Looking Back on a Classic: Super Mario 64

Recently, my Nintendo 64 console stopped working. That was to be expected. After all, those things were produced from 1996 to 2001, so it is quite old. I have no idea how old that particular one was, since I bought it second-hand, but still. I had a lot of good memories on it. I'm really gonna miss it. I'll buy a replacement at some point, of course, since otherwise all of my games are just gonna sit there collecting dust. But in the meantime? I thought it would be fun to take a look at one of the games for the Nintendo 64 in-depth.

Analyzing video games in-depth is really nothing new to me. But... this time, I'm gonna have to do it WITHOUT THE ABILITY TO PLAY THE GAME. I basically have to rely solely on memory and off of YouTube/Twitch playthroughs. I chose Super Mario 64, because that is undoubtedly the most iconic game of the Nintendo 64 library. For what it's worth, I do have access to the remake of the game on the DS, but that remake changed so much stuff that it really isn't worth playing if your goal is to analyze the original.

Anyways, why is Super Mario 64 so iconic? Well, it was released alongside the Nintendo 64, for starters. So everyone who owned a Nintendo 64 owned this game. But that's nothing special. What makes Super Mario 64 any more remembered than any other launch title for a console? The joystick. It seems so commonplace now that you forget "Oh yeah, someone had to INVENT that." But the Nintendo 64 was the first console to have a controller with a joystick.

So that's what makes Super Mario 64 so iconic: it was the first game most people played that used a joystick. And that's not all -- it revolutionized the Mario franchise in plenty of other ways too. For starters, it's the first Mario game that uses 3D movement. Prior to this, all Mario games were 2D side-scrollers. Not so with Super Mario 64. The game introduced a revolutionary new system: a camera controlled by the player. You can maneuver the camera freely and move Mario around in any direction, out of a full 360 degrees. Gone were the days of being limited to up, down, left, and right. So that's part of the equation: first game with a joystick, first 3D Mario game, and first game with a controllable camera. But there's one more aspect that we're overlooking.

Fun.

All that stuff that I previously mentioned would have been worthless if this game wasn't also fun to play. Thankfully, it is. Or at least... it was. In 1996.

But let's go ahead and revisit all the worlds of Super Mario 64 and see how they look now. Hopefully, we'll find them to be just as fun now as they were nearly a quarter-century ago.

So, the first thing that we see after turning on our console is the "Press Start" screen. But don't go pressing Start just yet. There's one more little thing that we can do on this screen. This screen has a Mario face that you can grab ahold of with your cursor. If you do, you can stretch them like rubber and contort Mario's face however you like. This does absolutely nothing, and is completely pointless, right? Wrong. First of all, this shows off that the Nintendo 64 can render 3D models in real-time, which was a big deal back then. Secondly, it is fun. Thirdly, it is actually a very important part of the game. Yes, really. I'm being serious here.

Remember, up until this point, no console had a joystick. As a result, when you're on this screen, imagine you've only ever played games with a D-Pad. Holding a joystick would feel pretty alien to you. How are you supposed to use it? It's not really clear. Luckily, this completely irrelevant Mario face is here to provide you with a toy that can be used to train you on how to use a joystick. And by making it just a fun toy and not really anything with an objective or a way to fail, it provides a judgement-free area where you can mess around as much as you like without penalty.

Okay, so then we press Start, choose a save file, and start the game. When we first gain control of Mario, it's on the castle grounds outside of Peach's castle. There's really nothing here. I mean, there's trees and bushes and stuff... there's a moat... a bridge to cross... but really, you just open the door to the castle and move on. There are no threats here, no ways to get hurt or to die, and nothing of value here. There aren't even any secrets that we'll be back for later. The opening castle grounds are... pretty pointless.

Except... not at all. The previous Mario game before this one was Super Mario World. Or Yoshi's Island if you count that as a Mario game (which I don't, but I can see the argument). Either way, that's just a basic 2D platformer. It controls NOTHING like Super Mario 64, a 3D platfomer. So by giving the player a wide-open space to play around, you can trust the player to figure out Mario's moves.

A full list of Mario's moves in this game are: Jump, Swim, Punch, Dive, Grab, Throw, Crouch, Double Jump, Triple Jump, Sideways Somersault, Wall Jump, Jump Kick, Midair Dive, Ground Pound, Kick, Backwards Somersault, Long Jump, Sweep Kick, Slide Kick, Crawl. That's quite a lot. And yet... the number of these that have mandatory in-game tutorials to explain them is... ZERO. Instead, they trust that the player will just fiddle around with buttons and figure them out. So you can just goof off on the castle grounds for as long as you like (unlike previous Mario games, this one features no time limits). And eventually, you'll figure things out. There are signs posted around the castle grounds that you can read if you like, and they will tell you about each of these moves and how to do them, but it's not mandatory. And, indeed, you have to go a bit out of your way to do so. The far easier and more intuitive approach is to just go straight for the castle's front door to move on. The game just lets you figure things out on your own, in a wide-open area where you cannot get hurt for doing so.

In my opinion, this is the ideal way to handle a tutorial.

Now let's talk about the game's story. Peach invited Mario over to her castle because she made him a cake. But when he arrives, not only is Peach (and the cake) gone, but it turns out that Bowser also stole the Power Stars. Mario must jump into the magical paintings in the castle in order to find the Power Stars that Bowser has hidden. This is because Bowser is currently hiding on the top floor of the castle, but he's placed a magical spell on the staircase leading up to him, such that the staircase will go on forever and never actually take you to him. The only way to break that spell is to have a sufficient number of Power Stars (70, out of the total possible 120 that are available in the game). At that point, you can go up there, defeat Bowser, save the Princess, and finally have your cake.

That's an incredibly simplistic story. But that's fine. Mario games aren't really known for having deep and complex narratives. Additionally, if there's one point where I see a lot of video games struggle, it's the story at the beginning of the game. A lot of video games have lengthy cutscenes that take forever to get through. In my opinion, it honestly should not take that long between starting a new save file, and gaining control of your character. Super Mario 64 masters this. Even the follow up to this game, Super Mario Sunshine on GameCube, is a complete failure at this. The opening cutscenes of that game are very long and totally pointless (and they cannot be skipped). I hate every time I replay that game just because of how unnecessarily long and tedious the beginning is. I greatly appreciate Super Mario 64 for not doing that. Despite that, the story of Super Mario 64 is still sufficient enough to the point where I feel like there is a good reason for me to jump into these paintings and try to find the Power Stars.

So, let's go ahead and jump into our first painting. Before we do, I should probably explain how this game works, for the benefit of those who have never played it. There are 15 paintings throughout the castle that Mario can jump into. If he does, each will lead him to a different world. Within each world, there are six Power Stars to be found. Additionally, collecting 100 coins in each of the 15 courses will reward Mario with a star. And then there are also 15 miscellaneous stars hidden throughout the castle, bringing the total to 120. Different doors in the castle will lead to different rooms, but each door is locked by default. They only open up if Mario has a certain number of stars. So the more stars you get, the more of the castle that you can explore.

The one room that we can get into by default has the painting for the Bob-omb Battlefield course. So for now, that's the only course that we can do. But once you collect a star here, the game opens up a lot. You can unlock the door that leads to the Whomp's Fortress course. You can unlock a door that leads to a couple of the castle's secret stars. Or you can just keep playing Bob-omb Battlefield and get more stars here. It's completely up to you. The game is completely open after you get the first star. And it only continues to open up more and more as the game goes on.

So what's Bob-omb Battlefield like? Well, it's a wide-open field with a giant hill in the middle for you to climb up. There are enemies placed sporadically around the area, but they're spread out pretty thin, so it's unlikely that the player will die here. You just run and jump and can basically freely play around.

The six Power Stars in the area are:

Big Bob-omb on the Summit = The king bob-omb is on top of the summit. Climb up the hill and defeat him. He'll relinquish a power star.
Footrace with Koopa the Quick = A koopa wants to race you up to the summit where the king bob-omb was. Win the race. He'll give you a power star.
Shoot to the Island in the Sky = Hop in a cannon and fire yourself to the floating island in the middle of the course. You'll find a star there.
Find the 8 Red Coins = There are eight red coins scattered throughout the stage. Collect them all to spawn a star.
Mario Wings to the Sky = There are five rings in the sky made out of coins. Fly through all five rings to spawn a star.
Behind Chain Chomp's Gate = A chain chomp is chained to a post. Ground Pound the post into the ground to free him, and he'll break the gate that's blocking access to a star.
100 Coins = As with any course, collecting 100 coins will spawn a star.

For a new player, they will almost certainly get that first star first. Koopa the Quick will not appear until after the King Bob-omb is defeated, so that one's out. The cannons are inaccessible to the player until King Bob-omb is defeated, which not only eliminates the third star, but also the fourth, fifth, and seventh, since the floating island contains a red coin, is the launch point from where to find those rings, and has coins on it that are necessary to get the 100 coins needed for the last star. You can technically sequence-break this by using Mario's long jump move to launch yourself from the hill to the floating island, but it's hard to pull off for a beginner (and flying before you have access to the wing cap requires superhuman feats involving several glitches, though still, going through all those rings is possible. Though it has yet to be done by a human player, only a bot). As for the Chain Chomp star, that one is doable from the beginning, and indeed, most speedrunners do so. But the chain chomp is scary, inflicts a lot of damage if it attacks you, and is probably best left alone until you're more confident in your skills.

