Super Mario 64 - More Than a Game

I want you to imagine playing Super Mario 64  for the first time, back when it was new. You   hear Mario’s voice for the first time as the  game starts up. You take your first steps in   the courtyard and acclimate yourself to the  controls. You wander into the backyard and   stare at that strange star statue. You meander  through the halls of the castle’s basement and   feel uneasy over its claustrophobic corridors. You  find secret areas all throughout the game, leaving   you to wonder what else is possible across these  wonderfully weird levels. You learn to sideflip,   wall kick, and triple jump for the first time and  you find applications for these new moves. Like   most everyone that played the game upon release,  you would have been amazed by how revolutionary   this game was, but I doubt you could have  imagined the amount of rumours, stories,   videos, art, and raw passion that would spawn  from just existing within these castle walls. Super Mario 64 may be over 25 years old, but  it is more than just a game in the modern day.   Everything about it - its levels, its movement,  its secrets, and its atmosphere - have all   inspired the imaginations of millions around the  world. Today, we’re going to be diving into all   of that. How the game came to be, what made  the game so endearing, how the game has aged,   and how its multifaceted community has kept its  memory alive for over two and a half decades. I’m Liam Triforce and this is a video about  Super Mario 64 and its massive, enduring legacy. To create a game that no one has made before  - this was the ultimate challenge for many   designers and programmers from the 1970s all  the way up to the late 1990s. Creating a game   for which there is no precedent is a daunting  task, filled with frustrating bouts of trial and   error. Throughout these decades of pioneering,  we received platformers, first-person shooters,   action-adventure games, fighting games, puzzle  games and many more that all broke ground in   their respective fields. But when something  has never been done before - something that   lays the groundwork for all future games of  its kind - where does that idea come from? Our creative endeavours are often just  amalgamations of everything that we’ve consumed.   For example, my content is essentially a blend of  the channels I watched in my formative years as   a creator. The notion of a work being “original”  is often a blend of several ideas coming together   to form something you haven’t seen before.  When it came to creating “firsts” in the   interactive medium, inspiration usually came from  outside sources and discoveries made during the   development process. For example, Tetris was  inspired by those pentomino puzzles wherein   you have to fit all of the pieces inside a single  space. Tetris’ original designer translated this   concept to a computer, wherein seven tetrominoes  would fall randomly from the top of the screen,   and the player would have to fill the screen to  the best of their ability. It wasn’t until he was   testing his idea that he realized completed lines  would take up a lot of space, so he eventually   decided to have them be deleted once cleared,  effectively creating the Tetris gameplay loop.   Ocarina of Time’s staff had a desire to  translate the engaging sword combat of Zelda 2   into 3D, but there was no precedent  for something like this at the time.   Key members of the staff took a trip to the Toei  Kyoto Studio Park and watched a chanbara show   that was being put on. During the show, the hero  would often be swarmed by like 20 enemies at once,   and yet he’d always prevail. Yoshiaki Koizumi  - one of the game’s directors - noticed that   only one enemy would attack the hero at a time in  accordance with the script, and that gave him the   idea for Z-targeting specific enemies. Toru  Osawa - another director - took note of the   way the fighters moved in the kusarigama show,  and the two combined their ideas to create the   Z-targeting combat that the final game features.  The camera shifts to focus on a single target,   and you can switch targets on the fly to manage  hordes of enemies. Now, lock-on systems are   commonplace in 3D action games, adventure games,  third-person shooters and countless others. While Ocarina of Time and Super Mario 64 were  developed concurrently, Ocarina of Time came out   after most of the staff had already experienced  the trial and error of developing the latter.   There was even less of an existing template for 3D  games when development began on Mario 64 in 1994.   But few companies knew how to tread  uncharted territory like Nintendo. Super Mario 64 technically wasn’t the first 3D  platformer, as there were other platformers trying   to take advantage of the jump to 3D graphics in  their own ways. There were isometric platformers   and games in which you run forward from a  three-dimensional perspective, but the first   true 3D platform game was called Alpha Waves -  released on home computers in 1990. You could move   forward and backward and turn left  and right with the directional keys,   a setup that we would later come to know as “tank  controls.” This control scheme permeated most   early 3D platforming efforts; you can feel  them in games like Jumping Flash from 1995   and Bubsy 3D from 1996. Jumping Flash actually  happens to be a pretty fun game for what it is,   as you jump around open-ended levels looking for  a specific number of MacGuffins to unlock the next   level, as well as power-ups for your blaster  to help you shoot enemies. The first-person   perspective and the viewpoint panning down during  jumps also helped alleviate the issue of depth   perception when viewing a two-dimensional  image of a three-dimensional world,   and the general non-linear structure of each  level could be seen as a starting point for the   structure that Mario 64 would eventually adopt.  Bubsy 3D utilized most of the 3D platforming   framework seen in Jumping Flash, but it was  far more annoying to play due to the sensitive   controls, dull level design, textureless  environmental graphics…and Bubsy himself. “Good thing I’m a cartoon!!” Crash Bandicoot, released in 1996, was perhaps the  most noteworthy example of these early efforts,   and its structure remained unique against Super  Mario 64. The concept seems rather simple,   as they took the perspective of a typical  2D platformer, put the camera behind Crash   and allowed him to move in eight directions,  but it was what they did with that concept   that made Crash such a fun game. The controls,  however, were not as tight as they needed to be.   While they did break away from the tank controls  in order to allow for more freedom of movement,   the D-Pad still limited you. As the  platforming becomes increasingly more precise,   using digital buttons to perform very specific  actions - combined with Crash’s sluggish mid-air   movement - made certain scenarios way more  challenging than they should have been.   The controls would obviously be cleaned up in  the sequels, but that’s a story for another day. The point is - most controllers at the time  used D-Pads, which were ill-equipped to deal   with the challenges of platforming in a 3D  space, even in the most ideal setups like   Crash Bandicoot. Digital inputs can only have  on or off values, meaning that the button is   either pressed or it isn’t. Basically, it  goes from 0% to 100% with no in-between.   Analog input, however, can factor in all of the  values in between. Therefore, Nintendo looked to   an input method that had been abandoned since  the Atari age when designing the Nintendo 64. Nintendo was in a unique position when  developing Super Mario 64, as they were   able to design the game in conjunction with  the hardware it was running on. To this day,   this is a philosophy that Nintendo still uses. The  Wii and Wii Sports, the Wii U and Nintendo Land   and the Nintendo Switch and Super Mario Odyssey  all featured the collaborative efforts between   game designers and console architects. While  Shigeru Miyamoto was working on Mario 64,   he and the other team members could only test out  Mario’s movement through an SGI Onyx computer.   Miyamoto desired an analog stick to give  Mario 360 degrees of movement. Obviously,   hindsight is 20/20, but tank controls wouldn’t  have been very intuitive and they wouldn’t   have felt like “Mario.” The console architects  presented Miyamoto not with an analog stick, but   an analog thumbstick. Other than an obscure Sega  Genesis controller called the XE-1 AP, an analog   thumbstick was seldom attempted. As absurd as the  design seemed back then, the thumbstick allowed   for the rest of your fingers to be free to press  other buttons, specifically the Z-trigger on the   back. The freedom that this thumbstick afforded  players eventually dictated Mario’s movement. This didn’t come easy, though. With tank controls,  you could move the viewpoint by turning left and   right. Being able to move Mario freely like this  meant you were unable to do this. The next several   months were spent deciding on how the heck they  were supposed to go about implementing the camera.   Giles Goddard - who programmed Mario’s face on  the title screen - said that the team went through   “probably thousands” of camera setups because  Miyamoto couldn’t decide on what worked best.   I mean, no one had really done anything like  that before. Should it be fixed in one position?   Should we allow players to control it? Should  we use a slew of dynamic angles for each level?   Eventually, they settled on a combination of the  three, and Takumi Kawagoe implemented each one in   specific scenarios depending on what needed  to be seen, and how much control the player   needed. Wherever the camera was pointed would  be where Mario would travel if you pushed north   on the analog stick, which was an insanely clever  and intuitive way to solve a complicated problem.   However, this took up most of the game’s  development time, and the actual level   design was kind of frantically performed at the  very end. Certain levels were almost “thrown   together,” according to Miyamoto. He wanted  to have 32 courses in the final game, but   this number was cut in half as it simply wasn’t  feasible in the time they had, even with a delay. The Nintendo 64’s launch was delayed from the 1995  holiday season to the summer of 1996 so that the   game could be finished. This took time away from  Nintendo throwing their hat in the ring during the   fifth generation, but then-president of Nintendo  Hiroshi Yamauchi gave Miyamoto the extra time   “unconditionally.” After the control and camera  had both been settled on and a handful of courses   were…relatively complete, the game and the console  it ran on finally made their debut at Nintendo   Space World in November 1995. Visitors to the  event were abuzz over Mario’s control scheme.   People of all ages were clamouring  for a test run. Even Mario’s big,   beautiful face was so mesmerizing that Giles  Goddard programmed a way for players to mess   with it on the title screen and create art. The  game never tells you that you can do this, but by   touching the analog stick you can enter goofy  mode and start pulling on his nose and stuff.   This little secret foreshadowed the endless wonder  that awaited players inside the castle walls.   In footage from Space World, you can see just how  much players sucked at the game because they had   never experienced anything like it. It seemed  like a magical time to be a video game fan.   With but a single game, Nintendo was able to  sell millions on their console. Lee Hutchinson,   a writer for Ars Technica that worked at  Babbage’s in the 90s (now known as GameStop),   had this to say about the effect the  game had on the launch of the system: “The lack of launch titles proved to  be no impediment at all to sales—Super   Mario 64 carried the day almost entirely on  its own. The rule that a console must have   a broad spectrum of launch titles to appeal to  the North American audience was generally true,   but Nintendo found the exception: a single amazing  title, with well-implemented 3D gameplay that most   console players had never experienced, could bear  the weight of the entire system on its shoulders.” The game’s impact was felt immediately. Analog  thumbsticks are now an industry standard,   and several 3D games to come would emulate Mario  64’s control scheme within their own unique   contexts. The structure of the game would directly  inspire countless other 3D platformers to come.   Nearly every 3D game to follow can  trace at least a portion of its DNA   back to the things that Mario 64 pioneered. While it’s hard to agree with every decision he’s  made since the Nintendo 64, it is impossible to   deny just how much of an impact Miyamoto has had  on the interactive medium. And in developing Super   Mario 64, he provided an alternative approach  to the philosophy on “originality” I discussed   earlier. Super Mario 64 evaluated the problems  that D-Pads created for 3D games, and instead   opted to use analog control in an entirely new  way. The star-collecting structure of the game was   born from the notion that a “point-A to point-B”  approach to level design wouldn’t represent much   of a jump for a 3D platformer, and their solution  was to give players complete freedom over how they   decided to reach that 70-star goal. The dynamic  camera system, as well as the decision to allow   players to have control over where they point  it, allowed players to acquaint themselves with   an unfamiliar perspective. These key elements  were inspired by things that didn’t work,   and so the developers sought solutions to these  problems. While borrowing from works you respect   is a great thing, it is equally important to  evaluate and borrow from ideas that failed   or otherwise have strong potential. They saw the  cracks and found ways to fill them, much like   Alpha Waves did in 1990 with its controls and  complex mathematical equations for displaying   its graphics, or Jumping Flash in 1995 with its  open-ended level design and shift in perspective.   And for that, I have the utmost respect  for the people behind Super Mario 64. In short - seemingly unprecedented ideas  always have precedents. Whether they exist   in other games, a different medium, from  nature or from life experience - originality   always has its inspirations. It’s all  about how you conceal your sources   and interpret your inspirations, and in this  case - Super Mario 64 got everything right. I don’t remember a lot about my first playthrough  of Super Mario 64, but I do remember the castle   and courtyard leaving a huge impact on me. The  nature of the game’s primary input method left   room for players to be completely overwhelmed, and  I believe that is how the courtyard came to be.   