Reviewed: October 5th 2025
I think it's important to go in blind as much as you can to games, so that you get experience and react to surprises and just things in general yourself. While you're still there in the moment if you watch someone else play a game, or watch a trailer (although they're often designed to avoid spoiling big moments/discoveries), when the moment/surprise happens it's still surprising and the thing is still the thing, I just find that because I'm not the one playing I feel more separate from the moment and it affects me less, it's a bit more distant and I don't get to fully explore that area or sit and think about it as I might, a jump cut takes me to a different clip 5 minutes later and the moments over. Of course when I do play the moment feels less interesting, that area has less to offer me and feels emptier than it otherwise would be. Certain people in my life deride the strictness that I have about spoilers, especially since even when I say "I'll get around to it" it'll be months, years or never before I do.
All of this is to say I had watched and been exposed to so much mario 64 that by the time I played it the experience was a lot less special, while I don't regret watching beautiful clint stevens play mario 64, it would've been nice if he'd at least run 16 star instead of 70 so I wouldn't have seen pretty much the entire game. Like I shouldn't get to rainbow road for the first time and my first thought be I should try the triple jump wall jump trick it should be huhhh where am I what iis this place huhhh, but really I wish I had fresh eyes coming to this game, because this is really one of the all time childlike wonder games, and I went it with most of the game solved in my head already and that's such a shame.
There's a few eh levels like wet dry world and snoman land but the movement is so nice that nothing bout it matter a thing. The shit camera would kill dead many an inferior game, mario 64 takes the bullet and hits them with the "many men, many many many many men", can't stop big M bro. While I would have loved to have gained knowledge about the speedrun and all the strats after I played instead of before, it doesn't change how sick they are, like everyone's tried the tricks, in lectures right now I'm busting out mario 64 online and trying to hit owless on shitty WASD and like J to jump controls and I've failed through like 4 lectures but the thought of hitting it is so fucking sick, hit that slide with the penguin hop over the chasm, of course hit mips clip and the bljs, the movement is just so free.
I was thinking about the levels for quite a while too and they were amazing actually, I was having doubts for a little bit because I remember them being cruddy but that was just the graphics and especially the textures, so many cruddy textures bro it's unbelievable. I'm not saying that it's a bad thing that it doesn't have the same homogenous visual identity that the franchise has settled into now, but design-wise it's not at all obvious that this was to some extent the first 3D platformer since they nailed it this hard, but graphics-wise it's very evident. There's good looking stages like cool cool mountain and lethal lava land but things like wet dry world, hazy maze cave and just generally in the game, the art direction wasn't quite there. That can't really be helped too much though, it was just clouding my memories of the stages themselves, and how well designed they, and the whole stars system is. Also music :), so iconic for a reason, knocked it out the park fully, the credits theme brings a tear to my eye every time cmon man. Truly legendary game.