This means that pretty much every player will obtain Big Bob-omb on the Summit. And yet... that's the ONLY star in the entire game that I can say that for. The entire game massively opens up after this point. It's really incredible.

But I'd like to draw your attention to one star in particular: Mario Wings to the Sky. Let's talk about this. Suppose you wanted to get 100% completion in this area. You will fail. Sure, it's only seven stars. But this one star, Mario Wings to the Sky, is impossible for you to obtain. If all you do is jump into the painting for Bob-omb Battlefield over and over again, you will never be able to obtain this star. This is because this star requires the use of the wing cap (at least, if we're playing by the developer-intended way that you get the star). Basically... there are three switches hidden throughout Peach's Castle. The red switch, the blue switch, and the green switch. Each of these switches will, when pressed, cause the ? Blocks of that color to solidify (prior to hitting the switches, they are transparent and intangible). If Mario hits one of these blocks, he gets a certain cap that grants him special powers. The red blocks provide the wing cap, the blue blocks provide the vanish cap, and the green blocks provide the metal cap.

What's interesting here is that Bob-omb Battlefield, in order to be fully completed, requires access to the Wing Cap. And the area of the castle where the red switch is located is completely inaccessible until the player has ten power stars. Thus, Bob-omb Battlefield cannot be completed in one sitting. So why is this? Well... probably you aren't meant to play the game this way.

Yeah, you COULD just treat each course like it's a checklist, get all seven stars, and then move on to the next course, and then repeat the process. Or you could jump around a bunch and try out many different levels. The fact that you are forced to do the latter probably means that the developers preferred that players do that.

So now we come to our second course, Whomp's Fortress. This course is basically just a giant rising spiral shape. You start at the bottom and you have to work your way up. However, there are plenty of opportunities for you to cut corners or shortcut your way up the spiral, so that as you get better at the game, you can reach the top with less and less effort. The seven stars are:

Chip Off Whomp's Block = The Whomp King is on top of the level. Defeat him and he'll relinquish a star.
To the Top of the Fortress = After defeating the Whomp King, the fortress is now at the top instead. Climb the fortress to find a star on top.
Shoot Into the Wild Blue = Using a cannon, aim yourself to launch at a star that's floating on a platform.
Red Coins on the Floating Isle = There are eight red coins scattered throughout the course. Collect them to spawn a star.
Fall onto the Caged Island = Grab ahold of Hoot the Owl and have him carry you high atop the stage. Have him drop you onto the floating platform where there's a star.
Blast Away the Wall = Use a cannon to shoot yourself at a wall and break it, thereby exposing the star inside of it.
100 Coins = Collect 100 coins.

Interestingly, there are no stars in this level that require the use of a cap. This level CAN be completed in one sitting. And, as previously mentioned, you'll get better and better at it and are able to shortcut the level quite a bit. This makes exploring this level a lot of fun, to see how many corners that you can cut. The enemies in this level are still fairly far apart from one another, meaning it's unlikely that they will ever kill you. Instead, what is likely to kill you is you attempting to jump from one area of the stage to another, missing your jump, and falling to your death.

The two most notable places where this can happen are atop the fortress, since you have to ascend it using platforms that poke out of the tower, thereby requiring you to jump up while moving circularly around the tower; and the floating islands, which contain some of the stage's red coins, because those are just so high up that even a single mistake can be deadly at that height.

The star that really stands out to me here is the last one: Blast Away the Wall. The way you get it is by shooting yourself at a wall. But the wall isn't cracked or anything. It just looks like a plain old normal wall. There's no reason whatsoever to launch yourself at that wall. So why would you ever do such a thing? Well, because the star is called "Blast Away the Wall", duh. It pretty much just flat-out tells you that there's a star there. You can just look at the names of the stars. The only catch is that these names are only visible to the player if all previous stars in the level have been collected. This means that Blast Away the Wall will be last. But, importantly, it does not have to be. That star is always there. Even before collecting any other stars here, if you want to blast away the wall, you can do so, and you can obtain that star, even before defeating the Whomp King. (Speedrunners typically do this, although they don't actually blast away the wall, they just use a glitch to go through the wall and get the star right away.)

But there's a problem with that strategy: it requires that you know the star is there. If you don't know that, then there's really no reason for you to launch yourself at the wall. I doubt many players found this star before getting the hint about its location (the star's name). Despite that, the names of the stars are often incredibly terse. They just give brief descriptions. They're not even full sentences most of the time. As a result, when the player finds a well-hidden star, even with the game's hint system, they feel a sense of accomplishment, because they think they found a hard-to-find secret, even if, in reality, the hint names are actually very explicit. Skipping ahead a bit, the star "Whirl from the Freezing Pond" in Snowman's Land is probably the best example of this I could find. That just perfectly describes what you have to do to get that star.

And the game doesn't even limit themselves to stars in that way. They hide all sorts of stuff. For example, the painting for Shifting Sand Land is camouflaged into the wall that it's hanging on. It's very easy to miss. But you can pause the game and view a list of all the courses you have visited thus far, and they are numbered. If you see it jump from 7 to 9, then you know that you missed course 8. And so you'll start looking for it in the area where courses 7 and 9 are. And indeed, you'll find Shifting Sand Land there. It always felt weird to me that the stages are numbered. Very few Super Mario 64 players consider Big Boo's Haunt to be Level 5 and Dire Dire Docks to be Level 9. Most players consider them to both be equal parts of the second set of levels, since they're both unlocked at the same time. This is probably why the levels are numbered: so that secret courses can be discovered.

Imagine you're a game developer. ACTUALLY hiding a stage would be a horrifically bad use of your development resources, since so few players are actually going to ever see it. But at the same time, you want to give the players a sense of accomplishment for finding a hidden stage. So what do you do? You provide a hint. Super Mario 64 does not ever actually hide its secrets, it instead only gives you the feeling to pretend that it does so.

Anyways, the next stage that we come to is Jolly Roger Bay. It's... a very bad level. Literally it's just a giant hole filled with water. You can swim around freely... and that's it. There's a small path away from this that leads to a tiny cave, but other than that, there's nothing here. Look, the swimming mechanics in Super Mario 64 aren't bad. I'll even go as far as to say that they're good. It feels fine to swim. But in Jolly Roger Bay, that's ALL you do. You will spend pretty much 100% of your time swimming from one part of the level to another. The different parts of the level don't even look that distinct from one another, so it's boring. To make it even worse, Dire Dire Docks, a later level, is ALSO a hole in the ground filled with water. I really wish that we had gotten levels that are part-water, part-land, as opposed to having TWO all-water levels, but alas, that's not the case. The only levels with both water and land are Wet-Dry World and Tall Tall Mountain, and the latter doesn't really count since that's pretty much just a land stage.

Obviously, this game was made back in 1996. And so it's hard for me to judge the development team here. Perhaps a half-land half-water stage wouldn't have been feasible. But... if that's the case... why does Wet-Dry World exist? That level is able to combine swimming and standard platforming. So if they can do that, why not do more of that? Why give us two stages that are nothing but swimming? It really feels wrong here.

The seven stars of Jolly Roger Bay are:

Plunder in the Sunken Ship = Swim down to the sunken ship, and open the treasure chest within, which drains the water from the ship and brings it back to the surface. Without the water, you can therefore platform inside of the ship and be able to reach the star.
Can the Eel Come Out to Play? = Swim to the hole where the eel lives and lure it out. It has a star attached to it.
Treasure of the Ocean Cave = Go into that small cave and find the four treasure chests. Open them in the correct order to disarm the booby-traps on them and find the star within.
Red Coins on the Ship Afloat = Find the eight red coins scattered throughout the level in order to spawn a star.
Blast to the Stone Pillar = Get in a cannon and launch yourself towards the pillar that has a star atop it.
Through the Jet Stream = There's a jet stream on the bottom of the level that has a star within it, but the stream constantly pushes you up away from the star. Use the metal cap to sink down and collect the star.
100 Coins = Collect 100 coins.

I have nothing really further to add to this. Onto the next stage: Cool Cool Mountain. This stage is a giant frozen mountain. But unlike the hill from Bob-omb Battlefield, where the goal is to start at the bottom and work your way up, here, the goal is to start at the top and work your way down. There's a lot of steep slopes that you'll slide down to do so. Mario is so fun to control while sliding. The seven stars of the level are:

Slip Slidin' Away = Go into the cottage at the start of the level. Inside you'll find a slide for you to slide down. A star awaits you at the bottom.
Li'l Penguin Lost = A mother penguin at the bottom of the mountain lost her baby, found at the top. Carry the baby to the mother and she'll thank you by giving you a star.
Big Penguin Race = Go into the cottage and you'll find a big penguin that wants to race you to the bottom of the slide. Win the race and he'll give you a star.
Frosty Slide for 8 Red Coins = There are eight red coins scattered throughout the course. Collect them all to spawn a star.
Snowman's Lost His Head = There's a snowball at the top of the mountain and a snowball at the bottom. Roll the former into the latter to build a snowman. The snowman will give you a star.
Wall Kicks Will Work = Use the cannon at the bottom of the mountain to launch yourself to an otherwise-inaccessible area of the mountain and you'll find a tricky platforming challenge that leads to a star.
100 Coins = Collect 100 coins.

