The first time I found Super Mario 64, it was among a pile of DS games dropped in the mud by the side of a soccer field. To my 10-year-old self it was the equivalent of winning the lottery. I grew up on those games - Mario Kart, New Super Mario Bros, Nintendogs, Pokemon Pearl, and Super Mario 64.
The other games were easy to get into and fun to play. They featured linear stories, gameplay, and objectives. But Super Mario 64 always confused me. The game was this massive Rube Goldberg Machine of mechanics that I felt I had no control over. The foreign and unique 3-D space it existed in, the extra responsibility of being able to control the camera, the things that Mario did sometimes when I mashed buttons fast enough but was seldom able to recreate. At the time, it seemed like the worst game of the bunch.
I was placed in these intricate worlds that I desperately wanted to explore, but lacked the means. Occasionally I caught a glimpse of a game that could have been when I mashed my buttons hard enough. I’d be able to traverse terrain that previously seemed impassable. But these events weren’t recreatable, and were few and far between.
These flashes of joy kept me playing for a long while. I think I got to about 60 stars when I gave the game up on the endless staircase. The game was too vague, too large, too impenetrable. I didn’t feel equipped to play it. And so it stayed at the bottom of the ziplock bag filled with games my DS games.
My reintroduction to the game came much later, when Clunt Stamens (a speedrunner I enjoy watching) started speedrunning the game. And it blew my mind.
What’s important to understand about ten-year-old me was this: I couldn’t play the game. Or at least, I couldn’t play the game the way that Super Mario 64 was supposed to be played. Sure, I knew that “B” button existed, but I thought all it did was throw bosses. Ten-year old me thought the only thing you could do in Mario was walk around and jump -- which isn’t entirely wrong. But I thought that there was only one way to jump, only one “A” Button to press. In that, I was completely wrong.
The joy of Super Mario 64 doesn’t come from solving the puzzles, collecting the stars, or beating the bosses. All of those exist only to facilitate the real gameplay: traversing the level. What I saw Clunk Sandals do was beautiful. Passages that had taken painstaking hours to navigate he just triple jumped then dove over. In Bomb-omb battlefield, he kick-jumps up the slope the same way that the massive koopa does when you have to race him to the top of the mountain. Watching Clint Stevens play the game was the equivalent of watching my ten-year old self mash buttons for several hours, and the one time that he did it right and got everything perfect and Mario did exactly what he was supposed to do. Only instead of button mashing and praying, these were techniques that mario could do, combinations of specific inputs that caused Mario to do a specific thing.
For this review, I replayed Super Mario 64. But this time, I learned to press the “B” button. I read the sign in the room before Bomb-omb battlefield: “Got that? Triple Jump, Long Jump, Wall Kick. Practice, practice, practice. You don’t stand a chance without them.”. I found the garden that literally told me all the advanced movement techniques I needed to know. And with these new modes of motion, the game world opened up to me. Obstacles became surmountable. For the first time, I played the game the way that Shigeru Miyamoto wanted me to. And it was breathtaking.
The Moment where you lower the water in the moat around the castle, and exit from the basement only to realize where you are? Genius. The way that you can chain long jumps together to go incredibly fast? Genius.
The way that peach’s castle slowly opens up to you as you explore more and gain more stars and mastery of the game? Genius. Whomp’s communist rant before you fight him? Genius.
The many options asks the player to constantly weigh and consider the consequences of their actions. But as you play more and more, you feel yourself gaining mastery over what was once unintelligible.
Super Mario 64 was one of the worst gaming experiences I’ve ever had. The hours of frustration. The opaque control scheme. The way that there was so much to explore, but no way to adequately explore it.
At the same time, coming back to it eight years later, it still holds up. The potential a younger me saw is realized. It’s not a big revelation, or a genius gimmick (although the way that Mario’s moveset fits together is genius). What makes Super Mario 64 special is the sheer freedom it gives to its players to move, experiment, and grow.