Year: 1996
Genre: 3D platforming
Developer(s): Nintendo EAD
Nº of players: 1
Publisher: Nintendo of America, Inc.
Recently, something happened which I greatly lament, although it didn’t exactly plunge me into depression or anything. Gustavo “Gus” Rodríguez, editor of Mexico’s official Nintendo magazine, Club Nintendo (“ClubNin” or “CN” to her friends), passed away on April 11 of this year at the age of 61.
“ClubNin” began publishing on December 1991. Much like the US equivalent, Nintendo Power, it had news, reports of such game expos as E3 and Nintendo World, previews and reviews of the latest games, cheats, walkthroughs, answers to individual readers, nostalgia sections and various other things, all of it directly related to the Nintendo universe. They had a colossal bias towards Nintendo -an imposition from “above”, i.e. the brand’s numerous distributors in Mexico-, which constantly made them contradict themselves -CD has always been the best format; Nintendo abandoned the SNES-CD; now cartridges have always the best format-, praising stuff they shouldn’t have -the Virtual Boy- and claiming some real nonsense -one time they claimed Lugia is a fusion between Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres-. But there was a good reason to overlook all of that; the writing style was humorous, complicit; it gave the feeling of a casual conversation between friends about video games, not just an adult gamer talking down to kids. There was no excess of that, nor the excess of snark that reigned supreme in European mags. Even if you didn’t own any Nintendo consoles or games, their camaraderie made it pleasant to read.
I have since understood this all had a great influence on my own writing style and my own aspirations for my retro reviews – to relate what the game is like, on an introductory level, and then giving my personal impressions of it while avoiding the “angry reviewer” and other mean-spirited stereotypes. I regret the loss of Gus, no matter the criticism I might have -and had- for the magazine, and I wish to make this review as a homage to him.
Keep in mind; all the games I review are usually emulated, because I can’t acquire nor maintain a huge game collection, but since Nintendo 64 emulation is terrible since 1999, I have to rely on physical hardware for it. So, if I don’t have an N64 game, I can’t review it. And this is Super Mario 64; the game that made me interested in video games. I gotta do it justice. But that’s another story.
For now, let us, as the commercials for the Game Boy Color used to say, “get into it”.
——————————————————————————————————————
The story of the game, as simple and sufficient as you’d expect from Mario, is as follows. Princess Toadstool, “Peach”, has invited Mario to her castle to eat a cake she’s just baked for him. When Mario arrives, he finds no one, except for Toad cowering in a corner of the lobby. Talking to him reveals what would be a discouraging situation for anyone but the heroic plumber: the evil Bowser, King of the Koopas, has kidnapped Peach. Again! But that’s not all; he’s also stolen the Power Stars that protects the castle, and with their power he’s created worlds filled with creatures -good and bad- and obstacles inside the paintings and walls. His goal is for his creations to overflow from their worlds and become an army he will use to take over the castle, and then, the entire Mushroom Kingdom. Mario is the only one who can enter these worlds and collect the Stars which are hiding in each, as well as the fifteen Secret Stars hidden by Peach herself before her capture, so that he may face Bowser and defeat him.
To be truthful, there is a 3D platforming game from 1990, six years earlier than this game: Alpha Waves, a French game for Amiga (called “Continuum” in the Américas). Don’t ask me if it’s any good; I’ve never played it -nor are my expectations for it to be good very high-.
Anyway. Super Mario 64 is a 3D platformer, a genre which had its moment of greatest popularity in the mid and late 1990s. In each of the large worlds, or “Courses”, of the game, there’s a number of Power Stars to collect for the purpose of opening access to more worlds -located behind locked doors with a number indicating how many Stars are required to open them-, in whhich to locate more Stars, and so on, until you reach the end. Peach’s castle serves as a hub from which you may access these Courses, while counting as something of a Course itself -the reason for the Secret Stars to exist-. These Stars are earned by accomplishing certain objectives: defeating bosses, solving puzzles, win races against other characters, collecting eight Red Coins -the recurring objective par excellence- and other stuff. One of the things this formula does stupendously is to have an “open” nature. It’s not necessary to collect every Star in every Course to proceed to the next ones, and it’s not necessary to collect them in a specific order either. In fact, it’s completely possible to defeat the last instance of Bowser and see the ending without having collected the 120 Stars there are in total -the only thing that’s different is Bowser’s final dialogue… and one other thing, but that’s for my readers to find out if they don’t know already-. Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of Mario, once referred to this by assuring that anyone could finish his game, whether they were an experienced player or not -or at least, Club Nintendo claims he did-.
