In the second of this three-part look at Super Mario 64 and Nintendo's leap into 3D game design, we explore what Mario's polygonal upgrade took from his sprite-based adventures… and where this pioneering work left room for improvements.
Super Mario 64, at the very least, still plays fine if you teach yourself to go with the camera rather than fighting it be required as in previous free-roaming camera controls. However, I think one of the reasons that Nintendo ended up inventing the Collectathon is precisely one of the major reasons that the 3-D Sonic games ended up being so weak: mid-90's 3-D world spaces were always going to be limited. So the idea of collecting different items within the same spaces was meant to be economical; they didn't have to spend so many resources at this point developing, building and testing multiple long 3-D worlds. Even when Galaxy came around and they did exactly that, Mario still moves a lot slower than Sonic would for any given level, so there wasn't a lot of money thrown at details that'd only ever be seen briefly during a sprint section. Sonic Adventure, in the meantime, had to devote a lot of space and resources to making really wide expansive levels so that Sonic had something to race around in, and they could only build so many of those, and had to cram in other stage types that weren't nearly as developed into the game lest it be like twenty minutes long. I'm pretty sure the Nintendo development team knew such a thing wasn't going to fly right out the gate with their first 3-D attempt, hence waiting all the way until 3-D Land and World to actually devote the kind of resources (and had the experience) necessary to making multiple unique 3-D stages, which is probably what they wanted in the first place.
7:56 This is something I've often said about Super Mario 3D Land. It was as if they thought there had never been a 3D Mario game before, and by simply having it play in 3D they'd done enough. Also, I'm glad I've FINALLY seen someone mention Donkey Kong GB while talking about Mario 64! Not enough people realize that's where Mario originally got those moves.
Sunshine works, Galaxy works, Ocarina of Time works, FF7 works, Persona 4 works. These are the things I dream about. I love game boy works and your passion for those games and for their preservation and documentation makes those videos interesting and worthwhile for me even on the Occassions when the games them selves don’t interest me but this Mario 64 series has has been so incredible. Having your knowledge of the history of the medium and ability to draw the historical context of the games and the connections both forward and back in actual and alternate time lines and your general style of critique and genuine admiration for these works really elevated it far above the other videos on the game and we desperately need his kind of analysis for these huge game changing games. I emplore you to work more of these retrospectives of the titans of the 32 and 64 bit era into your works series. Games journalism and particularly RU-vid games journalism needs it. Excellent, excellent work. Please never stop.
Great comment. And great video. Nintendo never disappoints, neither does Jeremy Parish. It is such a pleasure to watch his videos and realize so many things about this masterpieces. Or hear what we had in mind but never have been able to put it so well in a video. Thanks a lot to Jeremy Parish.
This is a peculiar 'problem', but when several of your text overlays come on screen, there's a particular little dark fleck that appears about a sixth up the screen, a bit right of center. It's particularly visible on the "Next Episode" card. It also shows up on the game info cards at the bottom of the screen. Excellent episode though! This Game Works series is practically definitive.
Perceptive analysis on the game's tendency toward open spaces and passive hazards, but I'm surprised you described melee as the primary means of attack. I almost always relied upon jumping, which was accurate enough and crushed everything you couldn't either throw or avoid entirely. The punch seemed like an interesting inclusion, a novelty afforded by a new dimension, but it was cumbersome to use in practice because it brought all your athletic locomotion to a halt.
I learned to lift my right index finger from the R shoulder button and manage the camera with the C-buttons without lifting my thumb from the A and B buttons. I'm not even a great super mario 64 player at all. I see what "pro" players do and I just give up even trying. I completed the game back in the day and didn't find much drive to replay. I'm not much of a replayer when it comes to adventure/quest games, to be honest. Once completed, it's mission accomplished for me. Sincerely speaking, just like I don't get all the hate the N64 controller gets, I also can't agree with all the "oh, feels so dated and awkward" crap modern gamers say. I'm much of a fan of the automatic cameras found in so many games. They feel like they are forced me. I'm trying to get this or that view on a seemingly free-roaming environment, and the camera just does some predefined thing because I'm supposed to do sumthing the developpers decided and they don't care what I want to do. You can critizice mario64's camera for not automatically doing what YOU want at all times, but I find many later games approach to camera management truly annoying, with the "we know better than you" attitude they seem to be created. Everybody seems to be OK with that, for some bizarre reason.
