Mario 64 Review 

"There's no point at all in making a 3d sequel if they couldn't first and foremost make sure it would feel good to play" Now why am I thinking about Castlevania all of a sudden?

To reinforce his statement about how perfect the beginning field is; I was at my brothers house warming party and late into to the night everyone else was drunk (me and my brother dont drink) and one guystarted playing super mario 64 after five minutes of him trying to grasp the controls he shimmies mario up a tree and then made him do a handstand on top. his jaw hit the floor. then proceeded to make mario start spinning while in this hand stand and all of the sudden the guy jsut starts going "woooooaaahhhh!!! woooooohooooo!!! i cant belive this is happening!!!". its truly perfect

That feel when Matthew reviews games you've already played so you don't have to worry about spoilers.

I agree with your points about the swimming sections. Though at the time I was completely mesmerized by the fact that a game could actually make me feel like I was underwater. The eels are still 2spooky though.

This is probably one of the best types of game reviewing i have ever seen. I really wish game reviewers like IGN and such would approach them with the same criticism and relevant points that you make, I'm subscribing.

I wonder how much of shigeru's success can actually be attributed to how LITTLE he plays games; he doesn't seem to get stuck in arbitrary formulas the industry seems commited to perpetuate. He seems to know what experiences he wants, and doesn't use other games as a basis; at least not in ways that are immediately recognizable.

Something I'd like to add to the topic of the controls: 3D movement was very new and they wanted it to feel very natural, and I think a big part of what made them succeed is that they added moves for every combination of the buttons you could possibly press. There's no functional necessity for the sweep kick (hold Z, press B) or dive kick (running Z, press B) and many players would probably never even see those moves, but they didn't want any intuition on the players' behalf to fail to provide a reaction.

He's like a teacher, providing constructive criticism, and I love it.

I think the idea of considering gameplay mechanics a language is super fascinating, and something that should be explored more. It might have already been done, I don't know too much design theory.

This video is absurdly well done.

Here's to hoping this masterful review reaches one million views someday.

This video is so well made that i want to throw all my money at you so you can make more

As a new viewer, I must say, your reviews are incredible. Very in-depth and informative. Subbed.

This is phenomenally inspiring work. I'll admit that I'm new to this channel and cannot make comparisons to many other videos you've produced, but I can say that I'm greatly looking forward to this Mario series, and your analysis is incredible while being fascinating to watch.

i first discovered matt's channel way back when egoraptor favorited his ocarina of time review (youtube used to display your subscriptions' activities like comments and favorites). i've been watching for 2 years now, and it's nice to see a few more people have found this great channel through arin. edit: i posted this in regard to the flood of people that came into the comments after arin mentioned matthewmatosis on game grumps.

VERY glad Arin mentioned your videos, these are amazing and I'm glad more people get to experience watching these.

Very well done. We need more videos like this one. "It's a Mario game" got a warm-hearted chuckle out of me. Fantastic way to close the video!

It's so refreshing to hear well thought criticisms after listening to Arin's "This game's stupid, I hate it!" over and over. In response to the criticism on the water worlds, while they are definitely the most boring worlds, It's not quite as much as a drag because it uses the most memorable soundtrack in the game. I realize that might not seem like such a big deal, but the choice of going for a relaxing soundtrack in the most boring level was definitely a good choice so as to alleviate a bit of the player's frustration.

You should review/compare SMB, SMB 3, SMW, and the NSMB series, and then compare them while reviewing Mario Maker(which uses the former 4 games as styles). Just a theme idea.

Great video. I think mario 64 is genuinely a masterpiece; a landmark game that will forever be remembered.

Nearly shat myself when I saw this in my subscriptions log (not just saying that I watched 2/3 of this on the dumper). You continue to prove to be the most phenomenal reviewer out there, fantastic work. Can't wait for Sunshine!

I never caught the genius of this game's design until now. I now have a greater deal of respect for it. On a side note, judging by the footage, you're quite skilled at this game. I'd wager you could do a speed-run fairly well (stream idea?).

A far better reviewer than me. But then again, Matthewmatosis is a much better reviewer than just about anyone who takes a stab at game reviews these days

In my game design class we're in teams and are currently making our own games using UDK (for the past couple months) and just watching this review with all the elements of the level design and how to teach a player by how your level is laid out is like gold!

Just realized there are no ads in this video until the end. Mr matosis you truely are a different level of your uber

This has always been my favorite game of all time. Looking back at the game critically and seeing the good things and the bad things is very interesting to me. There's so many things that one would not even notice when playing at a young age. Very well done!

