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Runa216 said:

Well this is a sudden surprise. Add Super Mario 64 to the list. Outta nowhere, I realized I needed 3D All-Stars (This is the last month to get it), so I whored myself out a bit to get the compilation! Friend bought it, it arrived yesterday at like 4 PM, and I spent the rest of the day getting 90+ stars and beating the game (Skipped past Tick Tock Clock and Rainbow Ride).

I gotta say...I'm loving it and hating it in equal measure. The nostalgia is strong so I'm enjoying it (I say present tense because I'm going for 120 stars), but holy hell this game has not aged well. I've been saying this for ages now, but most of it is borne entirely out of memories and old, well-established opinions on the game. but no, now that I've actually gone through and got 75% or so of the available stars, I have to wonder how anyone thought this game was anything more than decent. IT's got some good ideas, but holy hell the controls and camera and visuals are all terrible. Like, unforgivably so.

I know a lot of people say it was 'good for its time', but to this day I'm still not seeing it. Like, I can go back to Super Mario Bros 3, Super Mario World, and Yoshi's Island and all of them play and feel like an absolute dream even today. They look and sound and feel perfect or near to it. They aged well, but Mario 64 has some insanely bad controls. I'd say of the 100 or so lives I've died, 85 of them were for something I couldn't possibly have chnged. Cameras not moving so that I could see the enemy, glitching out on a wall/slope, not grabbing a ledge when I knew I could/should have, falling because the jump button didn't register, and general 'hey, instead of going in the direction you tilt the stick, I'mma do a wide figure eight, get hit by an enemy, and fall of the ledge'.

Like, half of the game is absolutely infuriating. I am actually surprised at how much I'm enjoying it overall (Like I said, the nostalgia is real and strong), but the other half of it is a nightmare.

/Rant

I played the DS version a bit during last Christmas and went out with positive feelings. It's the only version I've played, mind you, I got it for the first time during the early DS years and thought it was good; this time I thought it was going to be insufferable because of the D-Pad movement and the camera, but surprisingly it played well enough, can only imagine it's better on a real joystick. The real standout for me is the music, Dire Dire Docks is something else, man. 

The original 64 version obviously looks horrible by today's standards but everything else holds up nicely, that's what I feel. 

Also, at least you've got 3D All Stars. Make sure to save it very well, could be worth a lot in the future. 



My bet with The_Liquid_Laser: I think the Switch won't surpass the PS2 as the best selling system of all time. If it does, I'll play a game of a list that The_Liquid_Laser will provide, I will have to play it for 50 hours or complete it, whatever comes first.