The game tells you to head over the castle, but  you can march to the beat of your own drum out   here. There’s no music, no urgency to speak  of, you haven’t yet been informed of Bowser’s   arrival - all that exists to accompany you  are the sounds of birds chirping and a rushing   waterfall nearby. You can read the signs  to learn more about how to control Mario,   you can test out your moveset, climb trees,  learn to swim - when I first played this game,   I spent several minutes just playing around  with the controls out here. This area truly   feels like home, or like the street outside  my house where I learned to ride my bike,   and the courtyard is merely an extension of  my home away from home - the castle itself. As a central hub, Princess Peach’s Castle blew my  mind as a kid. Every single door held yet another   mystery. But what made it so special was how it  played into the structure of the game itself.   Each door may require a certain number of  stars, but which stars you choose to go for   are completely up to you. 1 star could lead you to  either Peach’s secret slide or Whomp’s Fortress.   3 stars could mean either Cool, Cool Mountain or  Jolly Roger Bay. The key to the basement means   access to Lethal Lava Land, Shifting Sand Land  and Hazy Maze Cave all at once, and so on. So   long as you meet those star requirements, you can  explore and experiment to your heart’s content.   This is true for the levels as well. While the  game funnels you into Bob-omb Battlefield first   and the hint before you enter alludes to King  Bob-omb on the summit, you are free to roam   the plains at your leisure. As you run along the  main path, you’ll no doubt spot some red coins.   They are strategically placed along Bob-omb  Battlefield’s level elements to introduce   concepts, and each time you grab one, it’ll  briefly flash the amount that you’ve collected.   This red coin is placed about these rotating  platforms, and these things actually become   crucial in conveying the importance of timing  your jumps. They lower and raise, and one will   flip over when it reaches the top, causing Mario  to slide off. This is an optional challenge, but   it becomes mandatory in Whomp’s Fortress, as it  is your only way up to King Whomp. Variations of   these platforms appear throughout the game. In the  Vanish Cap stage, they are much larger in size,   but they appear over a bottomless pit, making  the red coins a bit riskier to go for and the   platforming more daunting. The flipping blocks  in Tick Tock Clock, while visually different,   serve the same purpose in gameplay with a much  tighter window for jumping. The windmill platforms   in the Bowser stages are also reminiscent  of the same concept, with the final set of   platforms serving as your last obstacle between  you and the end of the stage, and falling off   of them means losing a lot of progress. All  of these level elements can be traced back to   this one red coin in Bob-omb Battlefield,  and this one hurdle in Whomp’s Fortress. Other red coins, like this one on the hill  or these two just outside the main path   reward taking your first steps into true  exploration and even manipulation of the camera.   These red coins teach you about slippery slopes,  and briefly introduce you to the sliding controls,   which are further tested in Peach’s secret slide  behind a 1-star door. This red coin sits atop a   floating island, which remains a mystery until  you either unlock the cannon, the Wing Cap,   or you gather all of your knowledge of the  game’s mechanics and perform a super specific   jump to make it over. This red coin can only be  obtained if you conquer your crippling fear of   the Chain Chomp. This thing terrified me as a  kid. The way it abruptly jumps out toward you,   the loudness of its bark… but you can grab a  red coin once you learn his pattern of attack,   and even ground pound the post that  has him chained down for a star.   This level is merely a sampling of the imagination  that made Super Mario 64 famous. It has subtle   tutorials like the platforms, the strategically  placed red coins, and the fact that King Bob-omb   teaches players how to judge distance and  positioning when interacting with things. King   Bob-omb may just wander slowly towards you, but  for someone’s first 3D gaming experience - this   boss is essential. The race with Koopa the Quick  also pushes players to optimize their movement,   a test of their experience with Mario’s abilities.  And the mysteriously titled “Mario Wings to the   Sky” alludes to those mystifying hollow item boxes  that float in certain places across the level,   which asks players to search for the solution  inside the castle walls. The creativity and   freedom at play distinguishes itself from the  design of previous Mario games, and the level does   an excellent job setting up the magic and wonder  of both what is possible with Mario’s abilities,   and the settings for which you can apply them,  and Bob-Omb Battlefield’s relatively harmless   terrain and compact size make it the perfect  starting level. In that regard, this level,   as well as the game’s overall structure, function  similarly to World 1-1 in Super Mario Bros.   Every time you’d lose all your lives, you’d have  to replay that level and you’d keep getting better   at it until you’ve eventually mastered it. This is  true for each course that Mario explores. Although   the stars each have different objectives, you’re  running through the same areas for different   reasons. This organically allows players to become  more knowledgeable about each level and how they   can use Mario’s moves to the fullest extent, until  they eventually have to conquer each Bowser level. Red coins continue to push players to memorize  level layouts and to look for secrets in each   level, while also challenging them to use Mario’s  moveset and the camera effectively. Whether that   means carefully jumping across floating islands  in Whomp’s Fortress, checking clams underwater   in Jolly Roger Bay, working through limited  platforming space in Tall, Tall Mountain’s   cliffside challenges, or putting mastery over your  movement to the test in Rainbow Ride’s vertical   maze. The special Bowser levels that block access  to the castle’s other sections also contain 8 red   coins for a secret power star, and they challenge  you to go beyond the level layouts, which already   compress all of the concepts taught and tested  across each level into one tough endurance run   of platforming brilliance. Each element appears  in some form across various levels - rotating   platforms, moving platforms, skinny and winding  platforms, elevators, wall jumping, lava and   its tendency to raise and lower to conceal  platforms, as well as vertical level design   that calls back to the upstairs levels and their  infatuation with having the player climb upwards. Each star hints at a new challenge or secret in  a level, which drives your imagination as you   venture off into the unknown. Some star names can  be vague or misleading; “Pluck the Piranha Flower”   actually refers to the reward you get for killing  the big Piranha flowers in Tiny-Huge Island,   “Pyramid Puzzle” in Shifting Sand Land is way  too generic of a name (even if the key inevitably   reveals itself when you accidentally  stumble upon one of the secret spots),   while “Wall Kicks Will Work” in Cool, Cool  Mountain doesn’t exactly give you a concrete hint   as to where you need to be looking. With that  said, certain vague star names can really get   your imagination flowing. “Through the Jet Stream”  in Jolly Roger Bay can potentially appear long   before you have the prerequisite for obtaining  the star in question. Then comes “Metal-head Mario   Can Move” in Hazy Maze Cave, which alludes to a  secret door that you need to have found in the   depths of the cave. It leads to the green switch,  8 red coins and the discovery of the Metal Cap! Imagination and discovery are at the heart of  Super Mario 64. Stars like the secret Wiggler cave   and the “itty bitty secrets” in Tiny-Huge Island  reveal a secret layer to the level. Shifting   Sand Land’s four pillars reveal the entrance  to the huge pyramid that sits in the center,   and it too contains several secrets of  its own, like the secret boss battle,   the star that sits at the top as a reward for  your platforming, and the aforementioned “Pyramid   Puzzle” that might seem vague at first, but with  the compact size of the pyramid itself - it ends   up being a fair challenge trying to find all of  the secret spots. Tall, Tall Mountain had that   secret slide that was just barely visible on the  mountainside, and completing it grants you another   Power Star. Jumping into Lethal Lava Land’s active  volcano for an attempt at two more Power Stars,   the coin trail in the cabin on Cool, Cool Mountain  that leads you through a secret path in the slide,   Big Boo’s Haunt and its assortment of doors  and intersecting pathways as you try to hunt   for boos and red coins, finding the Koopa shell  in Snowman’s Land and climbing up to the igloo,   the secret town in Wet Dry World  that sits flooded and abandoned… Oh, and Hazy Maze Cave caused my imagination to  run wild as a kid. There were so many secret paths   and ways that the maze intersected. The toxic maze  had multiple exits that led to different stars,   and the red coin room had an upper level that  challenged your ability to accurately time your   jumps. I remember my mind being blown when I  realized that there was an elevator that took   you down to a dank cavern full of water, which  was not only home to the friendly sea monster   named Dorrie, but also a couple secrets of its  own, including the unlockable Metal Cap that   enables you to collect more stars! This game is an  emphatically joyous wonderland of experimentation,   exploration and riddles. These secrets seemed  like an extension of Super Mario Bros. 3 and   Super Mario World, with Mario 3’s secret flute  and hidden goodies in each level, and Mario   World’s plentiful secret exits that lead to more  levels and the elusive Star Road and bonus stages. This is also why I adored the castle itself.  It was more than just a hub for you to access   levels - it had theming, as well as secret  stars accessible with some clever thinking.   A ray of light eventually shines down from the  ceiling on the castle’s main floor, and looking   up at it transports you to the Wing Cap stage. A  1-Up sitting in an alcove in the room containing   Jolly Roger Bay hints at a secret area accessible  in the alcove on the opposite side. The water in a   room off the beaten path in the basement can be  drained by ground-pounding some pillars through   the pathway. This also drains the castle moat  and gives you access to the Vanish Cap stage!   And I always had a soft spot for the entrance to  Snowman’s Land. The entrance to Snowman’s Land is   in a nearby wall that doesn’t have a painting on  it, which is first conveyed in the basement with   the entrance to Shifting Sand Land. While this  secret wowed me as a kid, I remember it fondly   for its atmosphere. As soon as you walk into the  room, you’re confronted with a giant mirror and   no proper level painting to speak of. I don’t  know what it is, but something about seeing   Mario and the Lakitu that controls the camera  reflected in the mirror always hypnotized me.   Miyamoto likes to experiment with multiple oddball  concepts during the development of his games,   and I like to think that this mirror was one of  them. Same goes for the entrance to Tiny-Huge   Island - you have three paintings, with two  entrances that trigger each mode for the island.   There’s a medium-sized hall, a teensy-tiny little  hall, and a massive, lengthy hall, and yet they   all look similar when you first enter the room.  Their scale doesn’t become apparent until you walk   toward the paintings. This effect may not have  aged as well as the mirror room, but it’s another   example of strong theming in each of the castle’s  areas. The endless stair effect is a pretty simple   programming trick in hindsight, but again - the  effect was really cool back then. The final area   before Bowser’s endless stairs has the clock and  the symmetrical entrances to both Rainbow Ride   and a bonus level involving the Wing Cap. The  walls of this room are painted to resemble   the sky at twilight, potentially representing  the twilight of your playthrough approaching.   Maybe I’m reading too deep into it, but that’s  why I always felt this area was distinct.   After all, I only had 20 more stars  to go before I could take on Bowser. The levels in Super Mario 64 are so incredibly  diverse, each with a rich atmosphere and unique   theming. After Bob-omb Battlefield and Whomp’s  Fortress give you a nice introduction, you’re   suddenly thrust into an explosion of creativity  that makes Mario the game series that it is.   Cool, Cool Mountain’s snowy, slippery terrain is  accompanied by both an indoor and outdoor slide,   and each slide can have its own objectives with  the baby penguin and the snowman’s rolling head.   Then there’s Big Boo’s Haunt,  which comes seemingly out of   nowhere with its foreboding art direction  and ominous music. It focuses on different,   intersecting rooms that each have their  own secrets and shortcuts for stars.   Of course, I can’t forget Jolly Roger Bay with  its soothing melodies over its somber colours   and slower, water-based exploration. Although not  as large as the other levels, it has puzzles and   mysteries of its own with the underwater cave, the  sunken ship and the absolutely nightmarish eel.   