The star that I'm going to analyze here is the first one, Slip Slidin' Away. Not even the whole star, really. Just a single blue coin that is found on that slide. When Mario first gets on the slide, the blue coin starts to move away from Mario. A blue coin is worth the same amount as five regular yellow coins (red coins are worth two yellow coins, if you didn't know), so Mario should try to get this coin. So what's the instinct of the player who wants this coin? To push forward on the analog stick to go towards the blue coin, right? Right. And so you do, and Mario speeds up. That's how the slide controls work. And indeed, that works. Using this will allow you to obtain that blue coin. If you don't do this, the blue coin will keep going forward and fall off the slide, forever unobtainable for the player. But watch out! You're not done yet. If you keep holding that joystick upwards, then Mario will fall off the slide too, and he'll fall to his death. You need to stop going forward! You need to go right instead, to follow the curve in the slide. And just pushing right won't be enough here, since the curve is too big of an angle. What do you do? You need to push the joystick back in order to slow down. And that's also instinctive. Congratulations! Thanks to this single blue coin, the entirety of Super Mario 64's sliding controls are now explained to you without any in-game tutorial!

All this off of one blue coin. And it's very important that you learn the slide controls well, because the Big Penguin Race is quite challenging if you are unfamiliar with the slide controls.

Before we move on to the next set of levels, let's tackle a few of the castle secret stars: Bob-omb Battlefield is unlocked from the beginning. The door leading to the room with the painting of Whomp's Fortress requires 1 star to be unlocked. The door leading to the room with the painting of Jolly Roger Bay requires 3 stars. And the door leading to the room with the painting of Cool Cool Mountain also requires 3 stars. But what else do we have access to at this point? Well, with 1 star, you can unlock the door leading to a stained-glass portrait of Princess Peach. It looks really cool, and it holds a secret. If you go behind the stained-glass, you can find the Princess's Secret Slide. Reach the bottom of the slide to get a star, and do so in under 21 seconds to get a second star. The room that has the Jolly Roger Bay painting also has a hole in the wall that you can jump into. Going through it will lead you to the Secret Aquarium, a small little aquarium that you can swim around in. There are eight red coins to obtain here that will spawn a star. Finally, once ten stars are collected, some light will shine down on the castle foyer. Look into the light to reach the Tower of the Wing Cap. This small area not only contains the red switch needed to obtain the wing cap, but also eight red coins that can be collected in order to obtain a star. Once twelve stars are obtained, a Big Boo will appear in the castle courtyard, which will allow you to access the next course, Big Boo's Haunt. However, due to the high star requirement, most players consider this to be a part of the second set of levels, not the first.

And let me explain that. If you obtain absolutely every star that you have access to at this point, you will have 39 stars (you technically don't need the metal cap for the last Jolly Roger Bay star. If you know what you're doing, you can swim through the jet stream in a very precise way to get the star without the metal cap). That's seven stars from each of the five courses, plus the four secret stars that we currently have access to. And that's all you will ever get. There's no way to access the rest of the castle if all you do is collect stars. Because there is one other thing that you need: keys. The next set of level is found in the basement of Peach's Castle and will only be available to you if you get the basement key to unlock the door leading to the basement. How do you get the key?

Once you have eight stars, you can go through a big door in the main room of the castle. This leads to an area called Bowser in the Dark World, our first Bowser level. The Bowser levels are not like normal courses. There are no wide-open areas to explore. Instead, they are just straight linear paths full of platforming challenges that Mario must overcome. They're very similar to, say, Super Mario Galaxy levels. There's no exploration -- just 3D platforming to reach a defined goal. There are eight red coins hidden in each one, and you can collect them as you go in order to spawn a star, but it is not required that you do so. You just want to get to the end, where you can fight Bowser and make him give up the key.

Despite the fact that Bowser levels are straightforward and linear, and not wide-open areas like the courses, the game is able to accommodate them well. The platforming feels great. The Bowser levels are a lot of fun.

And now we move on to the next course, Big Boo's Haunt. It's a wide-open space with a mansion in the center. The mansion has a foyer, a second floor, a third floor, a rooftop, a basement, and so forth. There are numerous rooms for you to explore. If that sounds familiar to you, that's because the layout of Peach's Castle is incredibly similar. The difference is that Big Boo's Haunt gives off a much darker tone. It's a haunted manor. As a result, it feels like a dark and twisted version of the beloved castle that we've spent a lot of time exploring. I honestly love it.

Big Boo's Haunts stars are:

Go on a Ghost Hunt = Defeat all the Boos in the mansion's first floor, which will cause Big Boo to appear in the castle foyer. Defeat him to spawn a staircase leading to the second floor, and go there to reach the star.
Ride Big Boo's Merry-Go-Round = Go down to the basement, where you'll find a merry-go-round full of Boos. Defeat them all to cause Big Boo to appear. Defeat him and he'll relinquish a star.
Secret of the Haunted Books = On the second floor, go into the room with the bookcases. Avoid the books that attack you and you'll eventually reach a bookcase with some books sticking out. Push the correct ones in and the bookcase will move out of the way, revealing a hidden door behind it. Go through the door to find a star.
Seek the 8 Red Coins = There are eight red coins scattered throughout the mansion. Collect them all to spawn a star.
Big Boo's Balcony = Go all the way up to the third floor and step onto the balcony. The Big Boo is there. Defeat him to cause a star to appear on the roof. Go up to the roof to obtain the star.
Eye to Eye in the Secret Room = On the third floor, use the vanish cap to go through a wall where you'll find a giant Mr. I behind it. Defeat him and he'll relinquish a star.
100 Coins = Collect 100 coins.

The star I'd like to focus on for this level, is the 100 Coin Star. Whenever you get a star in a course, Mario will automatically exit that course afterwards. However, the 100 coin star is different. After Mario collects this star, Mario can stay in the course until another star is obtained. The 100 Coin Stars are the most fun part of this game for me. Why? Because collecting that many coins requires you to explore the whole level, more or less. And exploration is the most fun part of Super Mario 64. It's fun to just run around a wide-open level. Given Mario's vast moveset, as well as how fast he moves, it is really enjoyable to just run around. In the later levels, collecting 100 coins is often tricky to do, because coins become harder to reach. But there's another reason why the coins are important to Super Mario 64. They allow players to be rewarded for finding stuff. Go down a path that you're not supposed to? You might find some coins waiting for you there as a reward for your exploration. This is a nice way to reward players.

I'd also like to talk about the coins themselves. So, Mario collects the coins by touching them, right? Wrong. It appears that way, sure. But if you actually slowly tiptoe your way towards the coins, you'll find that their hitboxes are a lot larger than the coins appear. Mario will collect the coin before his model actually overlaps with the coin's model. Why is that? Because the player is supposed to desire the coins. They want to collect them. As such, it should be easy to do so. This is something that every game should do: give bigger hitboxes to the things that players are supposed to want. To see an example of a game that fails at this, look at the feathers in Yooka-Laylee. It's a good game, sure, but man the feather hitboxes are small. It makes collecting them a pain because it is so easy to accidentally miss them. That's not the case with coins in Super Mario 64. Notably, though, Super Mario 64 does fail at this as well, with the hitboxes of 1-Up Mushrooms. They're too tiny. And it is very easy to miss a 1-Up Mushroom because of it.

Speaking of hitboxes, let's talk about Mario's. It's not that good. As soon as Mario is only a toe over the edge of a platform, he will either fall off of the platform or will start dangling from the edge. If we look at the latest Mario game, Super Mario Odyssey on Nintendo Switch, we see the exact opposite: Mario is allowed to walk over the edge of a platform a fair bit before falling. Heck, it's possible to get Mario's entire model off of the edge with NONE of him on the platform himself (though this is fairly precise). Let me just say that I prefer the way Super Mario Odyssey does this. Giving the player a larger hitbox helps the game to feel fair, especially in platforming challenges that involve very tiny platforms. Mario games are no stranger to this either. The player and the items that are desirable ought to have large hitboxes and the enemies ought to have small hitboxes, to allow a larger margin of error for the player.

In the original Super Mario Bros. on NES, this was the case. Go ahead and stand on a block, and slowly move Mario off of the block. You'll find that he won't drop to the ground until he is ENTIRELY off of the block. Even if just a single pixel of his foot is on the block, he will stand there as though he were perfectly balanced. And that's not all. Go ahead and watch a speedrun of the game, and you'll often see players who jump over a Piranha Plant, with the plant's model colliding with Mario's for a fair bit at the height of Mario's jump... but the player is fine. That's not a glitch either. That's just how the game is designed: the hitboxes of the Piranha Plants are smaller than they appear. This is the correct way to design a game. So I don't get why Super Mario 64 only partially does this.

Anyways, moving on to the actual basement of Peach's Castle, we can now access three new courses all at once: Hazy Maze Cave, Lethal Lava Land, and Shifting Sand Land. Additionally, several new secret stars are available to us as well. By pounding the two pillars and draining the moat, we can access the Vanish Cap Under the Moat stage, which has eight red coins, yielding a star. The Cavern of the Metal Cap, located behind the waterfall, can be accessed from within Hazy Maze Cave, and it too has eight red coins to collect for a star. This also provides access to the final two caps. There are various Toads throughout the castle that you can talk to, and they'll provide gameplay tips. However, three such Toads also give the player a star, and the first of these is located in the basement. Finally, MIPS the rabbit will be hopping around in the basement once the player has fifteen stars. Catch him and he'll give you a star. He then reappears in the same area and you can repeat the process once you have fifty stars.

