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How was your experience with Super Mario 64?

I remember watching college kids playing it at walmart, christmas that I got Mario 64 and System.

I was utterly shocked and would just set there in amazement watching.

I collected all 120 stars, met yoshi on top of the castle, and loved every moment of this game.
 
mr teaspoon said:
Definitely my most special gaming memory.

I was 12, and a regular EGM reader (along with other misc mags). Ultra 64 was the most important thing in my life, probably. I remember poring over early screenshots of Mario 64 and just imagining that world and how awesome it must be. And I would doodle pictures of the controller all the time - to this day I can look at an N64 controller and get that old feeling.

There's also some really nice memories of my grandma intertwined. She helped raise me, and is the single most important person in my upbringing. One day, near launch, she and I were in a Blockbuster. I turned a corner and saw a fucking N64 demo unit with Mario 64. And nobody was playing! Needless to say, I was all over it. Ugh, man, getting to hold that controller for the first time and play fucking Mario 64! My grandma was a saint, I don't remember exactly how much time we spent there but she let me play for so long.

I mentioned I was a regular EGM reader, so I knew full well when launch day was. Grandma knew consoles sell out, so she picked one up for me the day of. Of course I begged to open it and play Mario, just for one day! And she actually let me. And I swear, I didn't throw a tantrum to get it, it wasn't 'fine, you little shit, just shut up!' I know it must seem like she just totally caved, but opening a Christmas present and playing with it in September was big even for her. She knew how long I had been obsessing over it, but she can't really have understood how important and exciting it was in terms of being a gamer. I will always remember how grateful I was (and am).
Click to expand...

Sounds like the best grandma ever.
 
to be honest when the game first appeared at shoshinkai (or was it space world? whatever) i was pretty let down. not just with the game but "project reality" promised some pretty mind blowing stuff

still i was pretty stoked about 3D gaming so i pre ordered it and rented the japanese console that came out months later. in motion it was pretty amazing. its a classic but some of the precision jumping and level design put it a notch below in my 'classics' list. may sound like i'm down on it but it was a big part of my childhood
 
i was 12, and it was gaming perfection. at least until OoT came out. the experience of those two games, with mario kart64 on the side, has never really been topped for me. regardless of all the"superior" games that have come out since.
 
A cousin of mine had the N64 at launch day, he was playing and invited a friend of his to play. I was visiting at the time and he was a dick so I only got to watch while they had no idea what to do. Poor Mario, just running in circles :(

I finally played the game circa 1998 when I got my own N64.
 
Loved this game and I miss it. I wish Nintendo would do a proper analog controlled version of Mario 64 DS with improved graphics and 3D for depth.

The controls on my DS version are frustratingly poor.

I used to drive to my local game store in Hawaii that had a Japanese N64 on display with Mario since the release was so staggered. It blew me away at the time.
 
Bought at launch. I never did get all 120 stars. I collected 119, but could never get all 100 coins on the rainbow flying carpet stage, whatever it was called. Rainbow Ride?
 
Absolutely loved it. The memory I remember most was that playing it was like re-learning how to play video games. The whole switch from 2d to 3d was earth shattering to me at the time.
 
Played it for the first time on the DS (didn't have Nintendo stuff before) and didn't like the controls so I didn't get far. I later played it on the Wii VC and got a good deal farther. However I really don't like the slippery controls of 64 and Sunshine (which I really didn't enjoy, even though I did manage to at least beat it). I found it very annoying when Mario would keep falling down on his belly and didn't like his momentum coming from PS2 platfomers where the controls are a lot tighter.

In contrast, Super Mario Galaxy is one of my favorite games ever due to the more forgiving controls and the reduced amount of falling to your death.
 
It will forever be one of the greatest games I've ever played.

Though tbh I think SMG is the better game there's just too much nostalgia associated with 64.
 
Ahhh, Super Mario 64...

My first, most played and best overall liked N64 game (and also the game that happened to close off my youth and started me on adulthood age wise). Everyone in those days was impressed by this game, even the most anti-Nintendo gamers or pro-PC gamers. EVERYONE. They all wanted to play it!

For me this and Ocarina of Time (and perhaps Wii Sports) are the last Nintendo games to really have that complete universal appeal on people, that magical playground, toy box, Disney-esque quality that melts the hearts of even the biggest critics. It was also the last Mario game to have such an innovative impact on gaming unfortunately.

In a way Ocarina of Time improved upon Super Mario 64 in interesting ways, such as making the world even more open and full of characters to talk to. On the other hand, SuMaRi 64 had that Demon's Souls quality of vastness that only the combination of a well designed hub (ohhh, those castle grounds - I could live in them back then) with many varied levels can bring. No game before it, or since I would argue, has ever captured that raw playground "look-at-how-I-can-move-and-how-far-I-can-go" quality. While Ocarina's world was perhaps even more intricately designed, SuMaRi 64's felt bigger in some ways, more filled with mini stories and challenges. It also certainly managed to instill a very pure joy into controlling simply Mario through it.

