Idle Thumbs 231: Computer Processing Unit

[SecretAsianMan]

I haven't finished the episode yet but I gotta weigh in on the Mario 64 discussion.  I understand the view that Mario 64 feels more disjointed than other Mario games but that's what I like about it.  It was a big playground to me, in a way that other Mario games never felt like to me (and haven't felt like since although I haven't played Mario Maker yet which is perhaps the most literal implementation of that idea).  It gave me a new set of toys (the moveset), dropped me into a world that seemed to lack any rules, and provided almost no guidance beyond vague hints which you could completely ignore.  I suppose that sentence could also describe the other games but I never really cared for the tropical resort or outer space settings in Sunshine and Galaxy.  64 never bothered me because while each world was pretty stand alone they still felt "Mario-like" to me.  Sunshine and Galaxy are definitely more refined and if I were to play them all for the first time today I'd probably call them better games, but Mario 64 sticks out in my mind as the most fun.

 

Also, first appearance of pervy cameraman Lakitu.

[Henroid]

I've played Mario 64 via its port to the DS, which as I understand it is pretty faithful to the original.

 

It is far from my favorite Mario game, that's for sure. It feels like the level design was more ambitious than their grasp of making Mario controllable in the game would actually allow for.

[SecretAsianMan]

I had way more difficulty playing the DS version than original.  The game itself is faithful in that it's a nearly direct port, but trying to play with a DS vs an actual controller made a huge difference, at least to me.  I had no problem getting Mario to do exactly what I wanted on the 64.  The same levels were much more challenging on the DS.

[Architecture]

Super Mario 64 is one of the greatest games ever crafted by man. I would hold it up with both Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World. The level design, music and mechanics are nearly flawless.

[Jake]

  On 10/9/2015 at 5:57 AM, Architecture said:

Super Mario 64 is one of the greatest games ever crafted by man. I would hold it up with both Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World. The level design, music and mechanics are nearly flawless.

It's pretty good and did a lot of things right.

See I can be positive about Mario 64.

[robotslave]

I am of a certain age.

 

I did play console games as a child, before the NES was released, but I have never played a Mario game.  Not a single one of them.  Nor a Zelda game, for that matter.

 

Carry on.

[syntheticgerbil]

I just want to throw in some Mario 3 hate for being a god damn mess because I'm grumpy right now. That is all.

 

Yo, Mario, I'm really happy for you, Ima let you finish, but Rayman 2 was one of the best Nintendo 64 platformers of all time.

[SuperBiasedMan]

  On 10/9/2015 at 7:37 AM, robotslave said:

I am of a certain age.

 

I did play console games as a child, before the NES was released, but I have never played a Mario game.  Not a single one of them.  Nor a Zelda game, for that matter.

 

Carry on.

 

If we're pointing out weird things, my first Mario game was Warioland on the Gameboy, where Mario makes a brief cameo at the end but I couldn't tell who he was (it was partly the low res graphics).

 

I don't think I've actually played any Mario game between Super Mario Brothers and Super Mario 64 (if the DS remake counts).

[BigJKO]

As long as we all agree that Super Mario Sunshine is the best one.

[Jake]

  On 10/9/2015 at 9:59 AM, syntheticgerbil said:

I just want to throw in some Mario 3 hate for being a god damn mess because I'm grumpy right now. That is all.

Yo, Mario, I'm really happy for you, Ima let you finish, but Rayman 2 was one of the best Nintendo 64 platformers of all time.

Fucking Rayman people.

[Badfinger]

  On 10/8/2015 at 11:03 PM, SuperBiasedMan said:

Play discretely, my underserved lord~

 

 

  On 10/9/2015 at 7:37 AM, robotslave said:

I am of a certain age.

 

Mario: For Gamers of a Certain Age.

[rincewitch]

I related so much to the discussion of "unsanctioned nerds". Idle Weekends might wind up covering a perfect venn diagram of the sorts of games I'm into. :V

 

Anyway! Since it's share your vague impressions of Mario 64 day here on the Idle Thumbs forums, I have extremely vivid memories of the first few times I saw Mario 64 as a kid. I never had any consoles of my own back then, and grew up playing stuff like Bungie's old Mac games, Escape Velocity, Sim games, WarCraft II, shareware RPGs like Realmz or whatever, and anything else that washed up on the bleak shores of '90s Macintosh gaming. In retrospect, all of that was probably extremely formative in terms of how I think of games, but at the time it meant it was always super exciting to visit a friend's house and play on their console.

