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Your initial impressions playing Mario 64?

I was 10 when the game came out. After playing 2D games up to that point and then playing Mario 64 for the first time, it was like a life changing event back then, lol. I couldn't wait to get an N64 after that.
 
I skipped the N64 so I played Sunshine first, and on double-backing to Mario 64 I found myself coldly impressed with the technical achievement it represented in its own time, but not head-over-heels in love with it. (The same goes for OoT, incidentally; objectively a landmark game, but not one to which I have any sentimental attachment like I did for most other titles in the series before and since.) 64 and Sunshine both felt disconnected from the Mario platforming I knew, and the 3D series never achieved the crispness, polish, and sumptuous liveliness of the classic 2D series for me until the three-hit combo of Galaxy, Galaxy 2, and 3D World, in some order the three best 3D platformers I've played (not that 3D Land was any slouch either). But it may be a symptom of my general preference for obstacle-course Mario over collect-and-explore Mario, the former having a tightness and flow to it that feels more intricately constructed (even in the most 64-like stages like the ascent to the Freezeflame summit in Galaxy).
 
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To be honest I hated it at 1st, I let my friend use the game. I went to his house and watched him play then it clicked. I loved it from that moment on.
 
When i saw the tv ad the year it released, i was 7 and it blew my mind. The first time i played it i was 15 and it was good.
 
LOL @ the idea that the PS1 couldn't do more than the first Crash and the N64 couldn't do more than Mario64 when both consoles elevated WAY past those titles by the end of the gen.
 
The freedom of movement and the tightness of the controls left me just doing random stuff and jumping aimlessly in the courtyard. I still think it is amazing.

"Dear Mario,

Please come to the castle. I baked a cake for you."
 
I was amazed then at how much you could do in the game, and I'm amazed now at how much Nintendo knocked it out of the park on their first try. I mean, the variety of levels, the full use of levels, the engaging overworld, the secrets, the maneuverability... it's a mindblowingly complete game. And it was their first true 3D one. It's simply stunning.

Edit: I should add I'll always have respect for Nintendo, no matter what they do, because of how laboriously they must have worked over the finest details in that game. But it does mean I get pissed off when they don't put in as much effort into other titles.
 
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 right here. I was in love. The only demo kiosk i ever put time into.


all the 3D games felt awkward, until M64 came along.

Felt like an extension of myself in the game world... so smooth
 
rex said:
If you look at Banjo Kazooie and Sunshine (in the main stages) you'll notice one peculiar thing: an almost complete lack of traditional platforming obstacles.

Rotating platforms. Spinning blocks. Sinking stands. Ground that slips away and falls beneath your fit. From what I remember of Banjo, it has almost none of this. Sunshine has a bit more, but it's few and far between, and it rarely places a series of them deliberately between you and your objective.

The (top part) of the Pianta village level is pure Banjo. A flat, square grid with a bunch of hills placed haphazardly around the map. No platforming obstacles . Certainly nothing resembling a path you have to take. Gelato beach is the same thing. It's as if Rare and then EAD decided to make a bunch of hub levels as the main levels.

Mario 64 on the other hand is an extremely clever little bastard. Many of the levels are spirals with strong vertical elements. A hilltop. A fortress. A snowy mountain. A tall tall mountain. A clock. It takes a star, and it puts it at the top, or sometimes at the bottom of the level. You've got to work to get it. You have to pass the traditional obstacles the designers purposefully put in front of you on an obvious path. Off the beaten path are opportunities for exploration and hence your other stars.

But, that's only half the story. The tight spiraling structure of a Whomp's Fortress or Tick Tock Clock means endless opportunities for creative platforming. And Mario's mechanics allow you to take full advantage of them.

Mario 64 never forgot it was a platformer. Maneuvering up and down Whomp's Fortress, with its vertical structure and obstacles and enemies which are all trying to kill you, is a lot more interesting to me than meandering around Gelato Beach with its static trees and static beach houses and static mountain path. I still think Mario 64 is the only game to get open 3D platforming stage design correct.
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This is such a good comment and explains why Sunshine is easily the weakest 3D mario when it's not in an abstract platforming level. Those amazing snippets of classic platforming would go on to become the basis for Mario Galaxy, so I guess it wasn't a waste of time.
 
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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That's when I first played it too. I went there with my dad and walked towards the back of the store where the video games were since they locked them up, and I looked to my right and I saw Mario standing there breathing and looking at me with a dangling N64 controller sitting there. I was like "what the hell??", picked up the controller and literally all I did was run around in circles. System seller.

