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Your initial impressions playing Mario 64?

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Stayed up till sunrise playing it.
 
It blew my mind.

I don't think I've ever experienced anything like what I felt that day. I wonder if I ever will.
 
Mario 64 came late here in the UK and I had already played Tomb Raider so it wasn't that impressive, and Crash Although not an open 3D World looked better imo although Mario 64 was technically more advanced.
First impressions are important and I think the impact was lost on me in this case.
 
3D was key but found irritating the voice and graphics. Graphics-wise it was a step-down from the SNES games.

The re-visiting of worlds felt... cheap.

"Why does Mario HAVE TO go back to the castle after obtaining a star? Couldn't he just continue on from there and stash the star in one of his big pockets or something?"
 
Mind blown. I played PC at the time and had played PlayStation before but Mario in 3D was crazy, it looked perfect.

It joins the list of games that blew my mind just by being unbelievable for the time, like SMW, Sonic, Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Donkey Kong Country, Little Big Planet 2(came with my CD-Rom drive), GTA3, WoW, HL².
 
Most amazing video game experience ever for me. Most likely will remain unmatched. Those graphics. The title screen. The hub world. Using an analog stick in a 3D space. The music.
 
Stumpokapow said:
mostly i just sat on the title screen stretching the hell out of mario's face
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You know what, this is probably more accurate. I specifically remember my dad being annoyed that I was spending so much time on that dumb face-stretching thing rather than playing the actual game.
 
Joe Shlabotnik said:
I ran in circles around the courtyard for like a half hour.
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I did this too. I ran up trees. I ran up hills. I swam in the water. I performed endless triple jumps.

We take it for granted now, but Mario 64 was the first game to really nail 3rd person 3d gaming, both technical and game design. There were such games before and there were such games after SM 64. For examples of this, look at 3rd person Playstation 1 games before Mario 64, then look at them after. Camera perspectives, character controls, level design all adopted the standards Mario 64 set.

It was an industry changing title. Even PC magazines spoke of the technical achievements of Mario 64.

It's worth noting that Tomb Raider and Heretic 2 set off their own lineage of technical and game design. 3rd person shooters today usually trace back to these. Even so, go back to Mario 64 and Tomb Raider / Heretic 2, and see which is more playable today.
 
I had only owned an original game boy at that point, so when my parents got me my own nintendo 64 with a copy of SM64 I nearly died. The game was perfect and certainly the most impressive thing I had played at that point in my young life.

Even today it's still a blast to play.
 
Can't remember how old I was, either 10 or 11. My mind was blown by everything from the colours to the graphics. I jumped straight into the game. As soon I was controlling mario, that was the true moment. I loved every second, and opening every door and seeing the paintings and quests and characters was an absolute joy. Those type of experiences in video games has just been few and far between
 
Bought my N64 after having had a PlayStation for nearly 2 years, and Super Mario 64 blew my mind. Loved everything about it, and by the time I reached Dire Dire Docks and listened to that music it had become my GOAT.

Still is one of my fave games ever, it has aged quite good imo.
 
I could never get into it. I remember beating the bob-omb level but that's it.

Graphics didn't impress me either. Even as a kid, I thought there was too much inconsistency going on.

"This isn't the Mushroom Kingdom"
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Now that I think about it, I'm disappointed the first 3D Mario didn't resemble any of the old art.
 
I was going to buy a used SNES with a bunch of games when a neighbor invited me to see their N64. Blew my mind, held my Snes purchase to save money for the N64.

Funny though, I never actually owned Mario 64, but borrowed it from a friend. Finished all of his 4 save files with 120 stars. Loved the game. Rebought it on DS and loved it again with the thumb controls.
 
Playing Mario 64 was the best first hand on experience i ever had. Been gaming since the atari 2600 and the only moment in my gaming life i was really insta - blown away was playing Mario 64.

I hope Oculus Rift delivers this kind of feeling again on me.
 
Mario 64 was the very first game I owned and played (I was probably around 5-6), so I just thought that was the norm I suppose, lol.

But nonetheless, it was amazing, I still hold it in high regard
 
I wasn't old when I got mario 64, but even then I kinda remember feeling like the game was a bit childish. That is fine, but my tastes were going more mature. But I still liked the game a whole lot.

It wasn't like a huge huge huge deal, like final fantasy 7 was for me :D
 
I was about 11, I was very addicted do gaming and used to kick some butts at arcade (I miss X-men so much!).

I wrote this to say that I wasn't noob at all, but I still got very AFRAID to not being able to play Super Mario 64, seemed SO complex! I remember feeling that videogame could be not for me anymore because of it!

Of course this was just until I got to control Mario. It was BEAUTIFUL. I know that I'll never have this feeling again in my life. Nothing will ever compare to it.
 
Man I sure didn't expect Mario to become to be such a homophobe.

