Retro Gaming 03: It's-a Me, Mario!

For anyone who grew up around a Nintendo 64 that actually had any decent games, the phrase "It's-a me, Mario!" will hit their nostalgic nerve like a freight train. For those of you that don't know, the Mario series is the iconic series for Nintendo, and the number one hit for its series on the N64 was Super Mario 64 (genius title, I know). Aside from the title, the rest of this game is actually relatively brilliant. It was of decent length, varied gameplay up compared to old Mario games, and kept the player thinking the whole time.

The premise of the game is that Mario has been invited to Peach's castle for cake, but when he arrives, the castle has been taken over by the evil King Koopa, Bowser. He scattered the power source for the castle (and all of the land, the Mushroom Kingdom), known simply as Stars, across different worlds that manifest themselves in paintings throughout the castle. The player then assumes control of Mario and must explore these worlds, gathering stars on each different level and eventually advancing to defeat Bowser - not once, but three times.

Gathering Stars is easy at first - the worlds start off with simple challenges like races, jumping, and defeating easy bosses. Amassing the first 20 Stars and defeating the first iteration of Bowser is obscenely easy. After that, however, things become more challenging: jumps are harder, puzzles more complicated, and situations more dangerous - death is common to the inexperienced player after the first 20 stars. Bowser seems further and further away, as one must collect 70 stars to reach Bowser for the final time (though to truly beat the game, one must collect all 120).

Mario's arsenal of moves had been greatly expanded upon in Super Mario 64. He can perform a number of acrobatic jumps and can even launch off of walls. Mario can also access powerup hats that provide him with different characteristics not otherwise available. There are three different hats: the Wing Cap, Metal Cap, and Invisibility Cap. The Wing Cap allows Mario to take off and fly after successfully performing a Triple Jump - this allows players to fly anywhere they want around the map for the duration the cap stays on Mario's head. The Metal Cap turns Mario into pure sentient steel, making him invulnerable to most kinds of damage and able to sink to the bottom of bodies of water instantly (which proves to be essential many a time). Finally, the Invisibility Cap immaterializes Mario, giving him the ability to pass through certain walls.

Super Mario 64 proved to be an incredibly fun, rather challenging game. Though it had points where it did drag a little, those were made up for by the sense of triumph after completing the puzzle at the end, or getting that final Star in a level. All in all, it's definitely worth a 40 to 50 hour gameplay session.