first thing i did is run in a circle and do his iconic jump.


the only thing i can compare it to is mario galaxy and running around a sphere, but even then it was only a fraction of astonishment
 
It reinvigorated my desire to play video games.

Through my last year+ of high school (late 1994-spring1996), I sold off my SNES/Genesis collection, and thought that I was basically done with video games. Then I walked into a Toys R Us the summer of 1996, I tried Mario 64 and thought it was the best thing I had ever played.

It wasn't out yet, so I bought a Playstation too, where I found a ton of cool games too.
 
I was absolutely blown away. Some idiot had bought a launch day Japanese N64 for a crazy price and turned around and traded it in just a few days later at s local shop because he only had that and Pilotwings. Dude took a huge hit, so I snagged it for a small fraction of what it was going for. I remember also flipping over Wave Race later on, but it was a Friday and my local import shop had just 1 copy that we'd all been playing for hours. Everything has a price, so I took that home and continued to be blown away all weekend.
 
I think the only thing that made a seriously latge impression on me was the hub world. Didn't own a N64 or SM64, but the castle and surroundings were a joy.
 
Utterly mind blowing. I had been looking forward to the game and the console forever, and came across a demo kiosk at Blockbuster. It was equally as exciting just to get my hands on that controller. The stick! The Z-trigger!

My poor, wonderful grandma hung out for what seemed like forever so I could get my fill.
 
Aeana said:
I was really blown away. I first played it at a demo kiosk at Toys R Us before the system was actually released, and I spent the entire day there playing it with my mouth agape. I'd never played anything like it, and it was so fun too.
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^This was me.

The visuals combined with his movements were pure bliss.

Especially coming off of the Playstation's 3D graphics and 4 button directional pad.


My jaw dropped as much as this guy when I saw this
Mario64.jpg
 
"Oh, OK, it doesn't control like Doom."

Yes, really.

I walked up to a Best Buy kiosk and played it, before that I'd only seen pictures in magazines. It didn't occur to me that you could move in 3d just by pointing the stick in a direction.
 
I remember there was an import game store in Austin at a mall waaaaayyyy further North than we ever would have gone.

My mom loaded my cousin, me and my best friend up and took us in to pay 5 bucks to play for 10 minutes to play the just launched Japanese N64.

It was mind blowing as fuck. I had no damned idea how to control Mario. Movement was confusing, jumping to land on a platform was really hard. These were skills my brain and hand eye coordination had not developed in the 12 years of life/gaming that had led to that exact moment.

From that instant on all I could do was dream about the endless possibilities of what games could be.

The early N64 was the greatest jump in gaming period. Pilotwings, Mario Kart 64 (despite some issues but with gameplay had amazing 3d tracks), Mario 64, WaveRace and StarFox just blew the floor off everything.

PSX eventually caught up with it, but most early PlayStation games just weren't on that level. Jumping Flash was amazing but stupid short. Crash was fantastic but didn't feel as freeing as Mario. That hover bike racing game was dumb good and hard as fuck. Ridge Racer was probably early playstations biggest standout, but it was an arcade game experience I had already had for years.

Saturn had some amazing games that felt like bringing an arcade unit home. NiGHTS and Panzer Dragoon were jaw dropping games in their own right.

But the fucking first wave of N64 games up through OoT was a level of game changing innovation I will almost certainly never experience again in my life due to the sheer technological and design leap and my Junior High brain having more pleasure receptors or some shit.
 
I was eight, some things I recall:

- The N64 controller felt weird to hold.
- Moving around in 3D was hard to wrap my head around.
- I kept wanting to try different camera options because nothing felt right.

This was from short sessions at a friend's house and demo stations. I was still super impressed and wanted the game, and when I got it I loved it.

The controls didn't REALLY gel with me until years later, though. I played through the whole game and still had moments where I'd miss an easy jump or walk off a ledge. Movement being relative to the camera was such a new thing, I'm actually not surprised that generation used tank controls a lot of the time. Glad Nintendidn't.
 
I was playing everything on playstation up to that point, but sm64 was clearly the best game I had ever played after about an hour. Had never seen anything like it.
 
balohna said:
The controls didn't REALLY gel with me until years later, though. I played through the whole game and still had moments where I'd miss an easy jump or walk off a ledge. Movement being relative to the camera was such a new thing, I'm actually not surprised that generation used tank controls a lot of the time. Glad Nintendidn't.
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100% this. The controls were really hard to get good at. It didn't help that Mario 64 had some jank with the camera and floatyness that were eventually cleaned up as we got more used to 3d.