Shifting Sand Land has quicksand and multiple  ways to get around, Lethal Lava Land has compact,   but risky platforming segments, Tiny-Huge Island  takes a concept found in Super Mario Bros. 3   and beautifully transitions it into 3D, with  layered puzzle solving between both the small   and giant modes and the organic challenge that  each mode introduces. The levels never stop   feeling distinct from one another. Sure, some  of the upstairs worlds are a bit less glamorous   than the others, and we’ll discuss them in  due time. But paired with the excellent,   precise controls and the exciting levels that  keep on coming, Super Mario 64 is a joy to play,   and the major reason I find it so replayable  is: As you get better, the game gets better. As you go on to solve each of the  riddles that lead to Power Stars,   you’ll no doubt have memorized the level layout to  an extent. And you can put that knowledge to the   ultimate test if you decide to go for the stars  that appear when you collect 100 coins. Oh man,   these stars. This might sound absurd, but I think  the 100-coin stars are some of my favourite stars   to go for in the entire game. They aren’t the most  well-designed stars in the game, as they solely   depend on the player’s ability to collect coins,  and some of them can be particularly infuriating   if the terrain and level layout is often perilous,  as is the case with…Rainbow Ride… But it’s the   routing and rewarding memorization that I love the  most. It feels like a true mark of mastery on each   level, as you look for pockets of coins, find  enemies and interactable objects that net you a   wealth of coins, choose when to enter sub-areas  that net you even more coins - I can feel my   knowledge of the level paying off as I watch that  number go higher. They feel like farewells to the   playgrounds I’ve spent so much of my time in, as  by the time I’m able to collect 100 coins in them,   I’ve basically mastered them. Coins are also  often placed and hidden outside of most mission   objectives, which means further tests of your  ability to explore and use Mario’s many moves. The reason I love the 100-coin stars so much is  because my favourite Power Stars in this game   combine both exploration with clever movement,  which brings us to the best aspect of Super Mario   64, hands down - the movement. For years, 3D  platformers have been trying to live up to the   standard set by this game’s movement. Alongside  the open-ended structure and the sandbox-like   level design, the ways in which you can chain  moves together are a crucial aspect in enabling   player freedom. There are signs plastered  all throughout the castle that inform you   of Mario’s moveset, and certain stars deliberately  enforce certain moves if you want to obtain them.   Certain stars require mastering the art of wall  kicks, and certain ledges and platforms are too   high or far to reach without utilizing a  specific technique. Other moves can make   navigation and fighting enemies much easier,  so it’s best to try all of them out. This is   what I believe most players will be spending  their time on in the courtyard. There’s no   punishment for failing these maneuvers out here,  so you can play around to your heart’s content. The triple jump allows Mario to  reach his highest possible altitude,   but because you need a running start, you need  to make sure you have enough space to maneuver.   The long jump speeds up traversal and can clear  large gaps, but it locks Mario in a straight line.   The sideflip is a quick and easy way to gain  height and it requires less speed and room to   move than a triple jump, but it too locks Mario  in one direction to some extent. Alternatively,   the backflip can be performed from a standstill  and can reach the same heights as the sideflip,   so it’s perfect when you don’t have any room  at all or you don’t feel like moving around,   but it doesn’t really connect with any other moves  in Mario’s kit. The dive, however, does. It is   one of the greatest moves Mario can perform, if  not THE greatest. While it can be risky as Mario   slides forward after performing it, prompting you  to press A and roll out of it to save yourself,   it can be performed while Mario is running,  jumping, triple-jumping or side flipping, and   it clears large distances while also having the  added benefit of the height you gain with these   jumping maneuvers. You can also chain it together  with a long jump to keep your speed going. This brings us to the most important part of  movement in this game. It’s not just about what   each move is capable of in isolation. It is also  very much about how each move connects. Remember   the “Wall Kicks Will Work'' star I alluded to  earlier? This star serves as a perfect tutorial   on why chaining moves together can help you find  one of many solutions to nabbing any given star,   and its placement in the level requires a cheeky  bit of exploration in order for it to be found   in the first place. It combines everything that I  love about this game, while also teaching players   how they can be a better Mario. Basically, you  first have to get enough speed so that Mario can   jump high and far enough to reach the first  wall, and then kick off at the right time so   that he lands on the next platform. The next wall,  however, is much higher than the last, so you’ll   need to perform both a triple jump and another  wall kick optimally to have a chance at running   over to the star. I may have made this look easy,  but that’s because I made several attempts at this   star in my childhood. I just kept throwing myself  at this star until I eventually got a pattern   down and was able to scale the cliffs with ease.  Upon obtaining this star, I believe you will start   to see every level in this game in a new light,  because you will have learned the effectiveness   of combining Mario’s moves to perform feats  that you wouldn’t have thought were possible,   and when applied to the level design - the true  beauty of Super Mario 64 comes to light. When it   comes to freedom, nothing feels more liberating  than finding emergent solutions to problems. One of the reasons I loved Ocarina of Time so  much (and Zelda as a whole) is the fact that   its mechanics enabled more than just the intended  solutions to problems. Whether that means skipping   planting magic beans with a Cucco or cheating a  diving minigame with the Iron Boots, Hookshot and   sneaky pause timing, or perhaps freezing a Moblin  in the Wind Waker and then smashing it to pieces   with the Skull Hammer - it was incredibly  fun to think outside of the box and see how   you could connect different items and mechanics  together to form new solutions. In Super Mario 64,   sometimes there would quite literally  be many ways to climb a mountain. While these emergent solutions don’t have  to be related to movement; for example,   you can obtain the stars in both Jolly Roger Bay  and Dire, Dire Docks that float in the jet streams   by entering the stream at an angle and optimally  performing breast strokes to swim through. This   skips the need to grab the metal cap, meaning you  can collect all of the stars in Jolly Roger Bay   much earlier than intended. That said, movement  is what enables most of these creative solutions.   Big Boo’s Haunt is an example of a level that  thrives on this kind of experimental movement, and   for that it remains one of my favourites. It’s not  just the secretive design of certain stars and the   ominous art direction and musical accompaniment  that I love, I’m also huge on how movement drives   its design. The sideflip wall kick is perhaps the  most powerful combination of moves in the game.   Instant height, followed by even more height and  forward momentum. This skip in Whomp’s Fortress   for the “Shoot Into the Wild Blue” star is  perhaps one of the most famous, and at this   point - it’s the only way I can grab this thing.  The cannon is too slow. It’s a thing of the past. Anyway, back to Big Boo’s Haunt. After defeating  Big Boo, the star spawns above you on top of the   mansion. The only nearby platforms are parts of  the mansion’s roof that jut out, but they are   surrounded by slopes. You have to long jump and  use the momentum of the slope to jump up to the   star, or at least that’s how I solved it. These  stars exist on top of the movement the level   often demands from you, and the shortcuts  that the claustrophobic design can enable. The star atop the mansion is also what clued me in  to the effectiveness of using slopes for momentum,   and how I eventually learned to grab  a certain star in Shifting Sand Land   called “Shining Atop the Pyramid” in a new way.   You can either circle around the entire level  or use the Wing Cap to fly toward the star,   or you can abuse the fact that slopes don’t affect  the third jump of a triple jump, bounce over this   hill, and use the momentum from sliding down  the other side to perform ANOTHER triple jump   and reach the star. In Cool, Cool Mountain, you  can deliver the penguin to its mama by sliding   and jumping off of this slope here. It’s a little  risky, but it saves time. You can skip navigating   the toxic maze for the emergency exit entirely by  doing a side flip wall kick dive combo right here.   In Tall, Tall Mountain you can skip the slide by  jumping and then kicking in mid-air to influence   your momentum. Oh my gosh, I completely forgot  to mention the mid-air kick. I love it so much.   Any of the trickier platforming in this game  can be made easier with a well-timed air kick   as it can help steer you in the right direction,  and it halts your fall for a split second. Anyway, even simple things like long-jumping over  to a nearby pole in Rainbow Ride, falling down to   the star in the alcove that normally requires  waiting for a platform in Tick Tock Clock,   skipping the arrow lifts in Wet Dry World, or  using this secret warp in Bob-omb Battlefield to   beat Koopa the Quick to the goal (...I’m not sure  how that isn’t cheating, but okay) are examples of   discoveries that don’t necessarily require complex  movement chains, but are representative of what   makes Super Mario 64 so infinitely replayable.  This advanced movement mirrors the mastery of   World 1-1 in the original Super Mario Bros., but  the nature of these open-ended 3D levels means   that much, much more is possible. All that’s  left is for you to discover what can be done. Discovery is at the heart of this game in all  of its facets. Discovering the controls and   level design for the first time, discovering  secrets across the levels and castle hub,   discovering solutions to the riddles conveyed  in star names, and discovering ways that you   can bend the controls and level design to your  will with the moves at your disposal. I’m still   discovering new ways to chain moves together and  I’m still learning ways to apply them to any given   situation. The submarine in Dire, Dire Docks,  for example, disappears after you defeat Bowser   in the Fire Sea. This leaves the 8 red coins  suspended in the air, and moving poles spawn so   that you can pole-jump your way around to collect  them. However, if you go for the 8 red coins with   the submarine intact, with some precise movement  you can skip the waiting that the poles entail.   Recently, I was streaming this game on Twitch  and I was practicing getting the 8 red coins in   Bowser in the Fire Sea as fast as I could. These  platforms will slowly raise and lower themselves,   which makes walking up difficult and  jumping up to the next platform even moreso.   There’s a red coin on one of these platforms  that will be in reach at one point, but out of   reach the next as the platforms move. In order  to grab it, I tried performing a side flip and   a ground pound to reach it, and somehow the hitbox  on Mario’s butt extended to the point where I was   able to grab the coin. Sure, I could have just  waited for the platform to lower, but why would   I when I know what’s possible in this game? That  is the magic of experimentation in this game. Not every level is perfect, though. Miyamoto  alluded to certain courses being “thrown   together” in time for the game’s release, and some  of the upstairs levels are where this becomes most   apparent. Tick Tock Clock is a controversial  level, as it is a winding vertical trip up   several tricky platforming challenges with stars  placed incrementally as you ascend further up.   Either grabbing a star or dying means  repeating the process all over again,   and that is seen as repetitive by a lot of people.  To some extent, I agree. But the ways in which   platforms are clustered together as you  ascend make it yet another playground for   experimenting with Mario’s moveset. Of course,  the early portion of the level is unavoidable   and it has one of the most annoying 100-coin  stars in the game, but man - I just love the   challenge. It feels like a way to prove myself  with how much I know about how Mario controls.   It also has one of my favourite secrets in the  game - the minute hand dictates how platforms   and level elements move. If you enter when the  hand is on 9, everything will move quickly.   3, everything will move slowly. 12, everything  will freeze, which is handy but this also requires   you to get creative when elevators don’t  take you up to higher portions of the level.   Finally, 6 makes everything move at a  random pace. Fun, if you’re a masochist. Despite some of the levels in the upstairs section  having serious issues, the only level in this game   that I truly despise is Rainbow Ride. That major  problem lots of people had with Tick Tock Clock   is exacerbated here, wherein the level is too  open for many sneaky shortcuts to take place.   Thus, you’re stuck riding the flying carpet for  multiple stars, and if you fall at any point,   it means waiting on the carpet all over again.  This already makes grabbing the stars annoying,   but the 100 coin mission? Yeah…you  can probably imagine how it feels. There’s also Wet-Dry World, which…I don’t know…I  was always put off by this level when I was a kid.   I think I’ll save this level for later;   it has this strange aura about  it, if you know what I mean. Anyway - there is an upside to all of these sucky  stars and levels I’ve discussed. If you don’t like   a certain Power Star, you can simply leave and  look elsewhere for stars. Sure, collecting 120   stars obviously makes these stars unavoidable,  but seeing as collecting 70 stars is a challenge   to begin with, this liberates players to forge  their own path, just as the movement does. And   when it comes to finding the wackiest solutions to  stars, no one can do it quite like speedrunners. When talking about chaining moves together and  finding emergent solutions to age-old Power Stars,   no one has been able to flesh out and master  Super Mario 64’s movement quite like speedrunners.   It is one of the largest facets of Super Mario  64’s community when it comes to both runners   and viewers, and a showcase for the beauty and  depth of the game’s controls, level design and   movement. See, speedrunners aren’t just finding  ways to link moves together and skip portions of   levels with advanced techniques. They’re also  trying to do all of this as fast as possible.   When we observe some of these fantastic feats  that speedrunners are able to accomplish,   few of us are actually conscious of how much work  goes into perfecting runs. Having performed quite   a few speedruns myself many years ago, I have an  inkling of how much practice it takes to even have   a chance at a world record. These days, I don’t  really have that kind of time. I’ve thought about   learning how to run Skyward Sword at some point  because the glitches and movement fascinate me,   and I’ve flirted with the idea of running Mario  64 because of how much I love the movement,   but I just can’t commit like I could when I  was in high school. That speedrun footage I   showed you was from my last speedrun to date,  recorded on March 9th, 2020 - a year after I   had graduated college. My last submitted run for  that game was three years prior, which is why the   splits were so amazing. I was able to implement  new strategies and some cleaner gameplay. Even   if I already have a firm grasp on the beauty of  Mario 64’s controls and movement, I’m definitely   no Siglemic or Simply or Cheese or…ok, well, I  guess I am technically Liam, but not that Liam. I firmly believe Super Mario 64 is at least  partially responsible for bringing the art of   speedrunning to the mainstream, and I think we  have Siglemic to thank for kicking things off.   