Super Mario 3D All-Stars: Super Mario 64

 

Super Mario 64 is one of the best and most memorable video games from my generation.  When I learned that they were releasing a Switch version of the game I jumped at the chance to play it again.  I still have my Wii hooked up and thus have played the game relatively recently, but only the early portions.  Everything that made the game great (and not so great) remained true on my replay of this classic.

To begin, I'm much more into completing games (as much as possible, that is) now than I was when I was a kid.  When I was a kid, I wanted to get through the game as quickly as possible in order to move onto the next game.  As an adult, if it is a game environment that I really enjoy, I will try to get as much out of that game as I can.  I'm pretty sure when I played this game originally, I got the bare minimum 70 stars, went to defeat Bowser, and moved onto another game (probably Goldeneye or Ocarina of Time).  This time around, my goal was to get all 120 stars.

The concept of this game is great. Peach's castle has been taken over by Bowser, and in order to save the castle and all of your friends, you collect stars from various stages.  Not only do you get to explore 15 courses, but accessing the courses by exploring the castle is a great touch.  It was a great design at the time of its release and remains pretty fantastic.  In my opinion, it is the best part of this game, followed by the game's music in a close second place.  

Some of the stages are memorable and are pretty cool.  I particularly like the snow and water stages on this game.  Tick, Tock, Clock is a cool one too.  A lot of the courses aren't too memorable, however, and the sand and lava courses are a bit of a pain.  The graphics are polished on this Switch release but the terrible camera angles and semi-frustrating controls remain.  These are leftover from the first generation of 3D console games as a lot of games from that generation have not held up well to the test of time.  These are frustrating at times, but the game overall remains quite enjoyable.  

For whatever reason, the final battle against Bowser is a memorable one.  It isn't overly interesting and in the grand scheme of final video game boss battles is relatively easy.  But out of all the video game boss battles I've had, I do remember this one which is saying something.  The music during the battle is fantastic as well.

I finished the game with 100 stars.  I was able to get all 6 stars from the 15 courses, as well as 10 castle special stars.  I was ready to move onto another game.  I still need to get the 7th 100 coin star from all 15 courses, plus 5 additional special stars.  I may return to the game at some point to collect the remaining stars, but for now I've seen enough of Peach's castle.  It was a great stroll down memory lane, and while I've played the first 6-7 stages of the game several times, this is only the second time I've beaten the game and seen the later stages.  Onto the next game in this collection, which is Sunshine.  I never owned a GameCube and thus have never played this game before.  It looks...interesting.