I didn't even know you could run around snowmen to beat them :V

I love that even failing in this game is fun. When you fall from a high area, you get another opportunity to practice your skills at navigating the environment. In a 2D platformer, it would be irritating for that to happen, because the simplistic mechanics would make it repetitive. However, the jump to 3D adds tons of movement abilities, allowing you to spice up your methods of getting back to the place you fell from. It feels like a sandbox, if that makes any sense.

This is my favourite super mario game. It has my favourite video game soundtrack, and i actually love the way sprites were used. It makes it look much more realistic, and i'd rather have sprite trees than trees that look like a x from above.

18:00 After hearing this story repeated multiple times across many game development shows, I now believe Miyamoto's approach to Mario 64's movement was probably the biggest contributor to the current definition of "game-feel". Whenever anyone brings up the story, it's like they're reciting the definition/philosophy of game-feel

I wonder if you'd ever be interested in doing a review of Luigi's Mansion. Underrated title in the franchise, and in a few ways it's quite like Mario 64, although it's clearly very different in most ways. I think it's worth talking about though, especially because it's barely able to qualify under any particular genre. It's clearly not a platformer, I wouldn't call it an action game, but adventure game also seems like a stretch. A lot of design philosophy that seems intuitive now had to be thought out deliberately in earlier days. Mario 64 has a lot of 3D platforming ideas that seem obvious for any 3D platformer, but Mario 64 didn't have the benefit of previous titles to derive ideas from. They had to go back to the drawing board. And I think that's what makes Luigi's Mansion worth talking about - they had to go back to the drawing board and make everything from scratch essentially, and there's a million ways they could have fucked up, so I think that it's worth examining what they got right and what they got wrong.

That ending is so perfect man..every time I watch this it gives me chills.. "It's a Mario game."

Something I thought was really interesting is that, having an outcrop in the middle of a stage actually removes the necessity to draw what is behind it, saving a little bit of resources as the game is very unlikely to see all of what's around said outcrop. It's really amazing how many problems that structure solves.

Mario 64 and Sunshine had so much freedom of movement that I think the developers underestimated the abilities of players. A good example is the shocking arrow lifts star, like you mentioned. In both games you can skip entire sections of levels and render intended challenges useless with just a little practice and precise jumping. I personally think it's a lot of fun to manipulate the game in this way, even if it wasn't intended. Maybe they knew some of these things were possible, and they were intended as options for advanced players? Who knows. This is why I was largely disappointed with the Galaxy games and 3D Land and 3D World. Freedom of movement is no more, levels are entirely linear once again, and almost nothing can be skipped or accomplished in an alternate way. It doesn't mean they are bad games, but I sorely miss being able to have complete mastery over the environment like in the early 3D games.

I came here from the GameGrumps. Egoraptor mentioned you in the first episode of their recent Super Mario 64 Let's Play. I watched this video and I agree with everything you said. Your analysis of the game hit all the things that most reviewers would take for granted and forget about, such as the importance of Mario having a simple shadow beneath his feet when he jumps. You have earned my subscription.

3D All Stars! Time to rewatch these videos!

Good work, I love to watch your videos. I know you are very observant so I hope you can vocalize what is disappointing about playing Sunshine. To me the biggest thing is how FLUDD usually gives a gigantic amount of room for error in nearly all the levels. The only levels that lack this room for error either strip the player of FLUDD or are so treacherously high up or spread out that they become tedious to play. So few of the challenges actually require the use of the Hover Nozzle at all, it feels to me like a lot of the game was designed before the Hover Nozzle was introduced. Then they figured it might make the game more fun or easy to add a hovering function later on when really all it does is trivialize most of the movement in the game. At least Sunshine's atmosphere is great.

Why do people feel the need that they found out about Matthewmatosis from Game Grumps? Just watch the video and feel free to comment about the video's content instead of clogging the comment section with unrelated banter and inside jokes...

God I wish this guy was paid by big-name companies to do this. Professional and entertaining reviews!

Once again you are the king of videogame reviews. Absolutely brilliant analysis.

Far and away, this is the best review of a game I've seen in a very long time. Subscribed, and I'm gonna go ahead and watch that Sunshine review now. Keep it up!

Lakitu lives on a cloud. He is constantly watching you whether you like it or not. Sometimes he helps you out of a hole but usually he is just throwing crap at you to make your life difficult. Needless to say Lakitu is God.

for the record, that skate trick is called a hippie jump, but is only done over poles etc. great channel.