Siglemic is a legend not just in  the Mario 64 speedrunning lore,   but also in speedrunning as a whole. In  the early 2010s, Sig was one of the most   popular streamers on Twitch simply due to the  seemingly impossible level of skill on display.   No one had really seen anything like what Siglemic  was pulling off in Mario 64. Sig’s accomplishments   spread like wildfire. Several news articles  were written about Sig’s speedrunning career,   and several top runners credit Siglemic as  their inspiration. Siglemic has been out   of the speedrunning scene for many years now (and  once in a blue moon making a sudden reappearance),   but Sig’s impact can still be felt in how  popular speedrunning has become today. That said, a popular game means competition.  It is impossible to overstate just how   grueling it is to be competitive on  the leaderboards for Super Mario 64.   With over 7000 total players and a tremendously  large amount of depth in how Mario controls,   runners could be playing for decades  and still not be entirely perfect.   With that said, they can get pretty  damn good, and you’re about to see how. Let’s take a look primarily at 120-Star runs  and break down what it means to be the best.   In order to get the best time  possible, runners have to: 1. Optimize their movement so that Mario is  constantly traveling as fast as possible.   While occasionally runners will need to slow  down to make precise movements (as is the   essence of the game itself), fast movement is  a must. This means knowing exactly which moves   will keep Mario moving as fast as he needs to go  to save time. From watching speedrunners, I’ve   learned that jumping and immediately diving is a  godlike move when it comes to distance and speed,   and timing your rollout (meaning pressing A at the  right time as you go into a slide) is an equally   important step. I also learned that you can do  a mid-air kick to go into a triple jump faster   than performing it regularly. Speedrunners think  of everything when routing this game; even using   the booty burn in Lethal Lava Land’s volcano to  make it up to the lift, or using a ground-pound to   immediately knock out the big bully as it spawns.  When routing the game, runners need to know how   they can apply Mario’s moves to the level design  in the most optimal ways possible. This means   looking over every move in Mario’s kit, how fast  he could potentially be traveling, how much height   he could gain, and how much time it could save in  the end. Take a look at the way Liam climbs Tall,   Tall Mountain. He long jumps over to the log, wall  kicks from the bonk with good timing, does an air   kick and triple jumps to just barely make it up  the slope, and then performs a side flip wall kick   ledge grab combo to make it to the peak. From the  rolling log portion of the mountain to the peak,   it took him around 11 seconds to grab the monkey.  An insanely fast and creative way to scale the   mountain, and a testament to how applications  for Mario’s moves exist pretty much anywhere,   so long as you decide to look for them. Obviously,  runs take advantage of some of the jank that Super   Mario 64 features to create some awesome skips,  but a lot of these still require good movement   in order to be performed optimally. Even in  16-star and 0-star routes, which have implemented   tricks that skip pretty much the entire game,  movement is still the number one priority. The only trick I can think of that isn’t dependent  on a player’s movement skills is arguably the most   famous glitch in all of speedrunning. The  good ol’ backwards long jump. This trick   has transcended the run itself and bled into  discussion of Super Mario 64’s legacy as a whole   because it’s so hilarious to watch. The concept of  jumping backwards onto a staircase and mashing A   to fly through doors and walls is what I think  a lot of people associate with speedrunning as   a medium. I still remember the first time I saw a  BLJ. It was before Siglemic and before I even knew   what speedrunning was. I found a video on YouTube  that demonstrated its awesome power, and I went to   try it myself. After what seemed like forever, I  finally managed to make it past the endless stairs   to Bowser, and I rejoiced. As a young lad, I was  proud to have done it even once. Nowadays, people   have spent countless hours practicing their BLJs  for use in runs and they’ve found new places in   which they can be performed. The elevator in Big  Boo’s Haunt, the lobby in order to get to Bowser   in the Dark World early, and with the assistance  of emulator tools - literally anywhere. It is   an enduring glitch, and one that is now closely  connected to the identity and legacy of Mario 64. Personally, my favourite trick in Super  Mario 64 is “carpetless,” only because I   don’t have to do it. Runners have found a way  to skip the flying carpets in Rainbow Ride,   but it is so difficult that at one point it was  considered impossible for humans. On the flying   ship, you grab a Bob-omb, jump, quickly throw it  and then run forward and grab it again. This will   start moving Mario backwards, which runners have  abused in certain parts of the run like the Chain   Chomp star in Bob-omb Battlefield, and to get  inside of the pyramid early in Shifting Sand Land.   Anyway, you carefully maneuver Mario over here,  put the Bob-omb down, do a jump dive to grab it   again, and perform a precise series of movements  to optimally slide down to the warp point. From   here, the backward speed from holding the Bob-omb  is preserved, and you can do…this. Obviously,   you can watch other videos for a more in-depth  analysis of how this trick works, but all you   need to know for now is that this trick is  ridiculously tough. But it skips the carpet!   Top runners have used savestates to make it up to  the star, but to this day very few runners in the   world have been able to perform this trick  in real-time, including Xiah, who performed   it for the first time without the use of tools.  There was a recent proposal for incorporating it   into a new 120-star route as currently Rainbow  Ride is one of the last places runners visit,   and attempting carpetless this late in a run is  incredibly risky when it comes to time loss. As   such, it is suggested that runners do a difficult  BLJ in the lobby, get the 8 red coins and the key,   go downstairs, perform an even more difficult BLJ  on the stairs here to get a couple more stars and   the other key, and THEN BLJ all the way up to  Rainbow Ride, perform carpetless, get a couple   more stars and continue the run like normal.  This structure would only save 17 seconds, and I   doubt it will ever become something that runners  commit to…but I’d be happy to be proven wrong. All in all - precision and practice is the  name of the game when it comes to fast,   optimal movement in Super Mario 64, and the fact  that this game was the first of its kind when it   comes to this type of platforming makes the things  that are possible in it seem utterly mind blowing.   But that’s Mario 64. It is truly  the gift that keeps on giving. Anyway, speaking of routing: 2. Runners need to know when to get each star.  It saves far more time than you’d think getting   stars in a specific order. The less time  you have to spend traversing the castle   or areas you’ve already wandered through,  the better. People are constantly finding   little time saves throughout the game based  on what stars you collect in which order,   and there are differing routes depending  on your skill level. This brings us to… 3. Runners need to create the most optimal  100-coin routes to save as much time as possible.   Most players will create their own routes  when it comes to the 100-coin missions,   and creating super fast routes for them is an  extension of that creativity. People routing the   120-star run of this game are constantly trying  to figure out what the most optimal path is,   and which stars go best with the 100-coin mission.  You might think that getting all of the red coins   would always be a perfect pair, but it depends,  as certain levels have subsections with more coins   and stars to grab. Shifting Sand Land pairs its  100-coin mission with the Pyramid Puzzle star,   whereas Lethal Lava Land pairs it with a  volcano star, which is something that I   personally figured out in my years of playing  this game. You simply grab the Koopa shell,   which allows you to ride across the lava  and net yourself as many coins as possible   before jumping into the volcano. The game even  encourages this, as there are lines of coins   along the lava and certain level elements that  are begging to be grabbed with the Koopa shell. I find that 100-coin missions are often the most  fun stars to watch in a speedrun. To give you   just a sampling of what it’s like, here is a brief  clip from HMC 100-coins performed by Cheese. After   doing some quick rollouts, he sets up a triple  jump, and then wall kicks to make it up to the   eyeball, and upon defeating it, he allows the  Blue Coin to fall from the platform. From here,   he ground pounds this block for a red coin and  lands directly on a Scuttlebug underneath him,   which nets him a cool five coins. He then sets  up another triple jump, and ground pounds another   block for the final red coin. The star spawns, he  picks up the Blue Coin for the final five coins,   and then grabs the 100-coin star before grabbing  the red coin star to end the level. Whoever set   this up in the 120-star route is a freaking  genius, and Cheese performed this so well. All of these factors make Super Mario 64  such an incredibly difficult game to master.   But it also fostered one of the most passionate  communities I’ve ever seen in video games. To   be competitive, you need to make this game your  life, to some extent. And that is exactly what   a talented young man named Simply decided to  do. That chest is definitely not carpetless. Big Simp got his start when he discovered  Siglemic on Twitch, and he decided to play   the game again on an emulator. His Mom got  him an Xbox controller, and from there he   got serious about running the game. He spent his  first paycheck on a Nintendo 64, became friends   with Cheese - another legendary runner - and  eventually tailed him on the leaderboards to the   point where he made it to third place. He severely  struggled with self-doubt after a while, which is   something that many speedrunners face as they  attempt to improve their times and set records.   Speedrunning is a physically and mentally  exhausting activity, and he eventually   developed tendonitis and carpal tunnel while  trying to speedrun the game in college.   He had to stop playing Super Mario 64 altogether  in order to heal and focus on his schoolwork,   despite being so close to the world record. With  time and the help of a book called “The Mindbody   Prescription,” he was eventually able to cure his  hand pain and return to the game. After several   runs over a period of six months and feeling  like he had hit a wall, it all came together   in a run that took place in May of 2020. After  years of practice, years of health issues and   years of self-doubt, he finally achieved his very  first world record. It was an emotional moment. Of course, a handful of runners have been able  to achieve world records in Super Mario 64,   and each of them have their own stories  to tell. Simply’s is just one of them.   Cheese managed to set a world record at  Break the Record: Live in 2020 despite   being sleep-deprived and ill. His movement  throughout most of the run is almost inhuman,   and the record was well-deserved. I can’t  go over every story in great detail here,   but for a greater look into the journeys of  these runners, I highly recommend you check   out the Twitch and YouTube channels for  the runners I featured in this segment. I think Super Mario 64 accomplishes one of the  primary things that a speedrun needs to do to keep   people watching. It doesn’t matter what runners  are doing, good movement that saves time is always   entertaining due to the precision and split-second  decision-making runners need to perform.   Speedrunning encompasses the gorgeous depth  of Super Mario 64’s controls perfectly,   and it will continue to serve as a strong pillar  that upholds the game’s legacy for years to come. I mean, what else can you say about Super  Mario 64 that hasn’t already been said?   The levels are a joy to explore and master, the  stars are both silent tutorials and tests that   require players to think outside of the box at  all times. The player can be just as creative   as the stars can be. And the controls, oh man -  it’s not just the fine accuracy that the analog   stick affords you and the ways in which you can  influence your mid-air momentum, it’s the depth   and the mastery of Mario’s moveset, the satisfying  ways you link moves together, and the insane skill   gaps that you can observe between players as  a result. The controls are simply amazing. …But I have one little problem with them.  Hear me out. At this point, I can fly through   the game with relative ease, but there’s one  thing that has always bothered me about them.   Usually, if you quickly switch to the position  opposite of the one you’re pushing the stick in,   Mario will slide before turning around and  moving in that direction. This makes sense,   and it works. We’ve seen this with the sideflip  move countless times. However, this sliding   animation only comes out when you have enough  speed. If you’re attempting to turn this way   without much speed, Mario will perform an awkward  U-turn that has killed me on numerous occasions.   Look here - all I’m doing is pushing straight  up and straight down on the analog stick,   and Mario feels the need to perform wide u-turns  to the left or right in order to reorient himself.   This is why I often stop dead in my tracks on  tight platforms before continuing to move around,   because if I try to keep moving after landing from  a jump, Mario will do that stupid U-turn and get   me killed. Yeah, it’s a minor issue, but an issue  nonetheless that future Mario games would take   steps to alleviate. Super Mario Sunshine still  has it, but the turns are much faster and tighter,   and it takes less speed to go into a skid, so it  was essentially a non-issue. But that reminds me… With me gushing over Super Mario 64’s brilliance,  I also have to pinch myself and take stock of the   fact that it’s been over 25 years since it was  released. Several other 3D platformers have   followed in its wake, and they all have their  own takes on that running and jumping feel.   