In other threads I have been mentioning that newer Mario games, while mostly fine from a gameplay standpoint and justified saleswise, lack the symbolic impact and raw universal appeal that was so well captured in the old Super Mario Bros. 3 commercial (you know the one, with the Mario face on top of the Earth). Super Mario 64 is actually THE Mario game for me to fully personify that highest ideal. It truly had an impact on anyone that played or saw it and it inspired a whole generation of game designers in even more profound ways than Mario and Zelda 1 did. Part of this game's strength and symbolic capital then - apart from its revolutionary qualities - is how it seemed to promise us even better experiences in future (Mario) games (though sadly that promise was not very often delivered, perhaps only in Ocarina of Time).

Sigh, now I miss the days in which this game and Nintendo were like forces of nature. I also miss the sensation of awe that things like diving underwater for the first time and finding the ship, or chasing the rabbit in the basement, or exploring the ghost mansion, or the battle with Bowser would bring - I still get chills thining back on how much those experiences lived on in my head for weeks. I also miss the days when I could spend entire afternoons reading through Official Ninendo Magazine issues for months on end up to and after the release of this game. For me, their lyrical coverage was a large part of the appeal as it - again - symbolized the universal amazement and joy we all felt back then.

(And if my old buddy Max - not THE Maximilian though - is by any chance reading this: this is the game I associate the most with my time at my father's place in the woods back then. Thank you for the many afternoons in which we got lost in this game's world together - or simply jumped around in the castle grounds!)
 
Playing this game and flying around was the greatest time I've had and finding Yoshi after the 120 stars was awesome. Watching Siglemic speedrun it though has made me feel impotent so i haven't played it since.
 
It was about as monumental as the moment I stroked my pee pee and white appeared instead of yellow, Yes the moment was huge. I was 12 years old, my family had just moved to the states from Australia and I was in Toys r Us, I was walking around the store with my dad until he had stopped at something and called out to me to come check it out. Low and behold it was the thing I had read about in a magazine on the plane something I could not comprehend actually existed, I was was mezmorised by it, it was Mario, no ordinary Mario but a Mario with more than 4 sides, he was 3d, his world was 3d, this was my first N64 moment and one of my most amazingly fond memory, I watched my dad hopelessly control mario around this beautiful world but I didnt care as I just stood there staring, pretty sure i didnt blink for 30 mins. Then it was time to leave I was shattered but my world had changed and from then on I knew I would be a gamer forever.
 
I read about it in Next Generation magazine over and over. When I finally saw the display unit in Toys R Us, I was blown away watching some kid in front of me walk around. As soon as he left mad I got my shot, it was glorious. Seriously one of the those seminal moments that I'll never forget. Definitely the biggest generational jump the industry has had.
 
No words can describe the feeling of experiencing Super Mario 64 back in 1996.

I was literally floored...the game completely blew me away in every aspect.

The scope, the ambition, the freedom, the art, the graphics, the controls, the presentation...everything was out of this world.

It felt like playing a game from the future lol.

I found myself spending 2 hours doing random shit outside the castle, just jumping, climbing on trees, swimming in the lake, trying out Mario's moves etc.

Absolutely mind-blowing experience.
 
I still have yet to get all 120 stars.

BUT BEFORE YOU THROW ME IN THE BRIG, I'm trying to rectify that right now by getting all stars hopefully in a few weeks.
 
Thought it looked stupid when it came out in 96, but the game was very playable. Didn't really appreciate it until the DS port (largely because you could play as Luigi and break the game in half)
 
Super Mario 64 was completely magical to me when it first came out, but a few caveats:

  • I found it hard to find a camera angle I really liked, had to adjust all the time.
  • Moving accurately was tough, especially on narrow surfaces.
  • I often fell because of the 2 points above.

Great game, but the mechanics were definitely refined a lot in later Marios.
 
When I discovered you could jump higher with the 180 turn twist flip, then I started using it in areas which weren't designed for.

But really, my fondest memory was diving for the first time underwater, finding the wrecked ship and then entering it. It was just a mind blowing experience throughout.
 
I was already a jaded gamer in my late teens by the time Mario 64 came out, and I remember being kind of confused by the hype that surrounded this game. I'd already played Tomb Raider, Jumping Flash, Croc, and even Crash Bandicoot, and the constant claims that Mario 64 invented the 3D platformer in the gaming mags actually kind of made me mad.

Then I saw it for the first time in a local game store, and honestly thought it looked sparse, bland and blurry. All I could ask myself was is everyone else except me blind?