But it was real fucking weird and our brains just weren't spatially used to what we were throwing at them. It felt like something between video game and one of those spatialization questions on the Mensa test.
 
StoOgE said:
100% this. The controls were really hard to get good at. It didn't help that Mario 64 had some jank with the camera and floatyness that were eventually cleaned up as we got more used to 3d.

But it was real fucking weird and our brains just weren't spatially used to what we were throwing at them. It felt like something between video game and one of those spatialization questions on the Mensa test.
Click to expand...
Now I genuinely feel like it's second nature though.

It makes me wonder if that's what 2D games on NES also felt like when I first played them. But I was too young when I started to remember.

I still fucking love Mario 64 by the way.
 
I couldn't believe we were getting graphics this good at home, I think first time I saw it was on the TV show Bad Influence, I had goosebumps and couldn't wait to talk to a friend about it at school.

I was actually too poor to get a console at launch but borrowed a friend's machine and boy did it live up to the hype and then some. I still think it holds up extremely well today!

As far as mind exploding moments for me it's up there with seeing Ridge Racer running on a home console, seeing SF3 new gen in the arcades, Shenmue reveal video and the MGS2 tanker demo that came with ZOE.

SM64 remade would be an instant purchase, this is easy money left on the table, Nintendo. Easy money.
 
I only played it briefly, but I remember not liking it. Probably because I liked SMB3 and World so much. But I do see why it was important for a 3D World and why people like it. While I do own the DS version, I mostly let me little cousin play it.

On second thought, it may be the controller. It didn't click with me until years later.
 
This game blew my mind more than anything else before it or since. I was pretty much obsessed as an 8 year old, picking up any game mag with a mention of mario 64, soaking up as much info as possible. Got an N64 and Mario Christmas '96 and it remains one of my favourite moments.

I don't know why but for the longest time before playing the game I thought the joystick would control Mario's jump and long jump. Like, pushing it in would cause him to jump, and pushing it forward would do a long jump.
 
jres80 said:
ik49VlPshlPIz.gif
Click to expand...

That sums it up.

We didn't have a PC at home or anything so the graphics alone absolutely blew my mind. "What, no pixels!?!??! NO PIXELS!?!?". Then I controlled the thing and couldn't believe it. It was just so smooth and the levels were so open for back then. The whole structure and feel were utterly fresh and revolutionary to me.

On another note, everyone I knew was terrible at the game and thought it was super hard because we just weren't used to any of it. The controls, the total 3D-ness of it all...overload.
 
Saw it at a Toys R Us kiosk in an area that also had Crash on a PS1 and NiGHTS on a Saturn. Didn't think much of Crash and I really enjoyed NiGHTS, but I had to wait for a go on the N64 until some dude finally got off. I didn't know how to control it. I laid the controller in my right palm and used my left hand on the analog stick like it was an atari joystick. So while I thought it looked neat, I didn't know how it could be fun to play when it was so hard to control.

Then after a go at a buddy's house, it all clicked and I got an N64 as soon as I could.
 
Phediuk said:
I just wanted a straightforward action game like the previous Marios.
Click to expand...

This sounds like your problem. Super Mario 64 redefined an entire genre and arguably game design as it stood when it released. It inherently was not going to be the same as things that came before and is the same reason why so many people's minds were blown.
 
I'd been playing Playstation and Saturn games for over a year by that point, so the graphics, while impressive, didn't blow me away.

But the freedom did. It had been a bit of a rocky transition into 3D to that point, particularly for 3rd person games. My thought upon playing Mario 64 was "this is the first game to do this right". I couldn't believe how natural and near-perfect it felt to control Mario and move around the world.

Earlier 3rd person games I'd tried, like Fade to Black, were a total chore to control. Even the excellent Tomb Raider, which arrived soon after, used a locked camera and felt primitive and out of date compared to Mario 64. That feeling persisted for years, really, while the industry caught up to the example they'd been given.
 
I enjoyed Mario 64 but it didn't blow me away. Mind you it was, like, my 5th N64 game and I'd been a PC Gamer for a while too.

I was a little disappointed with the focus on exploration rather than platforming. The Bowser stages were by far the highlight of the game for me.
 
"How do I control this? This game sucks, I want to use the cross!"
I was around ten, and it was my first experience with a full 3D platform game. The analog stick took some time getting used to, but wow if it wasn't worth it!
 
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