Just discovered your reviews and you're just fantastic. So well put together

In before the swarm of Game Grumps fans! Seriously, this channel looks great, and I'm glad Arin mentioned it! Subscribed ;)

Super Mario 64 is a phenomenal game, but I'm always a little bit put off by the pointlessness of the lives system. Losing a life throws you out of the level and forces you to re-enter for seemingly no reason (other than maybe giving the game more time to load the level?), and the only difference between losing a life and getting a game over is that a game over makes you go through the busywork of getting back to the castle. Basically, there is no reason for this game to have a lives system. At all. Super Mario Bros. 3 did the same and it sucked then, too, and even games as recent as New Super Mario Bros. 2 did it. How many years will it take for Nintendo to learn this lesson? Of course, in NSMB2 the lives system was justified by the inclusion of in-level checkpoints, but that just makes the fact that you get ejected from the level when you die even more nonsensical.

Absolutely love your video reviews, and super excited to hear what you have to say about Galaxy and 3D World. Keep up the fantastic work!

Wooooo!! New review series, looking forward to watching them all. Keep up the good work MM!

Hey Matt nice review, just a couple of bits of advice for your next video First of all its a bit long this video so its a bit hard on the old attention span, cut it down to about 5 minutes, there is also no intro music, what you need to do is have a headache educing flashy intro with lots of loud music, it makes you seem hip and cool. You also need to get on camera, speak really fast, pull lots of silly faces and assure you have lots of jump cuts in, they're hilarious and really shows your editing prowess. Also don't be afraid to throw in a few skits in there as well, be great if you can get one of your mates to dress up as Mario and come in and say "Its-a me Mario!" The old jokes are ALWAYS the best. Now you don't want to talk about the game too much as remember these videos are about you, not the game so if you talk about what it was like to be a child and how exciting it was to play this game for the first time, the girls love someone who is in touch with their inner child and you'll certainly get a few chicks from it. When it comes to the actual gameplay what would be better is how annoyed you get when you fall off the edge, because of the poor game design of course not because you suck at it, and if you start swearing really loud and raging out, this is of course how all gamers play their games and getting angry and frustrated really makes for entertaining viewing. Swearing is also very important as it means you are also edgy and are are far too hardcore for kids. If you haven't got time or money to do this you can actually go to your parents for money as a lot of other you-tubers do, its a really effective method actually. Finally MAKE SURE you ask people to like subscribe and comment on the video, follow you on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook etc. Best of luck and i look forward to the next video BRO lol #itsamemario cracks me up every time

"Hello ladies and gentlemen!" Ahh, i'll never get sick of hearing that!

Highly looking forward to this series. Great to see more of you!

Great start for what will surely be an interesting series of critiques regarding the 3D Mario adventures.

18 years later, and this is still my favorite game of all time. So so good.

My only real gripe with Mario 64 is it felt more like a game. What I mean by that is the previous Mario titles felt like adventures, making a journey to rescue the princess, but 64 was set in a hub world where each level was inside a painting, it kinda made it feel like a childrens toybox, like there was nothing really at stake. I mean obviously it was impressive for the time, but it doesn't feel like a cohesive world, it feels like obstacle courses.

Not only one of the best reviews I've had the pleasure of seeing, but one of the best RU-vid videos I've come across, period. The effort and attention to detail you place here is outstanding and worthy of applause. Keep up the great work.

I continue to be impressed by the intellectual depth you apply to these game reviews. Please do keep it up!

Thanks for reviewing these games. I feel you work best when reviewing a series of games as you can compare and contrast the sequels between each other and talk about their improvements and their downgrades overtime.

I've heard a lot of people say that this game hasn't aged too great. Last time I played it was about five years ago on the Wii's Virtual Console with the classic controller pro and I 100%'d it and had a blast. I have it on the WiiU as well and look forward to playing through it again on the gamepad. It's been almost 15 years since I played the original N64 version with the N64 controller though. I wanna say anyone who thinks this game hasn't aged well has only played the original version, but I can't without having played through it again myself (I never 100%'d that version). I know the N64 controller is a weird controller to go back to, but I find a lot of N64 game have aged just find when played with a more traditional controller/button layout. If nothing else I consider the virtual console version one of my favorite games ever.

So excited for this series! Glad to have you back Matt.