We ended up getting an N64 and the game for Christmas one year, and I did play it for a bit, but didn't really enjoy it much. The controls were rock-solid of course, but the controller itself felt shoddy and the initial areas in and around the castle bored me to tears. Then of course there was the vaseline filter that that made it a pain to look at. I ended up going back to having my mind blown by Wipeout 2097.
 
Found a demo station and started playing. I was blown away by the 3D...but I had absolutely no idea what I was doing or where I was supposed to go. In fact, I still don't most of the time. It lacked the linearity of previous Super Mario games and it made me feel lost.
 
One of my all time favourite games! Mind was seriously blown playing it at Kmart. Got one for Xmas and spent hours per day playing this with my brother.
 
Alright. Let's jump in the time capsule and say you're seven years old. You've been saving up all of your birthday and Christmas money ever since Nintendo sent an issue of Nintendo Power announcing the "Ultra 64". And now, it's launch day, it's finally time, you go to Toys R Us to pick up your pre-ordered N64 and Super Mario 64. Your dad lets you hook it up to the big TV for the first day. You go through, die many times getting used to 3D platformers, and finally take out the Big Bomb-Omb. Game over, right? Except it keeps going, and for much longer. This game is huge! It took me years to finally get all 120 stars, the last two levels were my nemesis for the longest time. Now I can run through them and get all the stars no problem, but getting used to games in 3D planes was a big deal back then.

Finding Princess Peach's Secret Slide is still one of my fondest video game memories for some reason.
 
First time: Amazing from the very first time I saw it.

Today: I still think it's amazing. It's not my favourite game ever, but it's most certainly one of my favourite games ever. Aged incredibly well too, IMO.

DS version: Love it. I played through it a lot when I first got my import DS (from the US, I'm in Europe). It helped me through that dry spell. I don't get the whining about the controls, it plays fine and I never had any trouble with it.
 
I got it for Christmas the year the N64 came out from my dad. I also got Super Mario RPG from my grandma. My SNES was already hooked up so I thought for the first day I would just play Super Mario RPG and hook up the N64 the next day.

I remember feeling guilt, and apologizing to my dad because I didn't want him to think I didn't like what he had got me.

The next day he helped me hook up my N64 and I put it in. It took a long time for me to ever go back to Super Mario RPG. Super Mario 64 blew my mind at the time. I had never seen a 3D world (that I recall) and I was hooked. Ended up getting all 120 stars before I played any other games again.

To this day Super Mario 64 is my number 2 best game of all time. I bought the DS version for my 3DS a while back, and even went so far as to buy an actual N64 and the game again so I can play with the right controller.
 
I remember my first time playing it at Toys R Us. It absolutely blew my mind!

I didnt end up getting a copy till about 5 months later and I played the living shit out of it. Still an amazing platformer.
 
It was almost gaming-magic to me.. Still consider it one of my top games of all time. One thing though, one of the first things I noticed was that the controls were not very precise.. which slightly ruined some of the fun.
 
Like many other kids, I walked into a Best Buy one random evening and my jaw dropped at the N64 display there. There it was, the mythical machine I had read so much about in Nintendo Power, right in front of me. But it had to be a mockup. There was no way those graphics were real.

I waited in line with a bunch of other kids. Then my turn came up, and it was complete magic. There was Mario in 3d, and he felt just as good as in 2d. The time I had with the game was sadistically short before the black screen of death and Mario said "Who's next?".

I think I begged my parents to take me to Best Buy every week from then until Christmas, when I got my N64. By then the magic had worn off a little bit, but I had 90% of the game to go and levels like Tick Tock Clock got me pumped again.
 
Hm. I had watched my cousin play it a couple times and I think I played it once or twice too. However I can't remember this very well. I wasn't super impressed or anything. This was in like 2001. Before then I had seen the game for years in milk commercials.

A few years later I got the DS version with my launch DS. I was extremely impressed at the jump in graphics from GBA to DS, but the game itself was nothing impressive to me. There was a drought in DS games so I played it a fair amount, and I enjoyed it, but at the same time I was really kinda unimpressed. At the time I had already played Sunshine and I liked it more, but even then I didn't love Sunshine. However I never really had any issue with the D-Pad controls for some reason, so it wasn't the DS version. I was in the boat that 2D Mario games>3D Mario games, until Galaxy came out and I was blown away.
 
I got into this zen mode with the clock level a couple of times and literally just shocked myself at what I was able to pull off. Such a great game. Still has not been rivaled in 3D, even by its own follow-ups.
 