My mind wasn't blown right away since I didn't understand much of what I was supposed to do. I ran in circles, did a couple of laps under the bridge, learned how to triple jump, jumped on a tree, handstand, jumped off....everything but go towards the castle. The Lakitu showed up and I read its dialogue like the sky traffic reporter on the Simpsons with the voice that sounds like his nose is pinched, so I thought that was funny. Went in the castle, still didn't know where to go. It was a slow start but once I found out where to go I thought the game was really fun to play.

I don't remember being blown away or thinking it was a new era or innovative or anything like that. I think I remember thinking Mario 64's graphics weren't all that great, but the controls and move list Mario had were awesome. I ended up buying the strategy guide after getting 70 stars and finding out the early star shortcuts, which taught me how to combine Mario's special moves and open the game up even more.

I will say this: playing Mario 64 made playing Super Mario Sunshine a breeze. I rented Sunshine and was so disappointed. Mario 64 moves plus the water cannon made the game incredibly easy
 
Gorestrafe said:
Mindblowing indeed.

Nothing will ever top the transition from 2D to 3D and Mario 64 was truly a revolutionary experience that can never be replicated.

Nothing will ever top that Christmas morning... we got our N64 with Mario 64, Star Wars Shadow of the Empire and Wace Race 64. The only problem? We didn't have a tv with component jacks so we had to wait until boxing day to go to eb games get an rf adapter. Let me tell you, as an 11-year-old kid, that wait was brutal!
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Yeah it truly was a leap that we may never see again. The general consensus when Mario 64 came out among all my friends and pretty much anyone who laid eyes on it was that it was the greatest video game of all time, bar none.

I think Ign's review sums it up nicely.

"it must be stated that SM64 is the greatest videogame to date, and one which all games, regardless of genre, will be judged henceforth."

http://m.ign.com/articles/1996/09/26/super-mario-64
 
Seeing this game at Toys r us for first time really made feel like this is it and it doesn't get any better then this. I couldn't believe of what was happening on screen and I had to have it. The only other time this happened to me again was with soul caliber for the Dreamcast.
 
Krujo said:
Seeing this game at Toys r us for first time really made feel like this is it and it doesn't get any better then this. I couldn't believe of what was happening on screen and I had to have it. The only other time this happened to me again was with soul caliber for the Dreamcast.
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Soul Calibur was something else. Good old Dreamcast.
 
It's weird that I remember the day very well, but I can't quite put into words what I felt. Enough to say it is the same thing that made me get every single Nintendo console since, with no regrets whatsoever.
 
Completely mind blowing, we sat there on Christmas day all day taking turns getting stars.

It was absolutely revolutionary for us, the sense of adventure and discovery was unparalleled until then.
 
I can't express in words my experience with Mario 64. It was everything it should have been. Recently I've played the DS upgrade for the first time, and I think it's just as great as it ever was.

Sitting in front of the television with the Dire Dire Docks dynamic track playing... exploring the caves with the weird Lochness Monster thing in it... Snowman's Land, with all it's strange discoveries...

I feel sorry for people who didn't get to experience it for what it meant at the time of its release. Same with Ocarina of Time.
 
I'd played other 3D games by that point, having had a PlayStation over a Nintendo 64, but when I did finally play it a few years after release I think my initial impressions were... "this is pretty damn fun".
 
Greatest launch game ever. Maybe behind tetris. It wasn't even the graphics for me it was the gameplay. Everything just felt so right, Mario's moveset in that game is still unmatched.

Also the ghost house was created nightmares. Pianos with teeth, the gigantic boo.


The movement is the biggest thing though. Its like you could think of you could achieve it with Mario in super Mario 64.
 
Mario 64 (and Galaxy) have abstract worlds. Anything can have any shape, and it's easy to make a true platformer when you have that liberty. Sunshine (and the Banjos) have worlds that make more sense and actually feel like locations, so they naturally sacrifice platforming for the exploration and the feeling of adventure. I'd still call Banjo/Sunshine platformers, though.
 
The release of this game coincided with me going through puberty. At the time, I could just say it was mere coincidence. Now that I'm older and can use hindsight, I believe that this game is what turned me from a boy into a man. It literally made my balls drop.
 
I jumped from the 16-bit systems to the Nintendo 64 with very minimal exposure to anything that came out on Saturn and PSX in between (grew up in a country town with literally one shop that sold games, pretty sure they didn't even stock the Saturn at all). The arcade didn't exactly get new machines in very often either.

The local game shop somehow managed to get a working N64 system on display a few months before its official Australian release. Very likely an American import. Mario 64 was playable. I'd been following the N64 stuff in magazines, but it still didn't prepare me for how it'd actually feel.