But let's look at the actual courses, starting with Hazy Maze Cave. This stage is a labyrinth that is very easy to get lost in, especially if it's your first time playing and you are unfamiliar with the level layout.

Despite that, the level layout is quite simplistic once you learn it. There's a few rooms, joined by hallways, and as soon as you work out which rooms lead to which other rooms, it's easy to navigate. It just takes a while to get there. As for the rooms themselves, they are, once again, big wide-open spaces. You're probably tired of hearing me say that. But here's the thing: it REALLY works well for this game. Why? Because of Mario's movement controls.

Mario controls absolutely brilliantly in Super Mario 64, to the point where all future 3D Mario games incorporate all of the same moves that Super Mario 64 has, with the exact same controls. But the controls only work in wide-open areas. His moveset really lends itself well to horizontal movement, not vertical movement. The Long Jump is the move that most players tend to rely on a lot, and you know what? It barely gives you any vertical height at all, it gives you about the same as a normal jump. So why is it used? Because it provides an insane amount of horizontal movement. As for Mario's other moves, look at the Wall Jump. This does provide vertical height when you jump off of the wall, but it provides EVEN MORE horizontal movement. And even at the extreme end of the scale, we can look at the Triple Jump, which, by far, provides more vertical height than any of Mario's other moves. And yet, it requires a lot of horizontal space in order to be successfully used. Even a more basic move, like the Sideways Somersault, which provides a lot of height, still requires a decent chunk of horizontal space to use (though not to the same extent as the Triple Jump).

You see what I'm getting at here? The game is geared towards horizontal movement, not vertical movement. As such, wide-open spaces are preferred, since that's where the game's strengths are. One reason why a lot of players hang out on the castle grounds a lot even though there's nothing there is that it just feels fun to jump around and throw Mario places. Going from Point A to Point B doesn't feel like a chore, because it is so fun to execute all of Mario's cool moves. And, better, you can perform sequence-breaks if you're good enough. Some of this is unintentional, of course. For example, you can get to the underground cavern of Hazy Maze Cave by doing a precise movement through an elevator and glitch your way down there. But a lot of it probably is intentional as well. For example, in Whomp's Fortress, you know the star Shoot Into the Wild Blue, where you launch a cannon at a star? Well, even though that is what you're "supposed" to do, there's a far easier way to get that star. Just do a side somersault to get high enough on the wall, do a wall jump, and you'll end up landing right next to the star. This is actually super-obvious and I imagine that even without watching speedrunners, anyone who plays the game for a significant amount of time will figure this out. That would include the game's developers, of course. I doubt that they were unaware of this sequence-break. But they left it in the game anyways, to reward players who have achieved mastery over Mario's moveset.

By the way, the stars of Hazy Maze Cave are:

Swimming Beast in the Cavern = Go to the underground area of the maze and ride on Dorrie to the center platform, where a star awaits.
Elevate for 8 Red Coins = There's a room with a platform that you can control. Get on that platform and ride around on it to navigate your way to eight red coins in the room. Collect them all to spawn a star.
Metal-Head Mario Can Move! = Go to the underground area of the maze with the metal cap and quickly make your way to an underwater switch before the cap wears off. Then hit the switch to open a door leading to a room with a star.
Navigating the Toxic Maze = Navigate through the maze filled with poison gas before you succumb to the poisoning from breathing in too much of it. There's a star at the end.
A-Maze-Ing Emergency Exit = Go back to that poison gas maze, except that this time you need to take the door partway through the maze, which is way high up and hard to get to. A star is on the other side.
Watch For Rolling Rocks = In the room with the giant boulders, dodge them and get to the end of the room, where you can wall jump between two walls to reach a star up above.
100 Coins = Collect 100 coins.

Next up is Lethal Lava Land, an area where most of the floor is made of lava and you have to avoid touching it, relying only on the small platforms that the level provides. Here are its stars:

Boil the Big Bully = Make your way to the platform with the Big Bully. Defeat him and he'll relinquish a star.
Bully the Bullies = Make your way to the platform with the three small Bullies. Defeat them to spawn a second Big Bully. Defeat him and he'll relinquish a star.
8-Coin Puzzle with 15 Pieces = Collect the eight red coins that are in this stage.
Red-Hot Log Rolling = Make your way to the log and stand on its edge to roll it towards that direction. Keep rolling the log until you eventually reach a platform where a star awaits you.
Hot-Foot-It into the Volcano = Go inside of the volcano and climb up the platforms ahead of you. A star awaits at the end of the path.
Elevator Tour in the Volcano = Go inside of the volcano and climb up the platforms behind you. A star awaits at the end of the path.
100 Coins = Collect 100 coins.

The star that I will focus on this time is the red coin star. In this level, the red coins aren't scattered throughout the map. Instead, all of them are on a single platform. That platform is one of those sliding "fifteen puzzles" that forms a picture of Bowser. As you play, the pieces of the puzzle will move automatically and try to complete the picture. The one empty square that the pieces use to move around is, of course, empty. This means that you will fall into the lava if the piece you are standing on moves out from under you. As such, this star is just "survive on the puzzle for a little bit". Does that seem a bit too easy for this stage in the game? After all, this is the seventh course, and that seems easier than a lot of the stuff we were doing in the first course.

Well, notice my descriptions of the stars have not gotten any lengthier as the game goes on. Each star in the game requires Mario to do one and only one thing. Defeat the Big Bully in "Boil the Big Bully", figure out the order of the chests in "Treasure of the Ocean Cave", survive the slide in "Slip Slidin' Away", win the race with the penguin in "Big Penguin Race", enter the jet stream with a metal cap in "Through the Jet Stream", firing the cannon at the wall in "Blast Away the Wall", and so on. Each of these rewards a star even though Mario only does one thing. And that's a pattern that is mimicked through the whole game.

There is no star in the game where you have to find a hidden entrance to an area, then solve a puzzle within, which opens up the way to a platforming segment, where a star awaits you at the end. Because that's three separate tasks. It would make sense that you would increase the number of tasks to increase the difficulty as the game progresses, but Super Mario 64 does not do this. Does that mean the game never gets any harder? No. It just handles difficulty differently.

Yes, collecting the eight red coins of Lethal Lava Land is easier than collecting the eight red coins of Bob-omb Battlefield, since all of the red coins in Lethal Lava Land are all together. But there's one thing we've overlooked: getting to the place where the red coins are. Each task that Mario has to complete in order to receive a star requires him to go somewhere in the course to perform that task. In the early courses of the game, that's easy, because they are areas that don't have that many enemies or ways of hurting Mario. You can run around as much as you like until you find the task that you must complete. But that's not the case anymore. Hazy Maze Cave, Lethal Lava Land, and Shifting Sand Land don't let you freely run around, because the floor is covered in toxic gas, lava, or quicksand, respectively. That's how the game gets harder: getting to the areas where tasks are to be performed is much more difficult now than it was in previous levels.

And not only is there still only one task per star throughout the entire game, but the tasks themselves don't even become more challenging. The hard part is just GETTING to the task. That's a very interesting way of handling difficulty.

Next, we come to Shifting Sand Land. Much like Lethal Lava Land, this is a wide-open area with a hazardous floor (quicksand in this case, instead of lava). Also like Lethal Lava Land, it has a significant point of interest in the middle, a pyramid (as opposed to Lethal Lava Land's volcano). Its stars are:

In the Talons of the Big Bird = Kelpto is flying around with a star. Catch him and he'll release the star for you to go collect.
Shining Atop the Pyramid = There's a star sitting on top of the pyramid. Claim it.
Inside the Ancient Pyramid = Enter the pyramid, and ascend its interior to reach the top. You'll find a star there.
Stand Tall on the Four Pillars = Stand on each of the four pillars surrounding the pyramid. This causes the pyramid's top to explode. Go over to the pyramid and enter it from the top. You'll be in a caged elevator that descends to a new area, where you can find Eyerok, the spirit of the pyramid. Defeat him and he'll relinquish a star.
Free Flying for 8 Red Coins = Eight red coins are scattered throughout the level. Collect them to spawn a star. Some require the wing cap to reach.
Pyramid Puzzle = There are five special coins inside of the pyramid that are in odd locations. Collect these five and you'll spawn a star.
100 Coins = Collect 100 coins.

So, I have two stars to talk about this time: Inside the Ancient Pyramid and Pyramid Puzzle. These stars suck. Let's talk about why. For one, the camera in Super Mario 64 isn't that good. That's not really a fair criticism, because it does have a better camera than any game that came before it, but it has not aged well. Prior to this, cameras in 3D platformers were either static or just followed the back of the player character. Super Mario 64 gave camera control to the player. To be fair, some of it is good. Any game where the player has camera control, whether it's a Dark Souls game, a Zelda game, a Splatoon game, etc., will always have taken a leaf from Super Mario 64's book. This camera was basically the prototype of all video game cameras.

If you're playing Super Mario 64 and Mario is in a wide-open area, the camera is actually quite good, even by today's standards. But when there are a lot of walls and other obstacles, the camera can get stuck behind walls and greatly hinder the player. And the pyramid is one area where this tends to happen quite a lot. That's honestly the fault of the game designers. No game is perfect, of course. Every game has strengths and weaknesses. But the best games design their content such that the strengths of the game are very apparent and the weaknesses of the game are hidden away. Super Mario 64 does the exact opposite here. If you have a camera that does poorly in interior areas like a pyramid, you shouldn't design a pyramid as part of one of your levels. That makes your weaknesses very apparent to players. Anyone who plays around in this pyramid for even just a minute or two will notice this.

