Review
Release Date: 12.16.1996
Platform:
Nintendo 64Developer:
Nintendo Co., Ltd.Publisher:
Nintendo of America, Inc.Reviewed by
Brian J. Balsan on 4.27.2003
| Review Rating: 9/10 | User Rating: 9.02/10 |
Talk about speeding out of the game with a broken left leg.
That's the best way to describe the launch of the Nintendo 64. After numerous delays and the decision to make the system cartridge-based, the third parties left in droves for the greener pastures of CD-ROM media.
But it was Mario 64 alone that was worth the first-day sell-outs of N64 systems around the country. To this day people wonder if Gaming God Shigeru Miyamoto didn't give us too much too soon, since only his Zelda games could compare to the majesty that was Mario 64.
In his first 3D adventure (and first true Mario game since...well...Super Mario RPG) Mario is summoned to Princess Peach's castle for a party. However, when Mario reaches the castle he discovers that Bowser has once again kidnapped the princess, and to make sure he couldn't be reached seperated 120 stars and sealed them into paintings. It's up to Mario to enter these paintings and reclaim the stars, ultimately saving Princess Peach once again from the claws of the persistant overgrown lizard.
You start the game outside the castle, and right away you can feel the freedom given to you. You don't need to enter the castle right away; you can learn to do a variety of tricks including backflip jumps and superkicks, you can swim and climb trees, and other neat stuff. You can then go inside the castle and explore the hallway. But it's when you jump into your first painting does the game truely begin. Each painting holds 7 stars; 6 are done through an ingeniously-new hint system, and one is acquired by collecting 100 coins in all of the total 15 worlds. 15 of these stars need to be collected by other means.
Again, you can feel the freedom in this game right away when you jump into your first painting. Though you may see a star with a hint on it, that doesn't mean you're forced to collect that particular star. There's a good chance you might accidentally stumble onto the fifth star in the order. And the requirements to obtaining the stars are...as stated before...mentioned in the hints offered. You may have to fight a huge bob-omb at the top of a hill, a race a giant koopa, or get fired from a cannon onto a small platform that would otherwise be unreachable...The stars are all over the place. Also hiding about the castle are slides and colored cap powerups that will help your adventure out tremendously.
Graphics are simply astounding. Right away Mario 64 was showing us what the N64 could do in the right hands. Each would is huge, with a lot of things to do in each. Mario himself is bursting with life. He breathes when he's standing still, he bends into the direction that he's running or pulls back for a U-turn, he flips, jumps, punches, kicks...Mario has certainly evolved from the NES days.
Controls in the game are genuinely easy to get a grasp on. Even with a controller that generated mixed feelings like the N64's, virtually everyone could pick the game up and go. Analog control was the newest thing in '96, and no other game best used it than Mario 64. Pushing the stick slightly makes Mario tiptoe or walk, Pushing it all the way in one direction makes him run, and tilting the analog stick while running make Mario turn in that direction.
Koji Kondo once again returns to do another Mario game. Music in Mario 64 is pretty good, considering that there probably wasn't much space left after the amount of graphics and gameplay that was put into the cart. Unfortunately, this also means that there isn't enough soundtrack to go around; a problem Kondo-san also had with Yoshi's Island.
Despite that overly-minor flaw, Super Mario 64, in the tradition of Nintendo launch titles, was an instant classic, just like Super Mario World and Super Mario Bros. before it. Again, a game of this stature had people wondering if Nintendo didn't offer us too much too soon.
Because for 1996, it certainly was ahead of its time.