Future 3D Mario games have cleaned up and  tightened Mario’s core movement, and a lot of   people have started with those, instead working  backwards and playing Mario 64 after the fact.   A lot of people have had issues with the controls,  and I know certain people watching this are bound   to have some, too. I can go on about what  Mario’s moveset can enable, but that is all   dependent on the player’s ability to acclimate  to the controls. As I grew up with this game   and I continue to replay it endlessly, I cannot  remember the specifics of how I adjusted to them,   and thus it is impossible for me to give  an objective view of what it’s like to play   Super Mario 64 for the first time. Of course, I  could talk to someone that has experience with   3D games and has never played Mario 64, but  I’ve already seen those reactions firsthand.   To understand if Super Mario 64’s controls could  be just as problematic as they were brilliant   back then, I needed an unbiased, outside  perspective. And I knew just who to call. Outside of Mario Kart and Wii Sports, my Dad  hadn’t played much of any video game that was   released outside of the 1980s. During most of  the decade, he was in his 20s, and he played a   LOT of arcade games and pinball. For someone that  has been out-of-touch with the medium for years,   his arcade muscle memory remains intact. We  found a Galaga machine at an amusement park   a few years ago, and he managed to beat my high  score despite being out of practice. I thought I   was good at Galaga, but man. Watching someone who  lived through the golden age of arcade games is   a totally different ballgame. However, his gaming  knowledge doesn’t extend very far beyond the 80s.   As games shifted away from that arcade philosophy  of competing for high scores and started focusing   more on having a level-by-level progression scheme  and an ultimate goal, he eventually drifted away   from the medium as a whole. He’s even told me that  he doesn’t really like video games now because he,   and I quote: “gets frustrated when  he can’t get past a certain stage.”   He primarily played them to kill time  and take breaks from his schoolwork,   and the brevity of arcade gaming sessions allowed  him to do this. It’s the same reason he usually   watches films over TV shows. He just doesn’t get  the same enjoyment as I do out of video games. Of course, ever since I was a kid, I’ve always  wanted him to give them a fair shot, and certain   games have been able to win him over. One day,  he decided to play Super Monkey Ball with me.   Monkey Ball began as an arcade game, with higher  scores and extra lives awarded to you depending   on how fast you clear stages and how many bananas  you collect, respectively. The beauty of it was   that it was controlled exclusively with the  analog stick. No buttons necessary. Although   there was a learning curve as he grappled with the  concept of tilting the stage to move the monkey,   once he understood that - he was hooked.  I had never seen him more enthralled with   a video game released this millennium.  On top of the accessible control scheme,   he was enamoured with the fact that “every  level was a completely different challenge.”   Even if he wasn’t collecting all the bananas  and making a mad dash toward the goal for   bonus points, he still enjoyed seeing how each  level transformed the way the game was played. The game combined his arcade sensibilities with  something I’ve wanted to introduce him to for a   long time - three-dimensional video games. He’s  seen me play a plethora of different games over   the years, but he hasn’t played any of them.  In developing this video, I saw the perfect   opportunity for me to gain a unique perspective on  the way a first-time player responds to Mario 64   and 3D platforming in general. It would be as  though Super Mario 64 was brand new once again. What you’re looking at right now is my  Dad’s first time playing Super Mario 64.   I laid out the basic controls for him - move  with the stick, jump with A, crouch with Z,   and perform context-sensitive actions with  B. After adjusting to the automatic panning   of the camera and realizing that Mario’s  movement is relative to where it is pointing,   he made a beeline for the castle. Watching him  adjust to that was really funny and insightful   because you could see him swerving from left to  right to reorient himself. This must have been   how most people were when the game came out. They  had never experienced a game where the direction   the character travels is relative to the camera.  With that said, he eventually learned to use the   C-buttons in tandem with the dynamic camera angles  and he got used to the controls fairly well. The   controls were perplexing at first, but I believe  the game had a hand in easing him into them. For starters, his time in Bob-omb Battlefield  shed light on a few subtle design flourishes   I hadn’t noticed. Earlier I brought up the  effectiveness of learning how to grab things   with King Bob-omb and the platforms that  are re-incorporated throughout the game.   Watching my Dad go through this level inspired  me to talk about them. When my Dad tackled these   platforms in Bob-omb Battlefield for the red coin,  he initially struggled with timing his jumps,   but he got the hang of it with time. By the  time they reappeared in Whomp’s Fortress, he had   conquered other early platforming challenges  and effortlessly made it up to King Whomp.   Watching my Dad conquer this game’s controls  and its various challenges reminded me of how   my journey with this game began, and how it  eventually ended. It unlocked memories of   my own learning process that I hadn’t thought  about in years. When my Dad freaked out as the   Chain-Chomp jumped into frame, I was reminded  of how terrifying that thing was for me, too.   When he had trouble crossing the bridge in Whomp’s  Fortress, I remembered just how difficult it was   for me when I was a kid. I had yet to grasp how  sharp and accurate you could be with Mario’s   movements, so I remember falling a lot here  just as my Dad did. When he learned how to   ground pound and kick in mid-air, he immediately  wanted to find ways to apply them in the levels.   Seriously, he loved the mid-air kick almost as  much as I do. I suppose the point I’m trying   to make is that Super Mario 64 may have been alien  for most players at the time, but its level design   was top of the line when it came to silently  teaching players how to experiment with 3D.   The IGN review published in September 1996 is  true to how it was for most of us growing up: “Mario himself has so many possible movements,  and the environment is so intensely interactive,   that even the least experimental  players will spend hours on the first   level without achieving anything in particular.” This is why criticism of the controls always  bewildered me, although I hadn’t realized why   for several years. As Super Mario 64 was one  of the first 3D platformers I ever played (if   not the first), it formed my expectations of  how other 3D platformers should be controlled,   not the other way around. This brings  us to our next topic - the camera. Even though it was the first of its kind,  the virtual camera system in Super Mario 64   is relatively controversial nowadays, and even  contemporary reviews were critical of it. Next   Generation, IGN and Electronic Gaming Monthly  were all critical of the camera’s sub-optimal   angles back in 1996. Even when players tried  to point the camera in the right direction,   it would often get stuck on walls, behind  obstacles, and sometimes it just wouldn’t turn   at all because they hadn’t programmed the camera  to be in that specific position you wanted. Later   3D platformers did eventually develop smarter  cameras that glide along walls and highlight   characters through obstacles, and this may have  accentuated a distaste for Mario 64’s camera.   But it was always finicky. Even after my Dad had  learned to move the camera in tandem with Mario,   he had trouble manipulating it in tight spaces  and around certain things, often leaving him   disoriented. Also, this happened in Peach’s room  while the camera was zoomed out. This didn’t help. Giles Goddard acknowledged this  initial criticism of the camera,   but he viewed it much more positively  and credited Takumi Kawagoe for his work   on it. Here’s why the camera  in Super Mario 64 was great: As my Dad was going through Bob-omb Battlefield  for the first time, I immediately took notice   of how intelligently the camera functioned.  Oftentimes, he didn’t even need to touch it. As he   followed the path up to King Bob-omb, the camera  automatically panned to focus on what needed to   be seen. It avoided most obstacles from its fixed  perspectives and it would rotate as my Dad circled   back around to the main path after collecting  some Red Coins. Because Bob-omb Battlefield’s   hazards don’t ever lead to instant death, it is  the perfect testing ground for both the camera   and Mario’s movement. When facing off against King  Bob-omb, the camera zooms in or out depending on   how far apart both characters are on the mountain.  This helped my Dad find a way behind the King   without having to touch the camera at all. This  technique can also be seen in Whomp’s Fortress,   Big Boo’s Haunt, and just about any place where  two characters need to be tracked at once. Another   dynamic angle appears in Whomp’s Fortress, when  Mario can climb the stairs guarded by Thwomps.   This is a great beginner’s challenge when it comes  to timing and jumping to higher platforms, but I   already knew this. The camera is what I began to  take notice of. The angle was perfect for my Dad   to acclimate to this challenge. It was never  obstructed by anything, and it was consistent.   In truth, there are countless dynamic angles  in Super Mario 64 that we were unconscious of   because they worked in the background to make  playing the game easier. The way it pans around as   Mario scales the vertical levels like Cool, Cool  Mountain, Tall, Tall Mountain and Tick Tock Clock,   the pseudo-2D perspective in the Bowser levels  that allow for a consistent viewpoint across   their linear structure, all of the static angles  in Big Boo’s Haunt that were likely implemented   to avoid frustration in an enclosed space, the  effortless dynamic tailing of the camera behind   Mario in Lethal Lava Land and Shifting Sand Land  that allows you to see the whole level at once.   The camera is impressively intelligent for  a first attempt, and I think it succeeds   far more than it fails. Yes, the camera can  sometimes be your enemy. Hazy Maze Cave is a   pretty claustrophobic level, and it has virtually  no dynamic angles to speak of, making it somewhat   obnoxious to navigate if you aren’t already  used to the problems with the game’s camera.   Tick Tock Clock may have the camera pan  with Mario, but its maneuverability is   fairly limited and frustrating in one of  the most challenging levels in the game. Overall, watching my Dad really put things in  perspective for me. When Super Mario 64 first   came out, it was a game designed for players to  master. The nature in which you learn how to play   the game - experimenting with the controls to  grab stars and playing around with the levels   and camera was just what everyone did back then.  They had ample time to throw themselves at each   level because there wasn’t anything else like it.  After experiencing 3D platformers that came after,   it’s only natural that new players would have  expectations of how a game like this should   control, and are therefore completely thrown off  by Mario’s physics and momentum. Several moves,   like the wall-jump, triple jump and general  handling of Mario himself were significantly   tweaked in future 3D Mario games, with other 3D  platformers also iterating on the feel of jumping   in a 3D space in their own ways. If you don’t like  how Super Mario 64 controls and therefore can’t   get into the game, that’s fine. I don’t think  discussion of this needs to be so vitriolic.   I think the movement in Super Mario 64 is  absolutely brilliant, but the barrier of   entry brought about by it being the first of its  kind is understandable. I knew approaching this   topic without any memory of what learning how  to play the game was like would be difficult,   and that’s why watching my Dad learn how to  play was so informative for me. Without any   expectations set by other games or the limitations  of time against us, we had all the time in the   world as children to just learn how to get good at  Mario 64, and I believe the game sets players up   for this. Collecting each star was an event, and  every obstacle cleared was cause for celebration. This brings us to another issue that has arisen  with the existence of other 3D Mario games. From   Super Mario Sunshine onwards, isolated objectives  in each game would usually transform a level and   warrant the need to kick Mario out. Whether that  means covering an entire level in fiery goop,   the return of Petey Piranha, or something  else similarly transformative - each mission   reinvented the reasons and the methods  in which the levels were traversed.   By the time we received Super Mario Galaxy, the  structure was still akin to the previous games,   but the levels took you through far more  linear and distinct batches of planets   for any given Power Star, so kicking  Mario out made even more sense here.   As the years went by, the need to kick Mario  out of levels in 64 made less and less sense.   The levels are all built like sandboxes, and you  can usually grab each star in any order you like.   You can grab Watch for Falling Rocks before the  star in the sunken cavern in Hazy Maze Cave if you   so choose, because the order in which they appear  on the select screen is all but window dressing.   Of course, certain stars do require the level  to be reloaded, like when you raise the sunken   ship in Jolly Roger Bay after plundering it for a  Power Star, but other than that, all of the stars   are loaded in at once, so I doubt memory was  an issue. On top of that, the 100-coin stars in   regular levels and 8 red coin stars in the Bowser  levels don’t kick Mario out, allowing you to grab   another star if you so desire. Usually, I chain  the 100-coin stars with the 8 red coins as the   reds are worth 2 coins per piece, but sometimes  my routes take me in different directions.   For example, Cool, Cool Mountain and Tall, Tall  Mountain’s slides provide me with 80-90% of the   coins I need for the star, so there’s no need  to collect all of the reds and waste my time.   