Brilliant as always! Can't wait for your sunshine and Galaxy reviews I haven't played 3D world yet so I will definitely try and get that done before your review

Hey does anyone know any other youtube channels that review/Critique videogames in-depth like this? It's pretty time consuming and hard to find people like Matt, so I would really appreciate the help, even if you comment years later! Great analysis Matt, nice to look at this game in-depth. RU-vidrs that critique/review games in-depth I like(besides Matt) are: Super Bunnyhop(goes really in-depth like Matt), Angry Joe Show, Errant Signal, SomecallmeJohnny, StopSkeletons(happy videogame nerd), Strafefox, that one videogamer(completionist), totalbiscuit(not really game reviews. but close enough), clan of the gray wolf

Fucking love you, Matthew.

Nothing like starting Christmas break with some quality design analysis. You make several insightful points, such as the impact the snow effect may have had on level design. Looking forward to the rest of the series!

I was watching this video as your Majora's Mask one popped up in my recommendation and wow I remember watching this back in 2015. When you were explaining about Lakitu and how he gives a 2nd person perspective it jogged my memory of this video. I'm shocked I never subscribed way back when but I binged a few of your videos and I love your content.

This is the greatest review of this game of all time, and no one will ever be able to top it.

your videos are really making me forget about egoraptors sequelitis series. it may lack the funny tone of egoraptors videos but therefore is even more detailed and thus more interesting imo. im really looking forward to the future reviews

Super Mario 64 review? I never thought this would be a thing, but I'm so glad it is! You do the really big games with deep stories and mechanics or unique premises, and when you don't, you do indie games. I'm glad that you chose to finally mix it up by reviewing a big budget game series that is simple.

Beautiful review like all the others, You inspire a lot of people to get out there and play well designed games and think about them from every angle.

SHOUTOUT TO MY BOY MATTHEWMATOSIS

Finally just beat this game after 3 years :D f****** earned that cake

Thrilled to have you back and reviewing the console 3D games of Mario. Keep up the great work!

Been looking forward to another video, Matthew. Yours are always quite enjoyable and well thought out. Can't wait for your take on Sunshine.

Hey Matthew, I really like your review style. I went through your uploads and was disappointed to see that you don’t post many videos. I guess your really busy? Anyway, take it easy mate.

Game Grumps lead me here, and I appreciated this. Mario 64 was an awesome game for it's time. Probably still is today.

I can't help but get excited when I see a video from you in my feed.

Great video, ended up watching all your videos, love your review style.

*Now contracting Matthewmatosis, please stand by*

The prodigal son has returned! Forever yours based Matthew

Another Matthewmatosis review series!!! This is the greatest day. I'm a pile of hype right now.

Really great analysis. You brought some stuff to my attention that I hadn't actually noticed despite having pored over this game's design myself.

I must admit I've never heard anyone pronounce Lakitu that way before. I think people assumed it was Lack-A-Too as that's how it's been pronounced since the 80s cartoon.

Our lord and saviour has returned!

... The wait is killing me. Considering you're doing a series, I was hoping to take the points with me between them. At this rate I'll have to rewatch them.

Excellent video, and I'm excited for the others. You're the best at what you do.

How many subscribers did Matt gain after he was shouted out on Game Grumps?

anyone else here because of mario 3d all stars?

I admire that he made this review in 4:3

Matt, you have made my day. I cannot wait to watch these reviews. You are, bar none, the best game review to have ever lived. Keep up the good work!

Really enjoyed watching this! I love it when people are able to articulate how I feel so I don't have to :P

Thank god someone is reviewing this game without bias

So happy to see another review from you, exelent as always, so addictive to watch it, every review I watch it like 3 - 5 times,

A fantastic video! I'm going to definitely bookmark this to watch again in the future, you have a terrific grasp of the game's design and you're a fantastic player.

you forgot the part where mario teleports.

anyone here from pure enjoyment of mathewmatosis's content? ( and not game grumps D: )

This game was my shit back in 99! Thanks for the thoughtful video!

Nice to see you back, Mathew, and it's a great idea to review the Mario games. I can't wait for your in-depth look to the rest of the series like what you did with Zelda and Metal Gear.

Hey, Matt. Dunno if you'll ever read this, but I'm wondering what your thoughts are on the DS remake.

Oh, FUCK yes.

amazing analysis, I was going to make one like this from a game designer point of view, but it seems like you already covered everything, even the small yet important par about mario's shadow, camera, vertical /horizontal play and the issues it has, very well done in 32 minutes.

Great review, hope the other Mario reviews are as in depth.