Mario has an impressive amount of moves, all of which are at his disposal from the very beginning of the game and often explained to the player through signs they can read, on the Courses, the castle and its grounds. Not only are you able to jump and run, but also punch, kick, trip the enemies, triple-jump (three successive jumps ending in a forward somersault), backwards somersault, side-somersault, and long jump, as well as crawlon the floor, pick up and throw objects, hang from certain ceilings, descend from poles, swim underwater, pound the ground with your butt (yeah), slide down slopes… And not just all of that; there are ways to find special Switches, which, as in Super Mario World, can be activated to make certain red, green and blue Blocks visible. These blocks contain special Caps which give Mario special, limited-time powers, such as flying, turning into Metal Mario -indestructible, so heavy he can walk on the bottom of the sea- or becoming invisible and immaterial to walk through walls. However, such classic items as the Mushroom or the Fire Flower are absent, and there are no equivalents.
You can also talk to pink Bob-Ombs so that they’ll activate special cannons, from which you’re able to shoot yourself like a human cannonball to reach certain places. In later worlds, it’s even possible for Mario to lose his normal cap -revealing a brown pompadour underneath-, which makes enemy attacks do more damage than normal and presses you to retrieve the cap as soon as possible.
Bowser is a boss three times; the doors leading to him are indicated with large stars, and lead to more linear Courses, at the end of each of which is a gigantic Bowser with a deep, growling voice. The fights against him -which are counted among the most memorable parts of the game- consist of managing to get behind him, grab him by the tail and rotate the Control Stick in circles to swing him around, until you throw him away by pressing B, like in hammer toss; the goal is to throw him at the bombs around the platform. When defeated, he drops keys which open doors to the castle’s basement, first, and the upper floors later. Later, in other encounters with him, he demonstrates more powers other than breathing fire, including teleporting and causing shockwaves by stomping his feet.
A 1996 fragment from the Mexican TV show “Nintendo Manía”, more or less the same thing as the magazine but in live-action. Hosted by Gus, his son Javier Rodríguez Ávila, and a rotating cast, the show ran from 1995 to 2000. Many more VHS recordings of complete episodes can be found on YouTube.
Another great aspect of the game is that, despite the enormous amount of crucial elements there are to gameplay on a basic level -a level from I’m writing this-, it’s never hard to learn how to play. Some Stars are harder to get than others; sometimes depending on the player’s experience -try to get a small child to face the Chain Chomp alone and see what happens-, sometimes because of Course design -my absolute most hated ones are 14 and 15, Tick-Tock Clock and Rainbow Ride respectively-, sometimes because of reasons which involve little logic -how come the only way I could climb on the roof of Big Boo’s Haunt was by crawling?). But the majority of the game’s rules and how to follow it is clear from the beginning. In any good game for general audiences, Nintendo’s primary trait, it is crucial that the player be able to “pick up and play”, and Super Mario 64 is outstanding in that respect.
Cover of the magazine’s July 1996 issue, commenting on that year’s E3 where the first N64 games were shown.
It’s not a perfect game, of course. One of its potential flaws may or may not be the recurrence of collecting eight Red Coins, and later, finding and stepping on five secret spots. After a while, someone might become bored and think “Isn’t there anything else? More bosses or anything?”.
But definitely the biggest problem -as it was of the game’s many, many imitators- is the camera. The camera is controlled by the yellow C buttons, which let you move it around yourself, push it close, pull it away, and look around in all directions from behind Mario’s head. But you don’t move the camera; you simply change its angle, for it’s only able to take you in from predetermined angles under the excuse that Lakitu -the turtle on a floating cloud- is a “seasoned cameraman” and knows where best to show the action from -one of my favorite moments from the game is when you look at yourself on a mirror and Lakitu is reflected with you-. Thus, many times you’re simply unable to put it in a comfortable angle with you; at the least, in a least inconvenient one; and on top of that, Lakitu tends to move on his own anyway (particularly when you’re walking on narrow bridges) leaving you unable to see where you’re going unless you’re constantly reining him in. Since “looking around” is moving Mario’s head while he’s standing still, you can’t look on all directions because you can’t spin his head that far (or else he’d be Regan MacNeil from The Exorcist).
And there’s one thing I really detest. Flying with the Wing Cap is enormously uncomfortable. Mario is constantly descending; you can keep him steady for a while, but sooner or later he’ll dive down by his own weight and immediately climb back up (with a yell of “Yippee!”), but you can’t ascend higher than that anymore, and manuevering in mid-air feels very, very stiff. Stars such as collecting the eight Red Coins on the Red Switch’s Course force you to get them on your first try perfectly.
In conclusion: Super Mario 64 is that rare, almost-unreachable ideal; an original that has very, very, very difficult to surpass. Nothing less could be expected from an adventure with Mario, a character with games so timeless that each new game of any of them still feels like the first one.
Rest in peace, Gus, until we, the Nintendomaníacos and Nintendomaníacas, meet you again.
¡Estamos en contact!
“Gus” Rodríguez
1958-2020
Ognimod in English! 