And that's far from the only problem here. Let's talk about Pyramid Puzzle. You want to know where those five secret coins are? You have to go all the way to the top, where the "Inside the Ancient Pyramid" star is, and then jump down onto tiny platforms below you. This essentially means that ascending the pyramid to get to the point where the "Inside the Ancient Pyramid" star is must be done twice: once for the Inside the Ancient Pyramid star, and once for the Pyramid Puzzle star. While this problem was likely unavoidable, given that the Nintendo 64 can only store so much content, it still is nonetheless a problem. Replaying the same thing you just did is really boring, especially if you do these stars back-to-back (which, you know, is possible).

And Pyramid Puzzle actually features a third problem. Remember when I mentioned that the coins are on tiny platforms? Well... that's a problem. Mario's movement options are designed for wide-open areas, remember. They are NOT designed to do precise platforming challenges like this. As an example, suppose that Mario is facing away from the camera, and you press down to turn Mario around and face the camera. If you do this when not holding the analog stick in any direction, Mario will turn around immediately. If you do this when Mario is running at full speed in the opposite direction, then Mario will slip for a bit before turning around immediately. But suppose you were moving that direction, but not at full speed. What happens? Well, when Mario turns around in this scenario, he does not do so immediately. Instead, he walks in a semicircle to turn and face the camera. And this semicircle has a huge radius. In a wide-open area, that's not a problem. But if the platforms are tiny and precision is needed, then it becomes an issue.

Whenever the game expects you to do precision platforming, you will run into this issue. That's the scenario when you aren't running at full speed and could need to turn around. But then Mario will walk in a circle and often fall off of the platform, especially if the platforms are smaller than Mario's semicircle's radius, which is often the case (and is the case here). Again, this is totally fine if the game would accommodate that, but it doesn't. Yet again, Super Mario 64's design shows off its weaknesses. Mario feels amazing to control in wide-open areas, but the pyramid's interior is not a such area. So Mario's controls feel very awkward here. Add a horrible camera on top of that, and the fact that you have to do this twice, and you can see why I'm not a huge fan of the pyramid in this course.

So what would I have done differently? Just removed the pyramid? No. I actually quite like the idea of exploring an ancient pyramid. Would I have gotten rid of that semicircle turning thing that Mario does? Again, no. It's a perfectly good thing to have, and helps Mario feel more realistic. It's just that it's only good in wide-open areas and not that great for precision platforming. I have a few ideas on how to improve this, but I'm gonna hold off on discussing them until we get to Tick Tock Clock, which is a course that basically has all the same problems as the pyramid, except magnified further. So it makes more sense to discuss them there.

Once Mario obtains 30 stars, he can unlock a door that leads to the next course, Dire Dire Docks. After obtaining a star from Dire Dire Docks, the painting of Dire Dire Docks moves backwards in order to open up access to the next Bowser level. But for now, let's look at Dire Dire Docks. It's basically the exact same level as Jolly Roger Bay. Its stars are:

Board Bowser's Sub = Bowser has a submarine here. There's a star on top of the submarine. Go ahead and grab it.
Chests in the Current = Open the four chests at the bottom of the ocean in the correct order in order to spawn a star.
Pole-Jumping for Red Coins = Collect the eight red coins in this level to spawn a star.
Through the Jet Stream = Use the metal cap to go through the jet stream at the bottom of the ocean floor in order to go through five rings and spawn a star, which you can then collect.
The Manta Ray's Reward = The manta ray swimming around leaves rings in its wake. Swim through five in a row to spawn a star.
Collect the Caps... = Obtain both the vanish cap and the metal cap simultaneously. This lets you use both powers at once. The metal cap lets you sink to the bottom of the ocean quickly enough to reach a cage containing a star, and the vanish cap lets you walk right through it to get access to the star.
100 Coins = Collect 100 coins.

I will say that the Chests in the Current star is my least favorite star in this whole game, because the chests are located so close to a whirlpool and it's easy to get sucked in and die for no real good reason. And the whirlpool will constantly try to suck you in. And that's bad because you need to swim very precisely to get to the chests. Why? Because there are no hints as to what the correct order to open the chests is. The only way to get it is by trial and error. And if you open a wrong chest, then Mario will be damaged. Which is not a fun thing to have happen when you're also underwater and trying to conserve air. Oh, and remember: you also have to avoid getting sucked into the whirlpool during all of this. And if the whirlpool succeeds in doing so, it will automatically kill Mario, thereby forcing you to jump back into the Dire Dire Docks painting and start this whole process over again.

But that's not the star that I want to talk about here. The star that I want to talk about is the 100-Coin Star. So, the Nintendo 64 can't render an entire level at once. As such, the programmers need to only show some things at a time. So how do they decide what to display on your screen and what to keep invisible? Simple. They show what is closest to Mario. That way, you can deal with whatever is right in front of you. As you move around the levels, if you move the camera around, you can see things that get further away from you will gradually disappear and things that you get closer to will suddenly appear (though, with plenty of time for you to react). And now here's the problem: Dire Dire Docks has a lot of stuff in it. So because of this, the distance that you have to be from coins to get them to appear seems to be smaller than in most stages.

Because of this, collecting 100 Coins here is annoying. You'll swim around all over the place, and you will assume there are no coins in an area because you didn't get close enough for the coins to spawn. Then you'll come up short, with not getting enough coins. And then you wonder what you missed. It's because there ARE coins in an area that you initially assumed there weren't, because the coins weren't visible to you. This happened to me the first time I played this game and it really bugged me. This 100-Coin Star took me forever. I hate this design. Really, Dire Dire Docks in general is fairly mediocre. It's probably the least memorable of the fifteen stages, truth be told.

Anyways, we get to our next Bowser level, which is once again a straightforward linear path to a boss fight with Bowser. There are eight red coins in the level that you can optionally choose to collect, and a star will spawn if you do so. It's a pretty fun level.

And then Bowser will relinquish a key that lets you unlock the upper floors of Peach's Castle. Once this key is obtained, you gain access to four new courses: Snowman's Land, Wet-Dry World, Tall Tall Mountain, and Tiny-Huge Island. You also get access to the second Toad that gives you a star.

So we start with Snowman's Land. The painting for Snowman's Land is amazingly-well hidden. You see, the actual painting is invisible. But there is a mirror in the room. And although the painting is invisible, its reflection is not. So if you are a keen observer, you will notice the painting in the mirror that isn't there in the real world, and you can jump into the invisible painting from there. Thus, this painting is easy to miss.

The stars of Snowman's Land are:

Snowman's Big Head = Climb up the giant snowman in the center of the level. There's a star on top.
Chill with the Bully = Defeat the Chill Bully and he'll relinquish a star.
In the Deep Freeze = There's a giant ice sculpture with a star in it. It's hard to tell where the walls are and where you can walk freely because of the ice's transparency, but navigating it correctly will allow you to collect the star.
Whirl from the Freezing Pond = Jump off of the Spindrift to reach an otherwise-unreachable area, where a star is.
Shell Shreddin' for Red Coins = Collect the eight red coins in the level to spawn a star.
Into the Igloo = There's an igloo in this level that you can crawl inside of. Once there, you'll find a room with a star frozen in a block of ice. Use the vanish cap to go through the ice and claim the star within.
100 Coins = Collect 100 coins.

I want to talk about the enemies in this game. They're VERY easy to handle. If you die in this game, it will rarely -- if ever -- be because of an enemy. It will be because you fell into some lava, a bottomless pit, or something like that. The fact is that Mario is so maneuverable that he can deal with any threats that come his way. The hardest enemy in the game to deal with are those black balls that spit fire at Mario. But they're not even a problem themselves, it's their fire that's the issue, because if Mario gets burned, then he runs at max speed for a few seconds without being able to slow down or stop, and he'll often fall into a bottomless pit or something.

So then why are the enemies here? Well, there are two reasons. One, some enemies are in the game because it's a Mario game, and it wouldn't feel like a Mario game without them. For example, Goombas have been in ever Mario game since Super Mario Bros. on the NES. So obviously you'd have to include them. Bob-ombs made their debut in Super Mario Bros. 2 for the NES, and have also become a staple. If I told you that we were making a Mario game without Bloopers, Bob-ombs, Boos, Bullet Bills, Buzzy Beetles, Chain Chomps, Cheep Cheeps, Dry Bones, Goombas, Hammer Bros., Koopas, Lakitus, Magikoopas, Monty Moles, Piranha Plants, Pokeys, Shy Guys, Spinies, Thwomps, and Whomps, it just wouldn't feel like a Mario game. All of those are staples of the Mario universe. Most of them appear in all the modern Mario games, and of them, only a small few (Bloopers, Buzzy Beetles, Cheep Cheeps, Dry Bones, Hammer Bros., and Magikoopas) do not appear in Super Mario 64. And of the ones that do appear in Super Mario 64, only one of them (Whomps) is a new enemy that had never previously appeared in a game.