 

And the N64 was the most exciting console of all! It had 64 bits, which was twice as many bits as 32, so it had to be the best. We were just old enough to have been around for the tail end of the 16-bit era, so when the N64 arrived it seemed like some kind of wondrous alien spacecraft from the future that had landed in our midst, bearing a new Mario game. And Mario 64 looked incredible-- all of these huge, sprawling levels! All these varied environments! All these three dimensional spaces to traverse! Suddenly, instead of a bunch of goombas walking back and forth forever you had massive armies of rival bob-bombs clashing in battle. I wasn't thinking of it in these terms, because I was like ten years old, but the overworld map conceit of jumping into paintings seemed apropos-- the generational shift in consoles felt like jumping from a two-dimensional representation into inhabiting a real world.

 

So that was the idea of Mario 64 that had fixed itself in my brain. So imagine my surprise in, like, 2007 or something, when a college friend brought his old N64 to his dorm and it turned out that Mario 64 had aged horrifically, and it just looked like a blurry, incoherent, garish nightmare world. Meanwhile, all the 2D Mario games have aged fantastically, and we're still happily staring at those art assets in Mario Maker or whatever.

 

I've always wondered if that '90s low-poly 3D look will ever become cool and retro like 2D pixel graphics have, and Mario 64's aesthetic will be rehabilitated, or if those 2D games really have just aged more gracefully.

[syntheticgerbil]

I haven't played Mario Sunshine yet, but I feel like I can't judge Mario 64 properly because the only time I beat it was the DS version and I was constantly frustrated by getting the camera right with the touch screen and fighting with the d-pad. It was like all of the frustration of jumping in iso like Mario RPG doubled.

  On 10/9/2015 at 2:47 PM, Jake said:

Fucking Rayman people.

You're just jealous of the helicopter hair.

[mrwynd]

You owe it to yourself to try Caveman Games - 

[Patrick R]

I just listened to Episode 144: Gimme Some More, and Rob Zachny was talking about the divide between people that like Ocarina of Time and people that like Majora's Mask, which lead to discussion of other dichotomies like Blue Album vs Pinkerton, Graceland vs. Rhythm of the Saints, and a debate about Yoshi's Island. Jake concluded that they should have a streaming series where they stream divisive games with two people who fall on opposite sides of the spectrum.

 

If Jake and Nick streamed two hours of Mario 64 it'd be inncreeedibleee.

[BigJKO]

I would watch the shit out of that stream!

Edit: Hmm..

[syntheticgerbil]

I would shit the stream out of that watch.

[Problem Machine]

I would steam clean the shit out of all your pants after all that stream shitting

[syntheticgerbil]

How generous of you.

[Bjorn]

  On 10/9/2015 at 2:47 PM, Jake said:

Fucking Rayman people.

 

Rayman is the best.  Origins and Legends has given me the closest thing to childlike glee that any video game has done for years. 

[Arathain]

I've played Origins fairly recently- I'm not sure it's a better platformer than a comparable 2D Mario, say. Still, what blew me away about it was its aesthetic completeness. Every aspect- animation, sound, music, pace, character, everything blended into and informed everything else. The game gave me a wonderful rhythm and invited me to play in it. Good stuff.

 

Actually, I remember I played it not too long after completing Transistor, which has a similar aesthetic completeness to it. 

[Problem Machine]

  On 10/9/2015 at 7:41 PM, syntheticgerbil said:

How generous of you.

No, it was a suggestion. I mean it's just good hygiene.

[Twig]

Dunno if anyone pointed it out, but I'm amused by the World of Tanks/Etc. talk if only because I remember when there was a World of Tanks ad-read, and nobody had played it, and there was a bunch of hullabaloo about advertising a thing no one had played, and there never was an ad for it again on the 'cast.

[Problem Machine]

I think the bigger issue though was that this is a cast about video games, and doing an ad read for a video game created confusion as to what was endorsement and what was not.

[Twig]

I mean whatever.