I'm a huge fan of Mario games and played this during the N64 era. For some reason, I just didn't like the game and also did not like Super Mario Sunshine
 
So, my initial exposure to this game was at a demo kiosk at my local Sears. If you've read my story about Pokemon in the other experience thread, then you already know about this Sears, but to recap quickly, this Sears had it's game section nestled into the corner of the children't clothing section in the basement. Not sure if all Sears were like this or if the this Sears was run by someone who liked to piss of parents, but there it is. Now, these demo kiosks kinds sucked. They had a timer set on them, so the game would automatically reset after a certain amount of time, forcing a switch to whoever else was in line. Sadly, the timer was set for two minutes a piece. So, not really enough time to do anything other than watch the opening or play with Mario's face. So I had very little interaction with this one.

Which left me with screenshots and articles in whatever gaming magazines I could get my hands on. I don't have any direct memories of reading about the game in Nintendo Power, but I'm sure I did. Maybe their coverage wasn't that good, I can't say off the top of my head. As it turned out, my main source of information came from a magazine called PC World, who had started running stories on Mario 64, mostly because it was a fine example of new technology being used for new kinds of animation. The articles weren't really about gameplay or anything like that, rather focusing on the technical aspects of the game and system, but it was none the less interesting.

That Christmas, my mother surprised me with an N64 and Mortal Kombat 4. Grandma didn't approve of violent games like that and made my mother return it, much to her annoyance. A day later, the day after Christmas no less, she walked into my room with Mario 64. The next two weeks were a blur. I knew the game was supposedly big, but until I actually had the game in front of me, I hadn't understood just how much 'big' was the wrong word for it. It was huge, a grand adventure that tested my wits with hidden stars, portals to new worlds glued to the freaking walls, and hours upon hours of exploration.

Returning to school after Christmas break, I found that I got to be one of the popular kids for a few days. I was, apparently, one of only six people in my grade to have gotten an N64 (who remembers the great N64 shortage of 98'?) and of the six, I was the only one to have made any real progress in Mario 64. People who I normally didn't talk to were suddenly interested in hearing my advice and many of those people became good friends, friends I still know and talk to.

All and all, I can't say that Mario 64 blew my mind as much as Pokemon did a year or two later, but it was none the less help shape what types of games I enjoy.
 
It's probably my favorite game ever. If it came out after Galaxy, for example, I'm not sure that'd be the case. But with personal subjectivity involved, it was mind-blowing for me at the time. I can go into the first snow level and dive off the top, driving Mario's head to become stuck in the snow, and I still get a good giggle out of it.
 
My first experience? What the hell is this ugly ass game in which you move around in three dimensions? How do I win?

My second experience (a few months later when I gave it another shot)? This is awesome.
 
Awesome memories playing this. Pretty much majestic. One of the most important game of my childhood along with Ocarina of Time and Goldeneye.

This was also one of the only games I actually 100%ed.
 
First time i played it in a supermarket when i was on vacation with my grandparents.
It was so mindblowing to control Mario in full 3d.
Later i got a n64 for Christmas along with Mario 64.
I played the shit out of it, soo good.
 
I first saw this game running at Target. I was really young, although I can't remember how old I was. I was probably about 7 or maybe 8. I didn't own a N64 till probably around '99 or '00, but I remember watching other kids play, (Because I was too embarrassed to play) plus, the kids playing would hog it all day. The feeling was indescribable. I saw Mario running around what seemed to me at the time, a huge world. I saw Mario jump and run head first into walls, making him bounce back. I saw him open doors that led into rooms with even more doors. Then I saw him jump into portraits that would send him into even bigger worlds with all sorts of amazing things in them. The game was amazing to me. I didn't get to play it for another few years, but nothing else blew me away like that did... not until I saw Zelda at Sears a few years. Still, my family was very poor and couldn't afford to buy me these consoles at launch. I'm actually pretty lucky I got any consoles at all, although I did get a NES, and SNES during the N64's life time. I got an N64 when Donkey Kong 64 was being sold as a pack-in, and came with a clear green console. Good times.
 
I intensively read every artivle in gaming magazines about it for over 6 months, it was released almost a year earlier in japan, than in europe, so there were many many previews.

Never was I hyped more for a game, never had I higher expectations, and never has a game surpassed my expectation this far, GOAT, indeed
 
Playing the first stages was fun and all, but when you did your first flying level to get the cap and then revisited other stages with it, that's when I was completely sold.
 
I got a 64 & this game for Christmas the year it came out and it blew my mind in half. It'll be a long time until we see a game changer like that again.

I remember paying $2 at a little game shop in my local flea market to play the game for like 10 min. or something. I remember doing the penguin race, and just loosing my shit, I couldn't believe what I was playing. I wish I could get hat feeling from games these days.

Also notable is the fact that my fear of underwater levels in videogames began with this game, specifically Jolly Roger Bay and that fucking eel. I am still terrified of water levels and have a really hard time completing them in any game.
 
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