As you can see, this grants you a great deal of  freedom to explore and strategize - something that   Mario 64 thrives on. As such, why not allow  this kind of star collecting to take place? Obviously, hindsight is 20/20. Super Mario  Odyssey introduced the perfect compromise,   wherein specific Power Moons were touted as the  main objective, and collecting them would load   new level elements. Other Power Moons could be  collected at your leisure and didn’t kick Mario   back to the Odyssey. This would have been perfect  for Super Mario 64 in hindsight. You grab the star   in the ship, and from there it takes you back to  the shore, wherein you can see the ship has risen   from the water. After defeating King Whomp, you  respawn at the bottom of the fortress, wherein   you can see that they’ve built an extension in his  absence. With these stars loading new elements,   other stars could be racked up at your  leisure without the need to kick Mario out.   This would also make levels like Tall, Tall  Mountain, Tick Tock Clock and Rainbow Ride   much more bearable because you can grab multiple  stars at once. ESPECIALLY those last two levels. Of course, there is a counter-argument to why the  game was designed like this in the first place.   As I mentioned, 3D games were so new that  collecting each star felt like an event,   and it was important to gather your bearings after  you’d collected one. When people had merely just   begun playing 3D platformers, this issue wouldn’t  have been in their realm of understanding.   Some people also still prefer it this way, as  being able to perform a sweep of a level for   Power Stars removes some of the memorization  that the game’s original structure required. This brings me to my final point. When I was a  kid, it took me years to finally finish this game.   I played this game for the first time when I was  five years old, and I didn’t finish it until I was   eight or nine. It played it a lot in between, but  there were some stars I could never figure out.   There were levels that were just too difficult  for me. I’d create new save files and retrace   my steps, and I learned new ways to improve  my movement. Every star truly was an isolated   challenge to conquer back then. Other games  came out in that time that had a much firmer   grasp on three-dimensional game design, and I got  better at video games in general by playing them.   My critical thinking skills developed, as  did my reflexes and hand-eye coordination.   I grew up while playing Super Mario 64, and  eventually - I met that 70-star requirement.   I finally broke the curse of the endless  stairs and jumped into the final level.   I can make this look easy now, but with limited  experience in 3D platforming this tough,   it was brutal when I was a kid. Every single  level element that you’ve encountered throughout   the game makes a reappearance, all thrown  together in a brutal final examination of   your ability to control Mario. I can’t remember  the specifics of what it looked like for me to   attempt this level all those years ago, but I  do remember the pain of falling from higher up   and having to start all over again. When you  are able to see the difference between someone   who has barely been able to grasp the controls  and is conquering this level for the first time,   someone who replays the game often and has  a great understanding of Mario’s movement,   and someone who knows the game like the back of  their hand - you can truly distinguish the depth   of Mario’s controls, and how impressive it is that  this was the first attempt at a game like this. The final fight with Bowser is a bit trickier than  his previous two battles. The previous two levels   were a great showcase for the analog stick itself,  as the faster you spin it, the faster Bowser goes   around and around. But whereas you only had to  hit him off of one mine in the previous fights,   here you have to throw him into three, the  mines are further apart due to the terrain,   the level falls apart after a while, and his  flames won’t make maneuvering around very easy.   But after landing all three throws, you can rest  easy knowing that the day has finally been saved   by you. After weeks, months or years, the kid that  once took his first steps in the castle courtyard   has finally conquered the game’s  many challenges… and defeated Bowser.   Although many memories with this game have escaped  me, one that will always stick with me was the   feeling of happiness washing over me as I landed  that last throw and watched the credits roll. With that said… I didn’t want the game to end  there. After all, I still had stars to collect,   and I always wondered what was on top of  the castle. How do I unlock that cannon   in the courtyard? Were there any secret  stars in the castle I was unaware of?   Now that I was able to access the Internet, I  could check out what people were saying about   the game, and learn more about it. Perhaps I could  finally get some answers to my lingering questions   about the game’s remaining mysteries. This notion of “venturing beyond the castle walls”  to discover more about a game I loved so dearly   sent me down a rabbit hole that I have yet to  climb out of. As discovery and mystery is at   the heart of Super Mario 64, digging into what  people had been saying and discovering the art   that people had created felt like an extension  of the game world itself. The game’s secrets,   atmosphere, open-ended level design and gameplay  loop all drove people to spread rumours,   create videos, tell stories and push the game  to its absolute limits in more ways than one.   Let’s take a look at how the imagination  that Super Mario 64 constantly   inspired has contributed  to its long-lasting legacy. As YouTube began taking the world by storm,  Super Mario 64 had a pretty strong presence   on the platform in many ways. Super Mario 64  Bloopers were a surprisingly prevalent category   of Mario 64 video. If you somehow missed out  on this wave of content, I’ll give you a basic   rundown of what these videos were like. In a  typical compilation of “Mario 64 bloopers,”   the creator would record their gameplay window  in Project 64 with Unregistered Hypercam 2,   think of funny “lol random” sketches that  were typical for this era of the internet,   edit them in Windows Movie Maker, and  throw Scatman John over the gameplay.   Although they were some of the first mainstream  Machinimas alongside Red versus Blue,   and a few of them would be pretty well edited and  genuinely funny, these videos were dime a dozen   when I was younger. That said, they were some  of the first videos I watched on YouTube, and   they immortalized Scatman John’s music, making him  even more popular around the world posthumously.   If you really wanna go back, they were simply  interpretations of Newgrounds flash animations   that had a similar structure, like Mario  Bloopers by Sebastian Lopez or Sonic Oddball   Crackups by Big Papa Kitsune. I can’t believe I  just said that name out loud with a straight face.   But Newgrounds flash animations are another can of  worms entirely, so I’ll save that for another day. Super Mario 64 Bloopers astounded me because  of what was possible on an emulator and with   Gameshark on a console. I didn’t have access to  a computer that could run Project 64 back then   at home, but around the same time I discovered  YouTube, the school my Mom worked at had this   empty, unused computer lab. This is where I  learned how to mess around with emulation,   and I even made my first ever ROM hack using  the now-obsolete “Toad’s Tool 64.” Well,   I suppose I use the term “ROM hack”  loosely, as Toad’s Tool 64 only let you add,   move and delete objects in an existing  level, but I still used it to do some   goofy stuff. Gameshark codes also provided  me with endless entertainment back then.   Nowadays, it doesn’t seem so amazing to add  a moon jump code to a game through modding,   but back then it blew my mind to be  able to moon jump up to the castle roof. To give you an impression of just how  much fun Gameshark was for me back then,   before Gameshark I used to tilt the cartridge  in my N64 while the game was running,   after which Mario would suddenly become limbless  and the audio would be garbled beyond repair.   I must’ve pissed myself laughing  the first time I made this happen.   This cartridge tilting lived on both through  wacky Gameshark codes, but also for many years   after that in a subgenre of Mario 64 videos  called “corruptions,” popularized by Vinesauce.   Throughout my years of messing with Super  Mario 64, I had not seen anything like the   stuff showcased in that corruptions video.  Mario’s polygons reaching the heavens,   the ripple effect in the paintings violently  growing and consuming everything - I think I   may have laughed myself into a coma when I saw the  messed up save select screen for the first time. I hope my Mom doesn’t get retroactively  reprimanded for this years after leaving,   but those computers were all rendered pretty  much unusable by the time my brother and I   were done with them. We pumped those Windows XP  machines full of viruses over the course of a year   and then just left, and the worst part about  it was that I didn’t know what I was doing!   I was just like: “Man, this computer is slower  than it used to be,” and then I’d just move on   to another computer and ruin that one too!  That said, I learned a lot about computers   trying to mess around with a game I loved.  Well, more like I learned what not to do. Speaking of ROM hacks, Mario’s movement was so  much fun to experiment with that it was hard for   people to leave it alone. They couldn’t settle  for just the levels within the castle walls,   and future 3D Mario games weren’t  quite giving them the same feelings.   The ROM hacking scene has flourished  in creating playgrounds for Mario.   People have developed fully-fledged sequels  to Mario 64, games that transform the core   gameplay or otherwise try to improve  it, ROM hacks for beginners, experts,   joke hacks like Mario 64: Chaos Edition that  can turn every object in a level into a homing   missile - there is an entire website dedicated  to the works of passionate ROM hack developers,   and I simply cannot go over all of the ROM hacks  I want to in detail, but there is an entire world   out there dedicated to expanding upon the  excellent gameplay loop of Super Mario 64. Eventually, my Dad got a more powerful computer  than the Windows Millenium Edition one that had   been sitting in our dining room for years.  Rather than using this machine for emulation,   I actually decided to take advantage of its  increased power by playing a game I’d always   wanted to mess around in - Garry’s Mod. I  also discovered this game through YouTube.   It’s a mod of Half-Life 2 that allows you  to do…well, basically anything you want.   I doubt you haven’t heard of it. People used to  make Mario 64 Machinimas with this video, too, and   as soon as I could, I put Princess Peach’s Castle  into my game and used it as a map in sandbox mode.   The castle’s size and the diversity of all of its  locations made it one hell of a versatile map for   multiplayer modes like deathmatch, hide and seek,  and more. While I was looking through footage for   this video, I actually found a challenge map  I made many years ago saved on my hard drive.   Basically, you begin in the path to Dire,  Dire Docks and have to fight your way through   various Half-Life 2 enemies in order to  make it to the warp to Hazy Maze Cave.   That was as far as I got, but it was fascinating  to see just how many different ways I repurposed   this area I’d become all too familiar with. Oddly  enough, for every memory I have with the castle   in its original context, I also have a memory of  exploring it in Garry’s Mod. As a virtual space,   it really did feel like a home away from home.  In recent years, Mario himself from Mario 64 was   made playable in Garry’s Mod (as ridiculous  as that sounds), and you can build it using   your own copy of the game. Here he is, jumping  around gm_construct. Two games that raised me,   thrown together. Have you ever wanted to play as  Mario in Half-Life 2: Lost Coast? Now you can! …This doesn’t feel right. That’s better. The fascination with Super Mario 64 and how it was  made continues to this day. Some of Pannenkoek’s   videos break down (in excruciating detail)  how certain mechanics in Super Mario 64 work,   and in recent years the source code for the game  has been completely decompiled. Every single line   of code was reverse-engineered so that people  could have a better understanding of how they   programmed Mario 64. Kaze Emanuar used this to  optimize and bugfix the Super Mario 64 source code   so that it runs better on actual hardware, and  removes a lot of the jank that it features. This   decompilation is also how the PC port came about,  which allows the game to run natively on Windows.   From here, people have made countless  mods and tweaks for the core game,   like fixing the janky invisible walls,  cleaning up the controls so they align   more closely with the tighter and more  responsive turning of later 3D Mario games,   and even implementing full, analog camera  controls. One of my favourites is this Super   Mario Odyssey-like system that allows you to keep  on collecting stars until you decide to leave.   People care about keeping this game  accessible to future generations!   There’s even a randomizer for this game that can  randomize star locations, red coins, normal coins,   objects and more. It keeps the movement fresh,  and in Super Mario 64 - that is a wonderful thing. This endless fascination with Super Mario 64 makes  sense. Based on the game’s countless mysteries,   strong replayability, addictive gameplay loop  through its rich movement system, and the fact   that it was the first of its kind meant that an  entire generation of kids would understandably   be obsessed with it. I think we are naturally  drawn to literal corruptions and explorations   of nostalgic memories we hold dear, which is why  the 2000s was such a groundbreaking time for the   internet. It gave us a way to reach out to other  people that felt and thought the same way we did,   and connect over our shared fascination  with a game that changed the world. That said, in those early, wild west days of the  internet, it was harder to discern what was real,   especially if you were as young as I was.  Therefore, the mysteries of the castle kept   growing, and rumours began to spread both on  the playground and in various internet forums.   People kept adding fuel to the fire, and it made  Super Mario 64 seem much larger than it appeared. When you collect all 120 stars, you can finally  unlock the cannon in the castle courtyard and   launch your way up to the roof. While being able  to fly around the courtyard felt like a neat   little bonus in and of itself, I was surprised  to learn that an old friend had been hiding up   here for all this time. Yoshi is delighted  to see Mario as it’d been years since their   last adventure together, and he relays a “very  special message” from the Super Mario 64 team. “Thanks for playing Super Mario 64! This is the  end of the game, but not the end of the fun.   