Episode 150 - You Betcha - Super Mario 64

It is decreed that one shall pound the podcast. Welcome to the 150th episode of NOCLIP! Today, we’re celebrating, in a way, by finally talking about Super Mario 64, one of the single most defining video games of all time. Platformers, and probably games generally, were changed forever following the success of Mario 64, and that influence is impossible to deny. We’re going to be looking at that influence, and specifically, the problem solving that went into making this game work as well as it did. The technology that made this game possible was new at the time, and much of what makes playing video games in 3D possible needed to be defined and explained to the player. How do you see where you are, how do you interact with enemies and navigate the world? These questions needed solutions and the elegance with which most of them were handled is extremely impressive for what is essentially a first attempt. That being said, the game is extremely old in the context of the medium, and playing the game now is very different than playing it then, so seeing how the things pioneered in Mario 64 have been iterated on, or in some cases, have remained staples of the genre since, is also an interesting exercise. Does it “hold up” to the cruelty of time? Is the game even fun for someone playing it for the first time today? This is a question that will have a more immediate and well known answer as time goes on, but we are right at that edge where its legendary status and ubiquity among people playing games still mean that most people have an attachment to it and are able to contextualize it in line with its contemporaries. This much is true though, it holds up better than most, if not all of its immediate contemporaries, and the contributions it made to the medium are still obvious even now. We’re going to be talking about the obsessive diegesis of Mario 64’s world and how charming it is, the level and objective design and how experimentation was core to the game’s success, and we make an argument for Nintendo to do some pretty unorthodox DLC. Thank you for joining us this week! Super Mario 64 is a game that, honestly, hasn’t been on our schedule for a very long time for a number of reasons. The number of people who have talked about it already being among the most potent reasons, but there were other reasons this didn’t feel quite right for us to do. However, given the kind-of milestone of being our 150th episode, and with Nintendo being in the spotlight recently due to Zelda, it felt appropriate to take our shot at the almost 30 year old game finally. And personally, I’m pretty happy with the result. Let us know what you think of our discussion of this classic down in the comment section or over on our Discord. Next time, we’re going to be talking about The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and it’s probably going to be delayed by a bit, so we hope you’ll anticipate that.