Of course, Super Mario 64 introduced many new enemies, but with the exception of Whomp, none of them have become Mario staples. Why is that? Because many of them make no sense on any platform other than the Nintendo 64. For example, the sleeping Piranha Plants in Whomp's Fortress. You want to know how you deal with them? You approach them slowly by just barely tapping on the joystick. That's something that wouldn't work on a SNES, because no joystick is used. And on a GameCube, it'd be boring, because everyone already knows how a joystick works. It's only when the joystick is brand new -- the Nintendo 64 -- that this works. Another example of enemies that only work on the Nintendo 64 would be Mr. I's. If Mario runs in a circle around a Mr. I, then the Mr. I dies. That's how you kill them. The same is true of the Mr. Blizzards. That's showing off the new-at-the-time 3D environment.

But there's one more category that enemies from Super Mario 64 fit into. In addition to "Standard Mario Enemies" and "Nintendo 64 Show-Offs", there's also "Beneficial Buddies." You see, a lot of enemies in the game, despite being there as obstacles for Mario, actually do genuinely help the player. I'm bringing this up because one star in Snowman's Land, Whirl from the Freezing Pond, revolves around this. If you jump on a Spindrift enemy, it dies, but the bounce you get off of jumping on it provides Mario with an immense amount of vertical height, and Mario will do a twirl, spinning in the air until he touches the ground. While he does so, the speed of his descent is slowed, allowing for more control over where he lands. In this sense, the Spindrift is there to help Mario, not hurt him, even though Spindrifts are enemies.

This isn't unique to Spindrifts either. For example, jumping on a Koopa will send it out of its shell (and then jumping on it again defeats it for good). While the Koopa is outside the shell, Mario can jump on the shell to surf on it, enabling him to move quicker than normal, defeat any enemies he runs into, and run up steep slopes. The shell will last until Mario collides with a wall (and you can't stop your movement while on the Koopa shell, so that's easy enough to do). Another example is the Heave-Ho, which will throw Mario up to a really high height, thereby causing a lot of damage when Mario falls to the ground from a high distance. But if there's a platform or other sort of ground up there, you can use Heave-Hos to reach those high areas easily. Then there's Grindles and Thwomps, which are dangerous, put you can stand on them and let them carry you places, basically serving as a free platform. Those weird moving bars with eyeballs from Whomp's Fortress also fall into this category (seriously, what are those?).

It's really interesting that the enemy design in Super Mario 64 is not just for enemies to hurt Mario, but also to help him. Many stars require getting aid from an enemy (you need to use a Thwomp as a platform to get one of the red coins in Whomp's Fortress, for example). Thus, it's clear that this design choice was intentional. I mentioned that Whirl from the Freezing Pond is an example of a star that requires use of a Spindrift, but Snowman's Land isn't done there. If you want to get the Shell Shreddin' for Red Coins, you'll need a Koopa Shell to get the red coins over the frigid water that Mario cannot otherwise reach. And the only way to get a Koopa Shell in this level is to reach the one that's also across the frozen pond and requires use of a Spindrift to reach.

Anyways, let's move on to the next level, Wet-Dry World. This level has a gimmick. Its gimmick is that the height at which you jump into the painting affects the course. Specifically, the water-level will be set to a height corresponding to how high you were. If you enter the painting from the bottom, you'll find hardly any water in the level at all. If you enter it from the very top, it'll be completely flooded. And everywhere in between.

Wet-Dry World's stars are:

Shocking Arrow Lifts! = Ride the platforms with arrows on them and they'll take you to a star.
Top o' the Town = Reach the uppermost platform of the level, where a star awaits.
Secrets in the Shallows and Sky = Find the five secret spots in the course in order to spawn a star.
Express Elevator -- Hurry Up! = Reach the top of the elevator shaft and send the elevator platform downwards, then quickly get down there so that you can get on the platform in time to ride it back up, where it will take you to a star.
Go to Town for Red Coins = Find a way to access the hidden passageway in the corner of the level, which will take you to a town where eight red coins are. Collect them all to spawn a star.
Quick Race Through Downtown! = Use the vanish cap to go through the cage in the town to reach the star. It's tricky because the vanish cap is located far away from the cage.
100 Coins = Collect 100 coins.

Here, I'm going to talk about the 100-Coin Star. In order to get this star, you'll need to collect 100 coins. That's fairly easy to do. After all, there are eight red coins, and there's the secret spots, many of which have coins. Then there's all the coins you get as you go up to the top. And... wait a second. I just described a few of the stars. Yeah, that's the case for a lot of the 100-Coin Stars in the game. As such, it's often possible that you'll have a high number of coins at the time you reach a star. If this is the case, you should choose not to collect the star. Instead, just leave it. Go grab some more coins to bring your total to 100. Then you can get the 100-Coin Star. And then come back for the star you left behind. If you just grab the star that you had spawned originally, Mario will leave the course and go back to Peach's Castle, thereby necessitating you start all over to get your 100 coins.

This is suboptimal game design, right? I mean, wouldn't it be better if you could stay in the course after collecting a star? But as it stands now, the 100-Coin Stars are the only stars that you can collect while still remaining in the course. This is a criticism of the game that is almost always brought up whenever people discuss Super Mario 64. And yes, it is incredibly frustrating to deal with, when Mario constantly leaves the paintings for no good reason.

And yet... I will defend this as a good game design decision. First of all, some stages change their layout as stars are collected. For example, the tower at the top of Whomp's Fortress only appears after the Whomp King is defeated. Using Nintendo 64 technology, I doubt that it was possible to have this happen on-the-fly while Mario is still in the level. It is likely the level had to be re-loaded. Other examples include Bob-omb Battlefield, where Koopa the Quick won't appear until you defeat the King Bob-omb; Jolly Roger Bay, where the sunken ship will rise to the surface once the star within is collected; and Dire Dire Docks, where Bowser's submarine disappears once the second Bowser level is completed. This list isn't even exhaustive. You want to see the full list? Sure.

Bob-omb Battlefield: In the first mission, King Bob-omb is on top of the mountain. He is not there in any other mission. In the second mission, Koopa the Quick is present. He is not there for any other mission. There are two bowling balls to avoid in the pit leading up the mountain in the first mission, but there are three in all subsequent missions. The Bob-omb Buddy that opens the cannon isn't present in the first mission, but is there in all later missions. There's a koopa enemy in all missions starting with the third mission, but it isn't there in the first two.
Whomp's Fortress: King Whomp is present at the top of the stage in the first mission, but the fortress is there instead in all subsequent missions. The Bob-omb Buddy is not present in the first two missions, and neither is Hoot the Owl, but both are present in all missions starting with the third.
Jolly Roger Bay: The ship is sunken in the first mission, but is floating in all subsequent missions. The eel is in the ship during the first mission, in its home in the second mission, and swimming around in all subsequent missions. The Bob-omb Buddy is not present in the first mission, only in the second mission and later. There is fog covering this stage until the "Plunder in the Sunken Ship" star is collected.
Cool Cool Mountain: The big penguin to race is not present on the first mission, only the second mission and beyond. The penguin is replaced with a fat penguin if Mario has 120 stars. The snowman's head is not present except for in the fifth mission. It appears in no other missions.
Big Boo's Haunt: In the first mission, the stairs in the foyer are down, there are no Boos in the merry-go-round, and defeating any Boo will cause it to spawn a text box and say some things. In the second mission and beyond, the stairs are up, there are Boos in the merry-go-round, and no text is given when Boos are defeated.
Hazy Maze Cave: No course changes.
Lethal Lava Land: A koopa shell can be obtained in the fifth mission and beyond, but not in the first four missions.
Shifting Sand Land: Klepto holds a star only in the first mission and in no other mission. There is an additional tornado in the stage in the fourth mission and beyond.
Dire Dire Docks: The manta ray does not appear during the first mission, only in all missions starting with the second. Bowser's submarine will disappear when the player completes the second Bowser level. The poles will appear in that area as soon as Bowser's submarine leaves.
Snowman's Land: No course changes.
Wet-Dry World: No course changes within the level, but it does have the "Wet-Dry" gimmick.
Tall Tall Mountain: A star is on top of the mountain in the first mission, but no other missions. A monkey is on top of the mountain in the second mission, but no other missions. The monkey cage is present only in the second mission and no other missions.
Tiny-Huge Island: Koopa the Quick only appears in the third mission and no other mission. This level also has the "Tiny-Huge" gimmick.
Tick Tock Clock: No course changes within the level, but it does have the "Clock" gimmick.
Rainbow Ride: No course changes.

So yeah, there's a lot. Let's assume that it's impossible to program the Nintendo 64 to modify the levels while Mario is inside of them. Now the question becomes: which is more important? The levels being changed? Or making sure Mario can stay in a level after obtaining a star? And in my opinion, that's a no-brainer. You want to be able to change the levels to give a sense of progression. Changing these missions to be new unrelated stars is probably possible, sure, but then they would feel a lot less connected and more disjointed. I think it's worth it to have Mario exit the painting if it means we get all this stuff.

Furthermore, let's talk about the size of the courses. They're quite small. As a result, they're fun to explore many times, because that gives the game more content. If you only explored them once, that's less content. For example, consider Whomp's Fortress. It's really fun to try and climb it to reach the top of the level. There are many different paths upwards, and as the player learns the level, different shortcuts can be taken. If you didn't have to constantly replay this level, then there'd be no need to learn its layout. Additionally, the level is so small that there's just not much there. You defeat the Whomp King. Then the tower spawns. Climb the tower to obtain the star on top. Then from there you jump over to the floating islands to collect the red coins there. And congrats! You've just completed half the stage. And that's not even the worst offender! The worst is Tall Tall Mountain. If you didn't have to constantly replay it, that stage is so boringly linear.