I don’t know what you mean about sunshine’s camera issues, it feels perfect to me. Then again, it was my first Mario game as a kid so I guess I adapted to it too well to notice
"After stumbling with Super Mario Sunshine." Whatever. I still love that game. I consider it a major improvement over Mario 64 and even enjoy returning to it more than Galaxy. Fight me
Super Mario Sunshine being a good game (it is) doesn't really negates the truth. It's an unfocused game with little environmental variety going on (It may stick way too much to its theme) and obviously unfinished You enjoy it better and that's alright. I enjoy Odyssey better than 3D World despite 3D World being seen as the better game All 3D Mario games are good, so liking one over the others is a matter of taste Mario 64 is still the gold standard though
@@OsakaSan Who gets to decide what "the truth" is, though? Every videogame criticism is, at the end of the day, subjective to one degree or another. Someone might play Sunshine and find that the game is not unfocused, that there's enough environmental variety and that there's nothing unfinished about it. Or they might conclude that while it is flawed in some ways, so is every game and the flaws don't necessarily make the sum of the game's parts go down. There's no magical machine you can plug a videogame in to determine whether or not it should count as "the gold standard". I've been playing Super Mario 64, and it's quite fun, but also extremely flawed in some ways and 3D Mario games have seen a lot of improvement over the years.
Analog movement in the DS game is weird. Since there was no analog stick for the DS, you had to hold Y to run if you used the Dpad to move but if you used the touch screen, then you had analog movement. Did anyone ever use that control method because i find using the touch screen uncomfortable for that game.
I love Super Mario 64 DS, but I find the touch screen controls almost impossible to use. I never used them for anything except tossing Bowser into the mines.
Goldeneye may be the first shooter to have dual analogue support in any sense. Of course, the Sony dual analogue controller (not the dualshock, which came later) had already been shown at trade shows around 1996, and had released in Japan in April of 1997, where goldeneye was released on August 25th. The western release of the dual analog controller came 2 days later on August 27th. It's testament to the really weird design of the n64 controller that it's even viable to use a dual analogue scheme on the n64 without a new controller design. - if you struggle with making sense of the 3-pronged N64 controller and how to hold it (as is evidently the case for quite a few people), that may be hard to follow. But the key point is that the controller is symmetrical around it's centre grip, and thus the weight is balanced, meaning that it is perfectly viable both to hold the controller one-handed for extended periods, AND when held by the centre grip it works equally well in either hand. It thus follows that it is viable to use a controller in each hand. Hence, Dual Analogue schemes become possible. (as well as, in theory, independent rumble for each hand. XD) They don't make controllers like the n64 anymore. It truly is one of the most unusual designs, and very flexible for it. Unfortunately, it seems to confuse a lot of people, and others meanwhile simply don't appreciate what it made possible. Of course the very poor durability of the analogue stick didn't help it's case. And some people complain that you can't reach all the buttons at once, which is true. although it was never built with that in mind. If you include the one-handed case and count holding it right and left-handed separately, there are 5 ways of holding a single controller, and the idea behind it was the developers would use whichever grip style best suited their game. But compared to what became the modern standard, where a single grip gives simultaneous access to all the controls, the n64 does indeed block off parts of the controller depending on how it's used, and this had to be accounted for in game design. You could have: -- Dpad + 2 triggers + 6 face buttons (+ start) -- Stick + 2 triggers + 6 face buttons (+ start) [most common arrangement] -- Dpad + Stick + 2 triggers (+ start) {+ 2 face buttons technically still reachable} Those are the basic, official options, which were listed in the manual for the system and the controllers. That last point about the fact that you can technically still reach the A and B button when you have your right hand on the centre grip becomes important when considering the one-handed grip style (and the associated one controller per hand style) The unofficial extra options then, keeping in mind the mildly awkward but still plausible ability to hit the A and B buttons with your thumb with the hand holding the centre grip, look like this: -- Stick + trigger + {2 face buttons} + (start), Right handed -- Stick + trigger + {2 face buttons} + (start), Left Handed And of course, the combination of both of the above. -- 2 Sticks + 2 Triggers + {4 face buttons} + (2 start buttons) That last observation might seem a bit weird, but it is accurate; The console can tell the start button on each controller apart. In fact, the games known to use dual controller (Goldeneye and Perfect Dark) ignore one of the start buttons entirely, with only the other functioning as expected. Not very useful, but it does demonstrate that they are independent buttons. Also note that the combined effect of Dual n64 controllers is effectively like having a SNES controller (2 trigger buttons, 4 face buttons, 2 'control' buttons.) with the D-pad replaced with dual analogue controls. So while not providing as many controls as the modern standard controller (it's short 2 triggers and a dpad) it's still nothing to sneeze at in terms of control options...
