Super Mario 64 (Nintendo 64)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 4.5 stars Outstanding
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 9.4 (4.5 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Staff
• Reviewed on: 12/01/1996
• Updated on: 04/28/2000
• Released on: 09/26/1996
• Originally published on GameSpot: Super Mario 64 (Nintendo 64) Review

The story, in a Koopa shell: Our hero, Mario, receives a note from Princess Toadstool inviting him to Toadstool Castle for a cake...but when he arrives, the castle is deserted and a nasty, disembodied voice tells him to get lost. Yes, Princess Toadstool has yet again gotten her royal keister in the sling, and the bad guy gang of Bowser, Boo, et al, have overrun (and apparently redecorated) Mushroom Castle - hanging a collection of magical, wobbly-membraned paintings/portals that portray scenes from the fantastic worlds to which they're connected. Via Mushroom Castle's enchanted murals, players will find vast alternate worlds: Snowing planes of slippery ice slopes; mist-shrouded lagoons containing sunken ships; archipelagos of airborne islands; haunted castles wrapped in perpetual midnight; and red, seething expanses of lava-flooded obstacles. These worlds are slowly filling with monsters, the Princess herself is missing, and only one man can set things right.

Now somebody out there is probably thinking, "Mario, again. Mama mia!"

But wait....

The measure of a video game - one of them, rather, for they are legion - can be taken by the degree to which it provides an entertaining challenge, breaks new ground, and/or overcomes current designs, assumptions, and prejudices. If a game can best those that came before it in some way, that's good; if it can do this while offering a wholly new type of experience, that's great; and if it can so irresistibly draw a picky, opinionated, jaded game reviewer (like Yours Almost Always Perfectly Truly) into deep, emotional concern for the well-being of one dumpy little plumber, whom he never cared much for in the first place...well, that's revolutionary. Hard-core, demento gamers and media types knew it a year before its release, game deity Miyamoto-san certainly knew it as even as he designed it, and the collective mind of Nintendo (who essentially launched the Nintendo 64 platform around this title), knew it before anyone.

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  "You cant get much better on the Nitendo 64 then this!"

  by ohno21212 on September 7, 2007

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