24 years ago, Super Mario 64 was among the first few titles to be released for the newest Nintendo console at the time, the Nintendo 64. Super Mario 64 was the first 3D Mario game to ever be released. I think I speak for most gamers around my age when I say that this game was a big part of our childhood. It was pretty much well-beloved by gamers across the globe. I got to play this game again here recently and overall, it's held up quite well despite it's age.
Bob-omb Battlefield
The story for Super Mario 64 is nothing really new or groundbreaking for the series. Bowser has kidnapped Princess Peach and it's up to Mario to save the day once again. The game starts you outside of Peach's castle and gives you free-rein to explore this new 3D environment to your heart's content. You can of course run around and jump, but you can now climb trees (and flip off of them), slide down slopes, and go swimming. There's a lot of new things that you can do in this game.
Once inside the castle though, you'll see many doors. The castle itself acts as the hub world which connects all the various levels together. The first level you'll go to is Bob-omb Battlefield and after jumping through the painting, your new adventure begins.
In each level there are a few different things to collect, but the biggest ones are stars. Each level has different goals that have to be met in order to get a star. Some are fairly straight forward and others are a little more well hidden. You'll use these stars to unlock more levels and areas in the castle. Over the course of the game you'll gain some new abilities through the different caps that Mario can unlock and thus giving you access to some new levels as well as the ability to explore existing levels even further.
As you make your way up through the castle, you'll face Bowser several times. The Bowser levels were some of my personal favorites. Defeating Bowser on each level wasn't that hard and once you got the hang of it, it was almost a copy and paste strategy for each time that you faced him. He did throw some new things at you each new time that you faced him, but it wasn't anything that I found too bad.
Let's be honest, we all did this.
Defeating Bowser the final time was such a relief. It really felt like I'd accomplished something. Along the way, I found many secrets that just put the overall experience really over the top for me. There were a great variety of levels to explore and no two levels seemed alike in my many playthroughs of this game. The only gripe that I have about the gameplay overall is that sometimes I felt like the camera just really didn't want to cooperate with me. It was nothing game breaking, but fighting the camera at times wasn't very fun. It didn't take much away from my overall experience with the game, but it is worth mentioning.
Overall, I had just as much fun playing this game recently as I did when I was a kid. It's an iconic game that I put in my top 10 games of all time for a reason... it's just a really fun game.
Final Score: 9.5/10
"A masterpiece of a game from my childhood."