It blew my fucking mind. Clichéd response, but whatevs. Realising I could run around freely outside the castle, being able to jump into the water, climb up trees - it felt like there were no limitations. There were, obviously, but I'd never experienced anything like it. That tiny area alone felt like a vast, open world. It was like all the mystical VR stuff I'd read about in game magazines years ago, finally in grasp.

super-mario-64-20110928022559431.jpg


Just incredible.
 
It looked amazing but I sucked at it. I could barely fathom the controls. Still, it was magical. One of those rare moments I felt completely engaged and enraptured by a game. One of the other times was OOT.
 
I remember being very disappointed for the same reasons OP stated. It wasn't the same leap SMB3 was over SMB. I remember hating the analog, game felt wonky, and camera was all over the place. Even the graphics didn't make an impact. I was more wowed by the "3D" of Super Mario RPG lol

Then again I didn't like any of the early 3D games on Saturn and PSX. Ridge Racer looked terrible; Virtua Fighter and Battle Arena Toshiden looked like crap; Jumping Flash looked horrendous.

However, Crash Bandicoot felt how I wanted a 3D Mario to be. Linear plane but 3D perspective, almost like a Sonic 2 bonus stage but as a full game.

I was 20 during these days.
 
I thought it was as close to getting VR as we'd reasonably get with a standard controller.

Goggles and perhaps some mechanics aside, this may still be somewhat true.
 
I had never played video games, but a friend showed me Mario 64 and I was IMMEDIATELY all about video games.

I was about 10.

Visuals didn't blow my mind or anything because I hadn't really seen anything to compare it to, but it was just really engaging and exciting.
 
timetokill said:
I'm amazed at how well it has aged. I think the fact that it plays so smoothly helps a lot. I still go back and play it today and have a blast.
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I was thinking the same thing. So much of the 3d coming out right then was just awful Tomb Raider-ish slow and hard to handle tank controls. When I heard they were making a 3d Mario, I really expected more of the same and was sad. But the game was such a joy to control, I was pretty shocked. The first time I thought 3D gaming might not suck.
 
Eddie Griffin said:
Your anecdotes don't change the fact the game was not even close to technically impressive at all. Most likely you are using a nostalgia or eye candy argument. The game was technically flawed. It also was not fluid. It was clunky. But you were probably a kid back then and easily impressed.
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Funny thing is till this day one of the games is actively still played and is easily one of the best games to speed run.

I'll say it again, Mario's moveset in super Mario 64 is still unmatched in 3d platforming genre. In fact Mario's movement in Super Mario 64 expanded the movesets in many 2d platformers released after it. The only thing that surpasses it is probably sunshine in terms of moveset.
 
To this day, the first time I played Super Mario 64 remains the most incredible gaming experience I've ever had. I was absolutely stunned at how amazing it looked and played. I went to Wal-Mart every day after high school to play it on the demo kiosk for as long as they would allow me. I wanted nothing more than to further experience what I considered to be the most incredible and mind-blowing game of all-time.
 
A House of Video Games (before it became House of Anime) had a Japanese system with the game in hand before the NA version came out.

Because I knew the owner, he bumped me up on the waiting list and I was able to play with it over the weekend.

Even though it was in Japanese, I played through the first few worlds, and remember the first water world. It was amazing, and it made the wait for the North American launch even longer.
 
Remember Raiders of the Lost Ark? Remember the germans faces? Yeah that, thats what Mario 64 did to my face when I first saw it.
 
I just remember being blown away.

I think my first time playing it was at a Blockbuster, via its demo kiosks. My first time playing Goldeneye was at a demo kiosk in Zellers, too.

God, I miss Blockbuster. I lived there.
 
I remember playing this on the N64 demo kiosk at Walmart thinking, "I need this." In fact, when I was 10, I told my dad that I would forego buying a car when I turned 16 in exchange for an N64 and eight games. I can always ride a bicycle, I thought.

However, when push came to shove, I ended up getting a PS1 for Final Fantasy VII and Castlevania SotN. Of course I still traded back and forth with my friend who had a Nintendo 64 with Mario and Ocarina of Time, but I remain happy with my decision.
 
Yeah I hated this game when I first played it, and it took several years just to accept it on its own terms, and not relate it to the much superior Super Mario World. I must say though, when I finally accepted that we would get no real sequel to SMW, I was able to enjoy it and it is now one of my favorite games of all time. And after the New Super Mario Bros-series even brought 2D-Mario back, I am again happy with the franchise and even more so with this game.
 
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