The fact is that these levels are designed to be explored over and over again. They aren't designed for you to keep progressing deeper and deeper into the stage.

Next, let's talk about Wet-Dry World, Tiny-Huge Island, and Tick Tock Clock. Each of these has a gimmick that affects the level, depending on how the painting is entered. All of these gimmicks are brilliant and are quite memorable, and yet, they wouldn't be able to exist if you didn't have to enter the painting over and over again. Could you redesign the levels such that these gimmicks could exist while keeping Mario in the stage? Sure. It wouldn't be as clean, but you can probably make a way to manipulate the stage from the inside. Can you redesign the levels so that the stars aren't too close together? Sure. Can you make the Nintendo 64 change the levels while Mario is in them? Ehhh, that's a bit unclear, but based on what we see in other Nintendo 64 games, I'm willing to say that it is difficult to do, but probably still possible.

So is it possible to make this game so that Mario doesn't automatically exit courses when he grabs a star? Sure. But at that point, you've changed so much that it really isn't Super Mario 64 anymore, now is it? It's wildly different than the Super Mario 64 game that we got. Maybe this version of the game is better, and maybe it's worse. It's hard to say. But this is rarely the argument that people actually make when they criticize this game. Instead, players are just frustrated at being thrown out of paintings and want that aspect gone. And I can say with absolute certainty that if you remove that feature but change nothing else and keep the rest of the game the same: that would make for a worse game.

As such, I'm willing to give the game developers a thumbs-up here. They made the right call, even if this is an unpopular opinion.

Now onto the next stage, Tall Tall Mountain! Its name is pretty self-explanatory for what the level is. Its stars are:

Scale the Mountain = Reach the top of the mountain. A star is there.
Mystery of the Monkey Cage = Catch the monkey that is on top of the mountain and have him open the monkey cage for you, there's a star in that cage.
Scary 'Shrooms, Red Coins = Collect the eight red coins to spawn a star.
Mysterious Mountainside = There's a hidden entrance on the side of the mountain that leads to a slide in the mountain's interior. Slide down it, there's a star at the bottom.
Breathtaking View from Bridge = Use a switch to create blocks to stand on in order to walk through a waterfall and get the star on the other side of the waterfall.
Blast to the Lonely Mushroom = There's a giant mushroom off the side of the mountain. Use a cannon to launch yourself to it. There's a star on it.
100 Coins = Collect 100 coins.

I don't really have much to say about this level or any of the stars within. But you should know by now that whenever this happens, I have a completely unrelated topic to talk about. In this case, I want to talk about a completely different video game: Banjo-Kazooie on the Nintendo 64. This game is often compared with Super Mario 64 because they're both incredibly popular 3D platformers on the Nintendo 64 that revolve around exploring levels and collecting collectibles. Because of the popularity of both games, everyone who talks about one tends to talk about the other, since they're so similar, so not talking about Banjo-Kazooie here would leave this post lacking. So fine. Let's compare them.

Banjo-Kazooie is better.

There, done.

Yeah, there's no doubt in my mind that Banjo-Kazooie is a better game. If you compare the two, there really is no comparison. Banjo-Kazooie's worlds are bigger than Super Mario 64's. There is more content in Banjo-Kazooie than there is in Super Mario 64. And the graphics of Banjo-Kazooie are better than the graphics of Super Mario 64. So yeah, if you compare them, Banjo-Kazooie is just objectively better...

...IF YOU COMPARE THEM.

Quite frankly, you shouldn't. It's maddening to me every time this comparison gets brought up, because it's not an apples-to-apples comparison. Banjo-Kazooie would not be able to exist without Super Mario 64 laying down all the groundwork first. Banjo-Kazooie has the same camera as Super Mario 64, which Super Mario 64 invented from scratch. It has similar movement options as Super Mario 64, which is, again, something that Super Mario 64 pioneered. The whole idea of having a single hub world from which all other worlds are accessed also was first seen in Super Mario 64, and then later used by Banjo-Kazooie. Even some of the levels themselves are similar. Frozen Frenzied Peak from Banjo-Kazooie is an ice level that's a giant circle built around a snowman in the center. That's literally the same idea as Snowman's Land from Super Mario 64. Banjo and Kazooie are able fly around in the levels, something that was also first seen when Mario did it in Super Mario 64. I hope I made my point. Banjo-Kazooie is a much better game, but it was only able to be such because Super Mario 64 came first.

I don't want to talk about Banjo-Kazooie too much because this is about Super Mario 64, but there's one other thing I want to bring up: Banjo-Kazooie was designed for the Nintendo 64 console. Super Mario 64 was not. Super Mario 64 was in development at the SAME TIME that the Nintendo 64 was in development. It was designed for a console that was constantly changing as the game was being made. Thus, the development team of Super Mario 64 had no idea how powerful the final console would be. They therefore had to be conservative about what they put in their game, in case they put in something that the console couldn't handle. As a result, Super Mario 64 is much less powerful than Banjo-Kazooie just for this alone. I can't even imagine what a nightmare it would be to develop a game for a console that doesn't even exist. How are you supposed to optimize your game for a console if you don't know what that console even is?

And yet, not only did Nintendo make a good game, they made a PHENOMENAL game. The fact that I am still talking about Super Mario 64 more than two decades after its release is a testament to that. And they not only did this, but they also completely revolutionized the 3D platforming genre. Like I said earlier, every 3D platformer takes a leaf from Super Mario 64's book, because Super Mario 64 did it right. They set the golden standard that 3D platformers are held to.

All right. Now it's time for the next course: Tiny-Huge Island. The room with the Tiny-Huge Island painting is unique in that there are two copies of the painting: a small painting down a small hallway, and a large painting down a large hallway. Due to the perspective, they actually both look like normal paintings from the center of the room, and the size is only apparent as you approach either painting. It's a neat optical illusion. If Mario enters the tiny painting, then the entire level layout, including platforms, enemies, and so forth, will all be incredibly tiny and Mario will seem colossal by comparison. If Mario enters the huge painting, then the entire level layout and everything within is enormous and Mario will seem microscopic by comparison. Additionally, there are a few warp pipes placed throughout the level. Entering one will allow Mario to swap between the two versions of this stage, as Mario will emerge from the warp pipe's counterpart in the opposite version of the island.

The stars of Tiny-Huge Island are:

Pluck the Piranha Flower = On the huge island, go to the area with the five giant Piranha Plants. Defeat them all to spawn a star.
The Tip Top of the Huge Island = On the huge island, ascend to the highest point on the island. A star awaits you there.
Rematch with Koopa the Quick = On the huge island, you'll find Koopa the Quick, who will challenge you to another race. Win the race and he'll give you a star.
Five Itty Bitty Secrets = On the tiny island, find the five points of interests in order to spawn a star.
Wiggler's Red Coins = On the huge island, enter the cavern. There are eight red coins within. Collect them to spawn a star.
Make Wiggler Squirm = On the tiny island, get to the water pool on the top. Do a ground pound and the water will empty into the island's cavern. Switch to the huge island and enter the cavern, this time from above. You'll find a Wiggler that is angry you flooded his home. Defeat him and he'll relinquish a star.
100 Coins = Collect 100 coins.

Yet again, I have no star that I want to analyze in-depth, so I have to talk about something else in this game. I would like to talk about the course variety in Super Mario 64. It's quite a large variety. There's one mountain that you need to climb up, and one that you need to climb down. There's a course where the water level goes up and down, and there's a course that's just a dark version of Peach's Castle. There's one level that is a maze, but others are built in a giant wide-open circle around a single point of interest. Why is this notable?

Because that's basically the only thing that differentiates one course from another. All the obstacles, items, enemies, and so forth? They're all largely the same. For example, compare Big Boo's Haunt and Hazy Maze Cave. Both of them have Mr. I enemies, elevators that take you places, and much more. They're pretty much identical in terms of content. And that's not even getting into some items that are in EVERY stage, like red coins. Despite that, these levels feel vastly different. One is a toxic maze cave and one is a spooky mansion. That's how the stages feel different, despite having the same elements.

Really, no two levels feel the same. They are all unique. It is probably Super Mario 64's greatest strength.

Anyways, that's all the levels that we have access to at this time. There's just a bit more to go. Once Mario has obtained fifty stars, then he can open the door to the castle's top floor. Here, Mario will find the last two courses: Tick Tock Clock and Rainbow Ride. There's also the final Toad here that gives you a star. And there's a secret entrance to a hidden area called "Wing Mario Over the Rainbow", where there's a bunch of clouds that are far spread-out and you need to use the wing cap to fly from one to another. There are eight red coins amongst them and a star is spawned if you collect all of them, marking the final secret star in the game.

So, let's start with Tick Tock Clock. It's the worst level in the game, and possibly one of the worst levels in all of video gaming history. The level is a giant clock with various clock mechanisms that serve as platforms and Mario has to climb them. And there's a gimmick involving this painting. The painting is actually an animation of a clock with moving hands. Depending on the time that the clock shows at the time Mario enters it, the clock parts will be moving slow, medium, fast, or be completely frozen. So um... HOLY CRAP THAT'S BRILLIANT. The idea of a giant clock that you are inside and can control the speed of... yeah, that's a really good idea. So good that I really enjoy this and want it to come back in another 3D Mario game. And yet, so far, it has not.