More seriously, it was an absolutely magical experience. Just running around outside the castle with the birds singing, climbing trees... To this day I'm still amazed at how much control you had over Mario. His moveset is still, to my knowledge, unparalled in any platformer ever. The devs were also so wildly creative in the level design, you could feel the 3D allowed them to completely re-think what a Mario game could be, with mini-objectives within levels and many of the enemies/environments being completely new.
 
I can honestly say I've never been in as much joyous awe by a game than when I first played Mario 64. There's just no other gaming experience like it. Nothing matches up running around in circles spamming the jump button and accidentally doing a double jump and see that it's a different jump, a different sound and then... the triple jump happens and I lose my shit. Swimming in that water, I mean, holy shit the fish GET OUT OF YOUR WAY when you swim by them, a full 17 years before next, next gen systems would have the ability to do so. We had that in '96. The demo could have just been that courtyard area and been enough... but then you go inside the castle and it's another world and somehow, instinctively without knowing why I was doing it, I jumped into the painting....
 
I was a 5-year-old kid back then and I was generally easily impressed. And, boy, was I impressed that day... Running around freely in 3D for the first time is such a memorable experience!
 
Never had I higher expctations for a game, and never has a game exceeded my expectations as far as Mario 64.
I read impressions from the japanese version for months in every available magazine, but still, the game blew my mind when I got my N64. it was an incredible experience. the levels were huge and it played so damn smooth and tight.
 
I loved the open-world structure, it made the game really feel "next gen". Gone were the simpler days of just running right. Now there were worlds to explore!

Mario also had a ton of new moves, I didn't even miss the fire flower or other powerups. I spent countless hours just messing around in Bob-omb Battlefield and Whomp's Fortress, not actually going for the stars. I'd try to jump from this to that, or shoot myself out of the canon and try to land on something perfectly. The level design was so awesome. Linearity sucks.
 
I never really liked it that much tbh. And this is coming from a huge Mario fan - SM3DW is up there somewhere on my all time favourite games list. But yeah, I didn't like the graphics even back then, or the music, bosses... Some of the level design was good though I guess. I did like the spooky levels.
 
I actually found that I wanted a regular mario. I found all the jumping really hard because of the camera/camera controls.

Eventually I got over that and enjoyed the game.
 
"What is this crap?"
"Why am I not playing with Mario?"
"How could anyone play this?"
"Ragequit"

In approximately that order. I only played the DS remake after owning a PS. It was a severe disappointment.
 
Was back in 1996 at a Toys R Us demo station. I had spent the last few years playing Wario Land, Kirby, Zelda and Super Mario All Stars

I was absolutely astounded. Confounded. Amazed. Shocked. Excited. I went there every single day, just to jump around Bob-Omb Battlefield and use that analog stick. It was a fucking revelation, an experience I will never, ever, ever come across again.
 
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 my exact experience as well. Hard to believe I was 16 years old then.
 
Our first N64 games were Mario 64 and Waverace. Our (by brother and I's) reaction to both was nearly incomprehension. The idea that we were going from Mode 7 and Super FX chip graphics on Mario Kart, Stunt Race, and Star Fox to Mario 64 and Waverace blew us out of our minds. We had seen glimpses of the N64 before, but I think we expected the 3D to basically be similar to the PS1's (though we hadn't really seen that either). I think we expected 3D similar to Doom or some of the other 3D PC games we had seen around that time. We were very wrong.

That fly through of Princess Toadstool's Peach's Castle was the first sign something was up. We had NEVER seen 3D camerawork like that before. That shit was basically Toy Story quality (which had come out a year earlier). Then a fully rendered Mario popped out of the pipe like that shit was nothing. The next mind blowing moment was Bomb-Omb Battlefield. There was nothing akin to that in video-games. That was the first time anyone said "You see that mountain? You can go there." That was unheard of at the time, and I doubt any game today will be able to match the awe I felt when I played that.

Then we played Waverace. To us as kids, it wasn't as impressive as Mario at the time, but we were still having a ton of fun with it. Waverace was more impressive to my parents, who worked with computer applications in the military. The idea that you could have fully realtime rendered and simulated waves in anytthing, let alone a videogame was crazy to them. They were in awe just as much as we were.

And I don't care what the PC Masterace says, in 1996, there was nothing available on the PC that was doing the shit Mario 64 and Waverace were doing. Nothing.
 
Stumpokapow said:
mostly i just sat on the title screen stretching the hell out of mario's face
Click to expand...

This was so fucking awesome.

I mean, WHO would have thought of playing with the Start Screen?!?!?!?!

Hours just moving his ears and nose, getting his eyebrows to look lake sunglasses, to make funny faces and weird or horrific ones. It was simple but damn fun.

All the game was filled with discovery and everything new. First 3D game for me.
 
Mind totally blown, at first. Then, Mario's god-tier moveset began to overpower the sparse levels and enemies. Did any enemies have enough hits for Mario's punch-punch-kick? Many moves were dropped in later iterations, having been underutilized in 64. On one hand, it was a game-changer, on the other, it led me to conclude that 3D needed a bit more time in the oven.
 
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