We want you to keep on playing, so  we have a little something for you.   We hope that you like it! Enjoy!!!” You receive 100 lives, a dazzling yet slightly  inconvenient new triple jump, and Yoshi jumps   into the water below, never to be seen again. The  thing that stuck with me most about this message   is that part that says: “This is the end of the  game, but not the end of the fun. We want you to   keep on playing.” People definitely did keep on  playing. From speedrunning to content creation to   diving into and exhausting every possible  detail about this game - people have kept   playing for as long as this game has been in  the public consciousness. While this reward   seems trivial in and of itself as the feeling of  grabbing every star is enough satisfaction for me,   it was mind blowing at the time, and it was a  strong extension of the secretive and mysterious   design of Super Mario 64’s most cryptic stars and  locations. I and many others gravitated towards   those two sentences they wrote. With circumstances  like Yoshi on the roof, the hidden, unlockable   caps across the castle and its levels, and many  more secrets - we wanted to keep on playing.   We wanted to believe there was more  to this game than meets the eye. Because I played Super Mario 64 so many times as  a kid, I was able to appreciate the finer details.   In Whomp’s Fortress, there are these Piranha  Plants that you need to sneak up on to nab a blue   coin. The music and all other sounds are seemingly  drowned out as this comforting lullaby takes over.   I remember just watching this Piranha Plant  sleep as the lullaby kept playing, and eventually   letting Mario fall asleep as well. The imagery of  Mario sleeping by the Piranha Plant is a strong,   nostalgic memory I have with this  game, and it’s finer details like this   that made me want to delve deeper into the game. For example, the levels always felt so much bigger  and magical to me when I was a kid because I   didn’t have many 3D platforming levels to compare  them to. I always came up with my own hypothetical   questions for the little areas and features of  each level, like: Who lived in the cabin on Cool,   Cool Mountain? Who lived in the igloo in  Snowman’s Land? Who was the captain of the   ship in Jolly Roger Bay? In Big Boo’s Haunt, why  does the sky around the level suddenly grow dark?   I mean, you’re jumping into the level in broad  daylight in the middle of the castle’s backyard.   Therefore, are these trees or  sticks and blades of grass?   Why is there a sign in the upstairs area that  tells you to “walk quietly in the hallways?” I also wondered where the static, unique  paintings in the upstairs area led.   The walls of the final area of the castle are  pressed into a single painting by the stairs here,   and I always felt like if you jumped into it,  you would end up in one of the Star World levels   in Super Mario World. Or how about these balls  of light near Wet-Dry World? Where do these go?   They kinda reminded me of Navi from Ocarina of  Time when I was a kid, so I thought they’d take   me to Hyrule. The imagination was flowing  at this point and it couldn’t be stopped. One of the most prominent mysteries I remember  getting swept up in was the mystery of the 121st   star. Certain Mario 64 bloopers and Gameshark  videos I watched on YouTube back in the day   had a star count higher than 120, and I always  thought that maybe the game was hiding a second   quest like The Legend of Zelda. Maybe you could  access it through a cheat code or something.   Obviously, they were using Gameshark codes. They  used a code that maxed out their star count right   off the bat, and then they collected stars from  there to increase it beyond what was possible.   But if it wasn’t already clear, I desperately  wanted to believe there was more to be found. This brings us to the biggest mystery of them all,   the one that ignited the imaginations  of millions of players around the world: Where the heck was Luigi? Super Mario 64 was one of the first main series  Mario games not to prominently feature Luigi.   He was simply nowhere to be found throughout the  main game; he didn’t even receive a mention. Then   again, if Yoshi was in this game as a reward for  collecting all 120 stars - surely Luigi had to be   somewhere, right? Perhaps his existence was tied  to this elusive second quest I was dreaming about?   Well, let’s dive head first into  the history of these rumours. Pretty much immediately after the game’s release,  rumours of Luigi being unlockable began to spread.   In 1996, IGN actually posted a $100 bounty for  anyone that could find proof of Luigi in Super   Mario 64. This was before the earliest  known attempt at Nintendo 64 emulation,   which was in 1998, and Gameshark  for N64 wasn’t released until ‘97.   There was no way players could fake it. No one was  able to prove it, and the bounty went unclaimed. The biggest instigator of this whole phenomenon  was the star statue in the backyard. The text on   the plaque below the star is hard to make out.  You could probably decipher the top line of   text as “Eternal Star,” as that would make sense  contextually, but a lot of people seemed to agree   that the text said “L is real 2401.” People have  tried to analyze what the text could actually be   saying, and even Nintendo supposedly weighed in on  this in 1998 in a letter to a fan, saying that the   text “wasn’t supposed to say anything.” Honestly,  at this point in my life, I can’t read the text on   this plaque as anything BUT “L is real 2401.” The  text on this plaque has been etched in my brain. The forum posts and supposed “cheat codes”  began pouring in from players claiming to   have unlocked Luigi. Let’s start simple  with this one from 20-something years ago: This was actually a surprisingly prevalent  rumour, despite how simple it was to perform.   It was relatively believable back then because of  that simplicity. But because people would try this   out and nothing would happen, these so-called  Mario 64 experts decided to get creative.   They’d always suggest these insane setups for  unlocking him that could take hours to replicate   in real-time. Take a look at this one: Beat  the game four times. On the fifth playthrough,   go to Bob-omb Battlefield and initiate the Koopa  the Quick race. While that is happening, free the   Chain Chomp and it will lead you to Luigi! Save  the game and you can play as him. Of course,   in all caps: “THIS ONLY WORKS FOR THE JAPANESE  VERSION.” I mean, playing the game four times is   quite a stretch, but this still isn’t nearly as  elaborate as some of the other hoaxes I’ve seen.   Stuff like holding up on the analog stick for  the second controller while collecting 64 stars   in one sitting, and then resetting and copying  your save to file B, collecting 2401 coins in   total to combine with the star statue and open  a portal to hell - although I’m making these up,   these hypothetical steps weren’t far off  from what people were posting back then. The one I remember the most fondly was this  post on Super Mario 128 Central from 2000,   which had several specific steps including running  64 laps around the star statue in the backyard.   They even included images of Luigi supposedly  following Mario around after he was unlocked.   This was, of course, a hoax. Luigi’s model  was ripped from Super Smash Bros. and it   was posted on April Fool’s Day that year,  adding insult to injury when I eventually   found the article as a kid…and tried it. Yes,  I did actually run 64 entire laps around the   fountain. Whenever I joke about the rumours  that spawned from trying to unlock Luigi,   I always cite that step in particular because  of just how stupid and time-consuming it was. The other part that people speculated about  was the 2401 portion of the supposed text   on the plaque. Certain steps that people would  provide involved that 2401 portion as well - the   aforementioned coin collecting, leaving the  console on for 2401 hours, collecting 24 stars and   exactly one coin - it’s hard to find the sources  of these ones in particular as the forum posts are   likely long gone, but they were dime a dozen. I  remember someone pointing out that February 4th,   2001 was actually the North American release date  of Paper Mario on the N64, and I found that to be   an insane coincidence. I mean, it was actually  February 5th, 2001…but close enough, I guess. These rumours continued for a while,  but obviously nothing came of them.   However, in 2004, Luigi would finally  be discovered in Super Mario 64!   …DS. He was playable alongside Mario, Yoshi  and even Wario. Let’s take a quick look at   this remake, because I believe it carries  the spirit of the original’s elusive secrets. Super Mario 64 DS takes the castle of the  original game that we’ve all come to know by now   and amplifies the mystery by including all  new stars, rooms and minigames to unlock.   It subverts expectations in the best ways,  so no matter how familiar you are with the   original game, there will always be something new  to discover, and your knowledge of the original   will often be rewarded. You begin the game as  Yoshi, who isn’t as fast or agile as Mario,   but he can perform a flutter jump and stuff  his face by using his tongue to grab stuff.   In the main lobby, you’ll notice that the room  to the secret slide now has a border around it,   and upon entering you’ll notice four distinct  doors housing characters unlockable with the   corresponding key. Through the middle door,  there is a room with a new painting, a collection   of minigames to unlock with the keys you can  obtain from various rabbits around the castle,   and an 8-star door that leads to a  painting wherein you can unlock Mario.   Luigi is unlockable through Big Boo’s Haunt.  Basically, you climb to the top floor of the   mansion and you’ll find a Luigi painting. From  there, you have to solve a puzzle involving   listening for Boo's laughter, you fight the boss  and you’ll unlock the man in green from there.   Finally, L is real. Kind of. Personally, my  favourite unlock method between the characters   was for Wario. Each of the three caps from the  original game have been transformed into a single   Power Flower that provides each character with  different effects. Wario uses the functionality   of the Metal Cap, Luigi uses the Vanish Cap  (which makes sense because Big Boo’s Haunt uses   the Vanish Cap), and Mario uses the Wing Cap,  as well as…whatever the hell is going on here.   Anyway, upon entering my beloved mirror room,  you’ll notice a Power Flower sitting on one of   the pillars. By collecting it with Luigi,  you can actually walk through the mirror   and into the reflection of the door, which  leads you to a white room with a Power Star.   This room is already an extension of  the wonder that Super Mario 64 inspires,   but it has more to it than that. The room has  the painting of Luigi from Big Boo’s Haunt,   hinting at which character is required, while  the reflection contains a painting of Wario.   If you jump in, you can clear the level, fight  the boss and unlock the man himself. Probably my   favourite secret in this entire remake, despite  not being terribly difficult to figure out. Like Yoshi, each of the portly plumbers have their  own ups and downs. Wario can break large blocks,   while Luigi can jump incredibly high and his  backflip allows him to hover anywhere he likes   and completely break certain platforming sections.  This move was actually in the Spaceworld ‘95   preview build, and it was nice to see it make a  return here, even if it is incredibly busted. You   can also find the caps of the characters across  each level and you can become that character   until you take damage, allowing you to collect  certain stars even without having them unlocked.   There’s a map of each level on the bottom  screen, and there are new stars in each level,   new levels and secret stars to find across the  castle - all adding 30 stars to the existing 120.   64 DS transforms the original game while  also staying true to it in many ways. The only drawback to 64 DS? The controls are  awful. As they were designed for a D-pad,   you have eight directions and a run button. The  fact that you can only move in eight directions   with the D-pad actually exacerbates that one issue  I had with the original game’s controls - the wide   U-turns seem even more prevalent here. You can  also use the stylus, but using the touchscreen   for a platformer sounds like a hell I do not  wish to endure. No matter how you slice it,   digital controls do not allow for any of the  accuracy afforded to you by the analog stick, and   when you consider that Super Mario 64 was built  around analog controls (and even set an industry   standard through its use of those controls), it’s  hard for me to revisit this game in retrospect.   Thankfully, fans have implemented analog  controls using the touchscreen inputs as a base,   which makes this game far more enjoyable to play. Anyway, I went off on a long tangent about  64 DS, but I feel it contributes a lot to   that wonder-filled legacy we’ve been  discussing. But when it comes to Luigi,   he did eventually become playable in Super  Mario Galaxy, and that game actually had a   121st star to collect if you collected 120  stars both as Mario and Luigi. Luigi himself   happened to be that second quest I had wondered  about as a gullible, yet quite imaginative kid.   These mysteries came full circle in a game that  journeyed through the far reaches of space, and   considering there’s a lot we don’t know about the  universe outside this ball of water we live on,   I can’t think of a better setting for them to have  honoured this mystery - intentional or otherwise. The thing is - Luigi was actually planned  to be in Super Mario 64 at one point.   Luigi’s existence was entirely debunked in 1996  - before any of the rumours even began - saying   that Luigi was removed from the game in February  of that year due to memory issues. They intended   for Super Mario 64 to have simultaneous  multiplayer, which would have been a first   for the series as previous games had players take  turns. Remember that fixed camera I mentioned they   used during development? This was primarily  going to be used for the multiplayer mode,   and a remnant of this functionality exists  within the final game if you switch the camera   to the fixed mode in the options menu. Sadly, they  couldn’t get their experiments running smoothly,   especially as the levels grew more complex  and the camera system was being settled on.   