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Super Mario 64

Because this game gets constantly speedrun, I feel like it's the perfect way to kick off November 64, what with talking about possibly the greatest 3D platformer ever made. And while it was great, even groundbreaking for its time, I would like to say it still holds up and simultaneously still brings joy to whomever plays it. It's one of those games that you like to look back on and be like "yeah, I remember that" and subsequently leads to the enormous amount of nostalgia there is to be had about Super Mario 64.

You've got stellar platforming, great enemies, great level design, great bowser fights, just great everything. Mario can move all over the place, he can slide, he can flip, he can swim, he can do it all. Obviously I don't remember exactly how my first experience of this game actually was given that I probably played it for the first time maybe 20+ years ago? I don't know. Feels like it. But anyway, I'm confident that my first experience was great. Seeing a 3D platformer as fleshed out as this one is even at a young age would have certainly been mind blowing. I do remember getting frustrated with it at times, as well as my brothers also getting frustrated at it because not only was the game great, it was also tough. You had some tough platforming that you had to get through to traverse some levels, and sometimes that meant figuring out the timing for a side flip or figuring out when to start doing your triple jump. It's all precise and carefully calculated that no matter what you do in the game, you feel cool doing it because the game responds well to creativity. If you want Mario to flip all the time, have him flip all the time. Want to do a run where you don't flip at all? Sure. Don't know how hard that'd be but I'm sure you could figure it out.

And that's not even touching one of the best parts of the game: the powerups. As is a staple in any Super Mario game is that you have to have powerups. And Super Mario 64 is perhaps one of if not the true shining example of putting in great powerups. You've got flight, you've got invisibility, you can run through walls, run through toxic clouds. And it of course all works so well together with the level design as would be a shining example of the care that the developers took when making this game.

Granted they are also vague, I do remember this as a great time of gaming for me personally because I didn't grow up with the Playstation or Sega, it was the Nintendo 64 for me. And this was during a time when not only did I experience Super Mario 64, but many other staples in gaming that I will surely talk about in the coming days. But for now, let's continue onwards talking about Super Mario 64.

Aside from all the things I have already talked about, I want to focus solely on the final Bowser fight for a little bit because I still to this day think it's one of the best examples of what the level prior to a boss fight should be like then how the boss fight should be once you get to it. And I remember many times getting really frustrated with this final fight because once you've get him 2/3 of the way down, the stage changes before your eyes and it makes getting that final blow that much tougher. But oh so satisfying once you do it and collect your star and see Mario just jump into the air like a badass.

It really is a great game and like I said, has held up quite well with it being released when it was. People still play the **** out of it and I've been planning to do a full playthrough of it again once I get the motivation to do so. I also plan to do it on original hardware so I just gotta find a copy and off we go!

I'm sure this is no surprise for anybody to see Super Mario 64 get nothing but praise because it's pretty well known and seen as a staple in gaming for a lot of people, myself included.