i think a lot of mario 64's camera issues are a result of the camera constantly going out of its way to not show you the direction you're moving. more often than not the game shows you either some slight angle or a side view that completely obstructs where you actually want to be looking. oot has its share of camera issues but the camera in that game is definitely a step in the right direction, as it at least tries (but doesn't always succeed) to give you a good view of where you're headed.
Draygone Fuzzbottom Jr Parts 1&2 were meant to be a single long episode but I had to cut them in two due to time constraints from our Portland Retro Gaming Expo commitments. So...
I don't know, since speed runners have really found ways around the camera. Definitive controls first try out isn't really the definition of the whole franchise if that's the case Bungie should be ashamed of every FPS game they release since Marathon. Plus 1997 was an era where everyone was experimenting in every media, including begining of rythem games, online games, 3d vs 2d, CD media, the audience was starved to play video games even if it's a Myst clone.
At some point it hit me that botw is really a humongous Mario 64 level. Whatever can be said about open world games influence on botw Nintendo made this genre their own.
Super Mario Sunshine has its camera problems, but I do prefer its camera system to the one in Super Mario 64. While the camera in 64 seems to fight you a lot of the time (Lakitu is one of Bowser's minions, after all), the camera in Sunshine goes where you tell it to. But it also doesn't go anywhere you *don't* tell it to, so you have to babysit it. 64's camera is more forgiveable, though. 3D games weren't some mysterious new thing by the time Sunshine came out. It should have worked better.
Mario 64's camera isn't *meant* to be moved, 90% of the time, and it's something modern gamers always struggle to understand, including the reviewer it seems. In fact, the game has around 100 different camera behaviours and modes working in the background, designed to pan, tilt and twist either with the player or to automatically give them a dynamic viewing angle. This approach was by no means perfect all of the time, but mostly works extremely well and must have taken a lot of effort. Nintendo would later perfect the approach to an art with Ocarina of Time. You can easily spot a modern gamer playing Mario 64 for the first time - they'll expect to have full control of the camera all times, and constantly try to force it behind Mario for a "push forward to win" effect. Somewhere around the time of Banjo-Kazooie though, and as duel analogue's became standardized, developers including Nintendo realised it was a lot less hassle to just give the player full control of the camera, and forgo artistic control.
TV-GAME Fan I think I agree that moving the Mario 64 camera isn't a great idea in general, but there are definitely areas with questionable default angles that lead to unintuitivie jump approaches. It's much easier to line up jumps with a self-directed camera, and since Mario's jumps give very little room for correction left and right in this game, having the camera facing forward can sometimes help make the game's more elaborate demands completable. It's harder to get the oblique jump angles lined up, and that's my second major source of frustration with the game (the first is that the eel is horrifying and I don't dare look into its face for more than seconds at a time lest I become mad)
I properly played Sunshine before playing 64, so the camera differences were jarring at the time and I feel like its only gotten worse. Sunshine allows you to smoothly zoom and pan in nearly every instance and would give way to WindWaker's camera which was even better. Even contemporaries of Sunshine, like Jak and Ratchet, were still more cumbersome to use.
