Super Mario 64
Platform Played On: Nintendo 64
ABOUT
Super Mario 64 is a game that was made for the Nintendo 64 that was a tie in game for the system. It's also one of the first 3d platformers that truly revolutionized the 3d platformer Genre as a hold, Prior to Mario 64 many game developers tried to take the leap into 3d platformers but typically either failed or succeed with little fanfare. It is a very important game in Video Game History.
STORY
The story follows Mario who gets invited over for a cake that Princess Toadstool Peach made for him. However, When Mario arrived to the castle, He learned that nearly everyone was trapped inside the castle walls all due to Bowser. It's up to Mario to save the day by jumping through paintings and get the Power Stars.
GAMEPLAY
Unlike it's predecessors, Super Mario 64 plays very differently from any other Mario Game of the time. Since you move in 3 dimensions, The movement has changed quite drastically. One of the first things you find out is that there's no run button and instead of Mushrooms and Fire Flower, You can punch enemies but you can still stomp on enemies. Addition to this, You can actually do a ground pound to hit harder enemies or obstacles to destroy them. The only Abilities you have in this game Is stuff like the Wing Cap where you can soar through the skies after a triple jump or shooting out of a canon. Metal Mario in which your jumps are shorter but you can traverse under water floor much easier and better. Invisible Mario in which you can walk through various objects to go into secrets or a way to progress the level. Pretty much, The Abilities just allows you to traverse differently and they become very important to you. Instead of heading to the end of a level, You have objectives in this game. Typically you have the same world but depending on what objective it is, There's slight changes made to the level specifically for the Objective. It never gets boring either as you go around to do something, you notice that you can do something else that you could do later to get another Power Star. There's also plenty of Secrets within this game that is begging for you to find too! This game also has various boss battles, Depending on your playstyle and how you go about this game, You can find various bosses to fight in the game and they're typically really fun to do, Though my biggest complaint is the Bowser boss fights. The first time isn't bad but the third one is where it's the absolute worse. Prior, You just need to pick up Bowser and sling him 1 single time into the Spiky bomb things. However, The final battle, You need to do it 3 times and not only that, He has many types of attacks that he can pull, and the cherry on top is how the Arena crubles into a star Pattern. Legit, I hate doing the fight and it's the reason why I never finished the DS remake when I was a kid x_x. But defeating the boss? Absolute satisfaction.
MUSIC
The Music is absolutely some of the most Iconic tunes in any video game soundtrack. Some tracks like Jolly Roger Bay is something I can never get tired of listening and a Track you'll hear multiple times through the entire game. However it can be quite of an issue of repeating tracks and mainly regarding one Track in particular in which originally it was for the Slide but it seems like they just ran out of time and used the song in various other places especially the last two levels (Tick Tock Clock and Rainbow Ride It's litterally in the same zone too.). I mean, I love the song but, It can be quite repetitive when it's in the final Area. Overall, I don't hate the music, They're all great tracks, But depending on how you are, You may or may not like the repeating factor of the songs.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Super Mario 64 is a very influential and one of the best Mario games you'll ever play, No matter how long ago that this game was made, It's a game that you can pick it up and play for absolute hours at a time. The controls may be a bit iffy at times though playing the PC Port that people made or Emulators may actually play better than the real hardware surprisingly. But since I did play on Real Hardware, I can tell you firehand that there are performance issues that is a lot more noticable. Other than that, There's a reason why thousands upon thousands of people are playing this game every single day. It even gets better with the introduction of Romhacks in which I must say, WOW, I'm very impressed with what they have to offer.