He was almost implemented in a Mario Bros.  arcade-style minigame, but since the console   would only be sold with one controller - the  team finally decided to scrap Luigi altogether. And that would have been the end of it…but  something extraordinary happened years later. In July of 2020, Nintendo suffered a massive  leak of development assets - including bits   and pieces of original source code - for several  of their projects. Dylan Cuthbert - programmer   on Star Fox 1 and 2 - confirmed the veracity of  these leaks by mentioning the contents of what   was leaked for Star Fox 2 contained development  tools he hadn’t used in nearly three decades.   Early builds and rough or otherwise unused content  from Super Nintendo games, Nintendo 64 games,   Game Boy Advance games, source code for the  Nintendo 64, GameCube and Wii, and countless   other miscellaneous things were found, including  a game that had never been released or mentioned   in any capacity called “Super Donkey.” Based on  the art design, it seems to be a prototype of what   eventually became Yoshi’s Island. This entire leak  was tantalizing to sift through, and you have to   wonder what else Nintendo has locked up in their  archives. That’s the beauty of stuff like this;   we are endlessly hypnotized by how exactly our  favourite games came to be. This is also why   people endlessly enjoy digging into unused content  and features that were left in the game’s files.   This is why there remains such a fascination  with the Spaceworld ‘95 build of Mario 64.   This leak provided us with great insight into  the development process of many of Nintendo’s   beloved games, something that they seldom discuss  - with notable exceptions like Breath of the Wild. Among the games that had content  leaked, one of them was in fact   Super Mario 64. Scrapped levels (some of which  appeared in the Spaceworld ‘95 build) were found,   as well as test levels, unused sprites,  models, textures, animations and much more.   However, the biggest and most  famous discovery of all… was Luigi. We’d known he existed at one point in development,  but we had yet to see a single remnant of his   existence in any supplementary material or  unused content. This leak changed that. We   didn’t get any code or random strings of text  related to his existence or anything like that.   No. Instead, we got his entire model. The model  itself was a mess when it was first discovered,   but it was soon reconstructed. We could  finally get a good look at the man himself.   L was finally real, after all this time. The best  part? Super Mario 64 was released in June of 1996,   while this so-called “gigaleak” occurred in July  of 2020. That’s a gap of 24 years and one month.   2401. A coincidence of cosmic proportions?   Definitely. But perhaps that plaque was  trying to tell us something all along. The gigaleak and the Super Mario 64 decompilation  project were both released within a few months   of each other, which would have made for a huge  resurgence of interest in the game on their own.   However, 2020 had one more Super Mario 64-related  thing in store for us. Inspired by the mysteries   of a game we’d all played to death by now,  a phenomenon spread across multiple websites   that was home to some of the most engrossing  fan creations Super Mario 64 has ever seen. As we grow older, it is possible  to lose touch with our imagination.   We will always have it to some extent, but  our adult imagination is usually informed by   our experience with reality and living life, and  we often use it to make decisions as they come.   However, a child’s imagination  doesn’t have these constraints.   They aren’t restrained by the limitations of  what we know is possible. It overpowered logic. This was what drove a lot of us to obsess over  those elusive mysteries and details in Super   Mario 64. Before I had an understanding of how  games worked and why they were structured the   way they were, I firmly believed a lot of the  absurd things we saw on the internet in that era   were possible. This is what I believe led to the  conception of the phenomenon that claims “every   copy of Super Mario 64 is personalized,” and  that Nintendo’s experimental personalization A.I.   would create a version of the game very slightly  altered to your tastes. A later post adds: “Have you ever played someone  else's copy of Mario 64?   Have you ever felt like something was just  a little bit off? That's why. That's how.” It began as a joke referencing an  obscure piece of media from E3 1996,   wherein Wario’s disembodied head floated  around and made fun of the games being shown.   A post goes on to detail the “Wario  apparition,” created “from the subconscious   wishes to see him in Mario 64.” While it  is definitely typical creepypasta fare,   the concept of things being created from these  subconscious wishes is something that IMMEDIATELY   clicked with me and several others, and it led  to the personalization phenomenon being born. The reason I fell in love with this concept is  because it tapped into my childhood memories   like no other phenomenon has. The “personalization  A.I.” was also a clever way to rationalize why   some kids on the playground claimed to have  unlocked Luigi. Perhaps they weren’t actually   lying; maybe they really did in their game.  Many videos were created to visualize some of   these abstract urban legends - some looking  relatively true to the original game or   development builds - usually with the uploader  putting a creepy spin on things. Just like the   Mario 64 Bloopers and L is Real videos, these  were dime a dozen as well, although a handful   were really well made. I loved seeing this renewed  interest in the mysterious side of Super Mario 64,   and this exploration of the various rumours  that sparked our imaginations back then.   My absolute favourite video spawning from  this meme was a video simply titled “Cold,   Cold Crevasse.” It referenced a sign in Cool,  Cool Mountain in the actual, final game that read:   “Warning! Cold, Cold Crevasse below!” There is  no crevasse to speak of, only a slope toward the   cabin’s exit, but this video makes it seem like  it was an urban legend that drove people to look   for an entrance to this elusive sub-level,  and honestly I don’t doubt that it would’ve   happened. Mario finds the secret entrance, and  explores a level that we’ve never seen before.   It’s honestly a really authentic-looking video,  and it doesn’t go out of its way to be overtly   creepy. At one point, Mario defeats a snowman  in the video, and I wrote it off as another   personalization thing, but you can actually do  that in the real game! This video is brilliant. Speaking of which, one of the most notable things  to spring from this whole phenomenon was a YouTube   channel called “Super Mario 64 Beta Archive.” This  channel was recommended to me out of nowhere in   the summer of 2020, and I was amazed. I won’t  spoil a whole lot about this ARG if you haven’t   explored it yourself. Essentially, they recreated  renders and early gameplay footage as closely   as they possibly could, to the point where an  untrained eye could mistake some of this stuff for   being official. Not all of it, obviously, but some  of it. It’s not usually about what’s being shown;   it’s the composition of the videos that allows  them to feel unnerving. For example, there’s   this anti-piracy screen that looks official, but  the way the game just hangs on this screen without   any music playing makes me feel like it would have  terrified me as a kid if it really existed. This   “scrapped system BIOS” video looks dangerously  authentic, and I commend whoever worked on this.   It makes reference to the personalization A.I.  through the UI elements, and the composition   and editing of the video once again makes it seem  hostile and disturbing. My favourite video for a   while was this animation showcase. The low quality  of the video itself, the dimly lit models, and the   fact that it hangs on Mario’s drowning animation  for just a little too long. Again - composition.   The creepiness is subdued. Then, you read  the description and you notice they wrote: “Fun fact, all the animations for Mario were  done with real human reference footage.” Unfortunately, this channel  abruptly ended later that same year,   and although a spinoff channel was  made satirizing the whole thing - this   is right about where the meme kind of  fizzled out. It was fun while it lasted. Then there’s this infamous Super Mario 64 iceberg  image. On it, you can find L is Real, the Wario   Apparition, Cold, Cold Crevasse and other little  bits and pieces of Mario 64 media - both fictional   and non-fictional. But there’s one element of  this image that always strongly resonated with me.   The Wet-Dry World Negative Emotional  Aura. I feel SO strongly about this. Wet-Dry World is a weird level, and I always  used to save it for last on my playthroughs.   Depending on where you enter the painting from,  the water level will rise or lower accordingly.   This means you have to swim or jump around the  level to raise or lower the water depending   on which star you want to grab, and it’s kind of  annoying. There’s also that weird town I mentioned   a while ago that is completely separate from the  rest of the level. It is a complete ghost town,   with nary a resident to be found. I’m also pretty  sure it uses assets from early builds of Ocarina   of Time, which made it seem even weirder, as if  they put an area from Ocarina of Time into this   game as a secret. The vertical structure  also makes it kind of a pain to traverse,   unless you get good at raising the water as  needed. It’s especially annoying with these   enemies wandering around. If you don’t know what  happens when you step on their platforms…good.   Finally, there’s the skybox. What the hell is  this? This is such a dower skybox compared to the   rest of the game’s levels. Even Big Boo’s Haunt  - which had the darkest one of them all - didn’t   feature a full city in its skybox. A real city,  at that. Apparently, the city in question has   been traced back to a place in Yemen, which is  absolutely bizarre. Considering everything in this   game has been crafted by hand, why the hell have  they incorporated a photograph from a real place   into this game? The only humans in this game are  Mario and Peach, but this town and the city in the   skybox seem to imply that Wet-Dry World was once  a bustling civilization - now buried underwater. As strange as it may seem, I actually love  Wet-Dry World now. This fascination with   how abstract its setting is played a part in  that shift in my perspective, but I actually   came to love how dynamic the platforming  can be in this level if you experiment.   The compact size also definitely helps,  and the 8 red coins in the town make for   some really cool movement puzzles that made me  fall in love with this game in the first place.   I think we are naturally drawn to the strange  and unusual. I mean, is it any coincidence that   speedrunners can accidentally BLJ into Wet-Dry  World when attempting to climb the endless stairs? Well, yeah. It is. But this level - in all of   its quirks - encompasses the aura  surrounding Super Mario 64 today. I played Super Mario 64 a lot as a kid; so  much so that I used to have dreams about   it. I had dreams about visiting areas of the  castle that didn’t exist. I had dreams about   obtaining stars that didn’t exist. And of  course, I had dreams about unlocking Luigi.   This entire meme felt like I was  watching those dreams come to life,   and it allowed me to step back into the  illogical imagination my child self used to have.   Watching my wishes come true. Fostering an  obsession with another childhood beyond ours   existing in an eerie liminality. It was more than  just a meme. It was a transcendental experience. Super Mario Odyssey would be the first 3D  Mario game to truly get in touch with what   made Super Mario 64 so legendary. The other  3D Mario games could also be incredible,   but they were incredible in their own ways.  Super Mario 64’s movement was so dynamic   and creative that it allowed for experimentation  beyond what anyone thought was possible.   Super Mario Odyssey interprets this creativity  through Cappy, with techniques that allow for   some of the coolest emergent gameplay that Mario  has ever seen. The freedom to collect Power Stars   and go about each level in any order you like  was expanded upon with the Power Moons, as you   can collect as many as you like, in any order  you like - so long as you meet the requirement   for progressing the game, and further rewards  for racking up as many Power Moons as possible   give satisfaction to seeking everything out.  Its speedrunning scene and passionate community   have made this game as dynamic as the game that  directly inspired it. In many ways, it recaptured   the essence of Super Mario 64. Its spirit,  not just its general structure and gameplay. When I say that Super Mario 64 is more than  a game, I am referring to just how much of   its thought-provoking, mysterious nature spun off  into an explosion of passion and creativity from   its fans. Speedrunning continues to breathe new  life into the levels and controls as time goes on.   Secrets, easter eggs, rumours and urban legends  kept discussion of the game alive for many years.   Its unprecedented status upon release drove  people to delve into every aspect of its design.   Eventually, the things we wanted to believe were  real came to life, both through development leaks   and one of the coolest artistic phenomena  I have ever seen a video game inspire.   Super Mario 64 will always continue to inspire  our imaginations as people attempt to find   the Metal Cap for the first time, talk to  Yoshi for the first time, find new strats   and re-route the speedrun, and we relive our  childhood innocence and wonder through art. The credits theme of Super Mario 64 used  to just remind me of finally conquering the   castle for the first time, but now it feels  so much bigger. It plays when I complete a   subsequent playthrough and remember I can never  experience this game for the first time again.   It plays for speedrunners after completing their  runs. It plays against the backdrop of everything   that has spawned from the game’s existence  in popular culture. But most importantly - I   think it unites everyone by reminding us of  simpler times. Nostalgia is a powerful drug,   but based on the feats that speedrunners  have accomplished, and the things that   artists have created - I believe it can  also be fuel for our next ventures in life. I’ve been Liam Triforce. Thanks for watching.

Channel: Liam Triforce

Views: 1,837,752

Keywords: super mario 64, mario 64, sm64, speedrunning, speedrun, 120 star, 16 star, 0 star, 70 star, wr, world record, retrospective, analysis, history, progression, critique, review, l is real, l is real 2401, 64 ds, ds, n64, cheese, simply, siglemic, personalized, wario apparition, beta archive, gigaleak, luigi, mario

Id: kO7d9opl2u8

Length: 111min 16sec (6676 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 10 2022