And that's because Tick Tock Clock sucks. Remember all the complaints that I had with the pyramid in Shifting Sand Land? Well, Tick Tock Clock is that on steroids. First of all, the camera does not work in Tick Tock Clock at all. It's not that it's dated by today's standards, as is the case in the rest of the game, but it's just kinda... completely unacceptable, even for 1996. The camera is pretty much never behind Mario because behind Mario is a wall. Always. And the camera doesn't like to get stuck in walls. That's kinda a problem when this clock is a giant cylinder. The camera is significantly better in the rest of the game than it is in Tick Tock Clock.

Now, remember how I said that some parts of Super Mario 64 expect you to do the same things multiple times, and that's, well, stupid? Luckily, those parts of the game are generally spread out pretty far, and there are less areas where this is an issue. But with Tick Tock Clock, it's ONLY this. Take a look at the stars:

Roll into the Cage = Climb up about 25% of the clock. A star is there.
The Pit and the Pendulums = Climb up about 50% of the clock. A star is there.
Get a Hand = Climb up about 75% of the clock. A star is there.
Stomp on the Thwomp = Climb up to the top of the clock. A star is there.
Timed Jumps on Moving Bars = Climb up about 80% of the clock, and then make a slight detour down a different path. A star is there.
Stop Time for Red Coins = Enter the clock when the clock parts are frozen so that you don't get knocked off the spinning platforms that the red coins are on. Collect the eight red coins on these platforms to spawn a star.
100 Coins = Collect 100 coins.

As you can see, with the sole exception of the Stop Time for Red Coins star, this stage gets really repetitive. First you climb part of the clock. Then you climb the same part of the clock plus a little bit more. Then climb the same part again, plus a little more. And so on. With only 1.5 exceptions, Tick Tock Clock ONLY works this way and expects you to do the same platforming challenges over and over again. It gets really old really fast.

On top of that, the platforming feels awful. It does not work with Mario's moveset. Many platforms require you to move across them quickly, before they move away from where you need them to be, or spin to knock you off of them, or whatever. But most platforms in this stage are smaller than Mario's turn-around semicircle's diameter. Thus, from the center of such a platform, you can't turn around without falling off of the platform. And that's not just one or two platforms. That's nearly every platform in this course. Add to this a camera that doesn't work, and the fact that the player has to do this many times, and it becomes a very frustrating gameplay experience.

Rainbow Ride is also problematic for a similar reason. It too is designed with numerous precision-platforming challenges, instead of being a wide-open world to explore. Rainbow Ride is an absolutely enormous course, and Mario has to ride on flying carpets to take him to the various places within the course, where he will encounter platforming challenges to clear. At least it avoids Tick Tock Clock's problem of repetition by making the platforming challenges different from each other, but the platforms are still too small. Rainbow Ride's stars are:

Cruiser Crossing the Rainbow = Make your way to the flying ship. There's a star on it.
The Big House in the Sky = Get on the roof of the big house in the sky. There's a star there.
Coins Amassed in a Maze = Collect the eight red coins that are hidden in the maze structure of the level, and then a star will spawn.
Swingin' in the Breeze = Make your way through the platforms that swing around to reach the platforms that fall down, and then climb up them and get the star at the end of the path.
Tricky Triangles! = Make your way across the triangle platforms. There's a star at the end of it all.
Somewhere Over the Rainbow = Get to the cannon and use it to launch yourself at a platform that has a star on it.
100 Coins = Collect 100 coins.

Now, one argument that you could make is that these are the final levels in the game. Thus, they're supposed to be difficult for the player. And while that is true, the problem is that they aren't designed in the correct difficult way. The correct way to design a hard level is to make one where mastery over the game's systems will reward you with success. But Tick Tock Clock and Rainbow Ride are actually a fight against the game's systems. The systems work against you here.

There are platforms where, if you turn around on them, you fall off and die. Tick Tock Clock doesn't have a functional camera. This often causes the camera to automatically move to accommodate Mario's jumps, but doing that changes which direction you need to input to control your midair movement, while you're in the middle of a jump! It's completely unacceptable.

So how would I fix Tick Tock Clock? Easy. First, make the platforms bigger so that we can turn Mario around. Second, to solve the repetitive gameplay problem, have Mario start out in the middle of the clock, so some stars require going up and some require going down. Third, call Mikhail Gorbachev and have him tear down that wall. Making Tick Tock Clock a cylinder was a horrible idea. There's no need to put walls on all sides. Open it up. It'd basically be an outdoor level, except that the sky is just background clock mechanisms in the distance that do nothing. Still feels like you're inside a clock, but now the camera actually works. If these changes are made, then Tick Tock Clock becomes amazing. As I said, the idea of a level where you're inside of a clock and can manipulate how time works is ingenious. It'd be a real highlight of the game, if it actually worked. But as it stands now, it doesn't.

I said that Tick Tock Clock was one of the worst designed levels in video gaming history. What did I mean by that? Well, it's the job of a level designer to design levels in such a way that the strengths of the game can really stand out, and the weaknesses of the game are hidden. Using this metric, Tick Tock Clock is abysmal. Tick Tock Clock does literally the exact opposite. All of the game's weaknesses are on full display, and all of the game's strengths are hidden away. It's garbage.

Super Mario 64 has an amazing camera system and movement system that basically defined how 3D platformers should feel. But those moments of brilliance are lost on Tick Tock Clock and Rainbow Ride. There's a few other areas in the game like this too: the pyramid in Shifting Sand Land, the volcano in Lethal Lava Land, and the igloo in Snowman's Land. The game really should have had more wide-open areas instead, like Bob-omb Battlefield, Snowman's Land, and Whomp's Fortress.

Anyways, we're not done yet. Once Mario obtains 70 stars, the final Bowser level opens. Going in there and defeating Bowser is what classifies as "beating the game". And for the final star, there are eight red coins that you can optionally choose to collect in that Bowser level, and doing so spawns a star. Thus, the minimum number of stars you can have at the end of the game is 70 (unless you use glitches to access this level sooner than intended), and the maximum is 120.

And let me just say that the final Bowser level is probably my favorite level in the game. Actually, the three Bowser levels are probably my Top 3. And yet... they're not wide-open areas to explore, but linear platforming challenges, just like Tick Tock Clock and Rainbow Ride. What's going on here?

I wasn't really sure, so I actually took out my copy of Super Mario 64 DS and tried to pretend I was playing it with the original Nintendo 64 camera and controls and what-not. And I think I figured it out. It's all about the level design. For one, the camera actually works here, because the camera should always be either directly behind Mario or directly to his side. There are no walls in the Bowser levels, they are just floating in the sky. Thus, the camera does not get stuck. The Bowser levels also have much bigger platforms than Tick Tock Clock and Rainbow Ride. And lastly, whenever Mario is supposed to turn around, a big wide-open U-shaped pathway is provided for Mario to make a U-turn. The Bowser levels are proof that platforming CAN work in Super Mario 64. Mario's moveset works even if you don't design your levels based around exploration.

It's just that the level design needs to work with Mario's moveset. The Bowser levels massively succeed at this in a way that Tick Tock Clock and Rainbow Ride do not.

Whenever people talk about Mario's movement in Super Mario 64, it inevitably leads to a debate. Some people seem to think that Mario's movement is one of the best movement systems ever made. And some people find it to be unplayably awful. In truth, both of these are correct. It just depends on the level that you're in. The developers should have made more levels where the former is true and fewer where the latter is true. Sadly, Super Mario 64 is a bit sloppy here.

Shigeru Miyamoto was actually interviewed at one point about Super Mario 64, where he had this to say:

And... yeah... I totally believe that everything was "thrown together" at the end. They made a revolutionary camera system and a revolutionary movement system, but didn't design levels to do it justice. At least, not all levels. They probably just ran out of time before the game's release date. Super Mario 64 is a brilliant game, but if they had just a little more time, then perhaps it could have been even better. They just needed to tidy up a few areas where Mario's movement system doesn't work properly.

Anyways, after Mario defeats Bowser, then the power stars are able to restore Peach, who had been trapped within a stained-glass portrait of herself, and then Peach makes Mario a cake. If all 120 stars are collected, then a cannon will become available to the player on the castle grounds. The player can use this to launch to the castle's roof, where they will find Yoshi. Talking to Yoshi will give Mario 100 additional lives, and increase the power of his Triple Jump.

And then the credits roll. They're actually quite interesting. Take a look:

So, in other words, if we look only at people who did actual game design work here, there's only about twenty people. That's a very small development team for a video game, especially a game of the magnitude of Super Mario 64. Though, I suppose it is possible that there are some other people who worked on this too and were uncredited. It's impossible to know.

This game is a masterpiece. Not only is it a lot of fun to play the game, but also, it showed the gaming industry how to do 3D platformers. It laid down the groundwork for a lot of games to come. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I would place Super Mario 64 in the Top 10 List of "most important video games ever made". And yet... it was made by a small team. Still, the movement system and the camera were complete masterpieces, despite a couple of missteps in the level design.

Anyways, that's Super Mario 64. It's a really great game and I enjoyed analyzing it. I can't wait until I get my Nintendo 64 replaced and can play this game again.

And that concludes my over-analysis of a game from way back in 1996.

Wow, I need to get a life.