@@kaneda010 Except they then doubled down on this approach for the Mario Galaxy games, where you pretty much have NO camera control in a lot of scenes. (the game completely locks you out from messing with the camera, more often than not.) Of course, the Mario Galaxy camera largely knows what it's doing, while the Mario 64 camera often doesn't behave appropriately. But still...
Wait....hold up.....did yall really use Mario's punch as his "primary attack"??? When you said that my head exploded lol. I almost never punched anything. Even now when I play it for nostalgia. I jump on almost everything. Feels like you were playing a different game lol
Despite the camera issues, I still find Mario 64 to be more playable than Sunshine. Sunshine simply isn't fun for the most part. The water pack is a poor gimmick that relies on a limited resource (water) for the purpose of traversing the environment. Then the environment you're traversing is almost always a series of platforms floating/hanging over a pit. Missing a landing or running out of water means traversing large portions over and over again. Now picture doing this for large portions of the game, that is, when you're not being forced to use the water pack to clean graffiti. Not fun. Oh, and the damn thing talks to you.
Maybe it's just because Mario 64 was one of the first games I ever played as a kid, but I never really understood why some people don't like the camera. It was frustrating at times, but that frustration was part of the fun for me. Sure the camera caused me to die many many times, but it also felt really really good when I was able to finally master a section of the game that the camera had made difficult for me. I felt the same way about the ds remake too, and I don't even remember having a problem with Mario Sunshine's camera at all. It's my favorite Mario game in fact XD Maybe it has something to do with the era of videogames I was born into. the N64 and PS1 were my first two consoles (not including the gameboy). So since wonky camera's were all I really knew as a kid maybe I just learned to enjoy them. I'd be interested if anyone else feels similarly.
I've literally never had a notable issue with Mario64 cameras and i played that game for years... Sometimes I think it's a modern thing for people to hate them. Newer games have obviously given better options... But I rarely play games after N64/Ps1 so I guess it never experienced all the advances
Nope. Nintendo stopped providing early review codes to most media with Odyssey, so my plan to run a comparison on Odyssey's launch day didn't work out, which killed N64 Works dead in its tracks.
Maybe it's just me but the camera did feel a bit improved in the DS version. It was still difficult to line up right, but it seemed like I was fighting it less and it didn't swing around nearly as much.
Mega Man Legends is the Jar Jar Binks of the series. I will stand by that scrawling until you prove me otherwise with one of your glowing retrospectives.
The camera was a challenging part of the game but I think you got used to adjusting the angle after a while. Give me a cam like that one today however and I don't think I'd had the patience to learn the movement...
This is bullshit the controls are perfect and superior to all 3d plstfotmers i ever played. Still have to play odysee but yojustbitching really. Also they did indeed reinvent the wheel cause they invented the way you mouve in a 3d game.
I'm always perplexed whenever aomeone describes Mario's controls in positive terms. I just find them infuriating. Mostly because of the inertia - I find it maddeningly frustrating having to negate inertia in order to change direction. It makes it unnecessarily hard to make precise jumps and movements. I vastly prefer what one might call Megaman-style controls, which are more precise - when I press a button, Megaman moves. When I stop pressing the button, he stops. Unless he's on an ice stage, where the addition of inertial movement is rightly seen as an obstacle and a way to increase difficulty. Of course, one can argue that one enjoys the challenge of inertial controls, but to call them precise, intuitive, etc? No, just nu.
If you consider a pre-launch trailer and footage from the first 10 minutes of a game that's been out for half a year "spoilers," you should probably consult a doctor about your condition. I worry it may be terminal…
I've seen some pre-release footage for some games that greatly lessened the impact of the level/character(s) when it appeared in the actual game, which is pretty much the definition of "spoiler." So, for certain franchises, I do take the same approach (getting annoyed when an unreleased or newly-released game gets referenced in a video about a several-year-old one without any warning in the description). I do agree that the tiny amount of footage you use wouldn't exactly be considered a spoiler, though.
