""...But it was revolutionary!" Yeah, so was Marxism, and look how that turned out."

Everything has a beginning. Everything that follows acts as a ravenous leech to that beginning, sucking out its very life to add to its own. The platform genre of gaming is a prime example. While platform games in general were in no way unfamiliar to the world in the mid-1990s, they were restricted to two directions - right and left. Determined to knock Sony down from its early start in the 64-bit era, Nintendo breathed new life into the platform genre by introducing its main mascot into the third dimension. Now, whether or not they succeeded in knocking down Sony is an entirely different story, but the matter remained that a revolution had occurred in the world of gaming. The product, Super Mario 64, is often regarded as the highest foundation that all following platform titles would be based on, due to its revolutionizing of the genre as we all knew it. Yet people have failed to realize that the landmark title was nothing more than a base for those games, meaning while it introduced the required elements, the atmosphere remained void of substance. They have failed to realize that a revolution means nothing if it can't do more than put on a pretty show.

That's not to say Super Mario 64 is a bad game, of course. It simply radiates a relative feeling of incompleteness. But some things don't seem to need a revolution. At least Princess Peach doesn't think so, as she's once again found herself under the hold of a certain reptile. Mario suddenly gets an eerie sense of deja vu, but this time, there's more of an incentive that just a kiss - there's a cake! Sweet, delicious cake. Who needs friends when you have cake? ...Hold up a minute, a cake!?! You mean, I can get a 40 percent discount on bread sticks just by cutting out pieces of my daily paper, yet for saving a damsel in distress from a 500-pound, twelve-foot fire-breathing lizard, I get one measly cake? And the kiss means nothing if the damsel isn't sexy (which Peach is definitely not). Then again, I'm not Mario. I'm not fat and agile at the same time.

No matter where you stumble in the game, you will always find yourself winding back up at Peach's Castle, which poses as the game's main overworld. Glitch-ridden and abode to stubborn camera angles, the castle links the main stages together. The majority of these stages are accessed by having Mario leap through a magic painting which acts as a portal (blatant rip-off of Voyage of the Dawn Trader). Once inside, Mario is transported to a new world, home to bright atmospheres, cheerful landscapes, and the occasional frolicking enemy. These worlds are diverse, ranging from the calm and mysterious hollows of Jolly Roger Bay to the treacherous heights and terrain of Tall, Tall Mountain. These environments capture the Mario atmosphere wonderfully, and all seems perfect until you delve deeper into the game.

Before the stage begins, the player is presented by a list of Power Star missions to select from, more of which are unlocked as they complete the successive tasks. Power Stars are the main objects Mario collects in the game in order to gain access to new areas and restore power to the castle. Many have famed this method as the "collecting" gimmick as a way of exploring and seeking out every cranny the developers have placed in a game. While this may have been the origin of a new sense of exploration for some, and a burden to others, it was not without flaws. Most stars have you either defeat an area boss, reach a certain point in a stage, or go on a coin-collecting hunt. While some of the more mind-scratching missions execute the exploration aspect beautifully, an experienced player will likely not feel much of a sense of pride from completing these missions. In other words, there's little to no challenge involved, both in figuring out how to accomplish a mission and actually accomplishing it.

Start by examining the boss battles. A good percentage of the bosses will give you a speech before your fight with them where they explain exactly how to defeat them. Now honestly, what boss is seriously stupid enough to do that? But more importantly, where's the strategy of devising the best method for taking your opponent down? Half the point in a boss fight is finding your opponent's weakness, yet the game decides to automatically do that part for you, eliminating the entire point. The Red Coin hunts are almost as menial. Let's take the mission “8-Coin Puzzle with 15 Pieces”, for example. The entire stage of Lethal Lava Land is a death trap. Though this is mainly due to hideous camera views, one wrong step sends you tumbling into a pit of lava, making the area treacherous to navigate, especially when searching for tiny objects. So where does the game choose to “hide” the eight red coins? On an easily-findable shifting puzzle featuring Bowser's portrait, where all eight coins are right next to each other. To make matters simpler, a Wing Cap is located right behind the start, enabling you to easily fly to the puzzle without any danger. The game is too afraid of making you feel challenged, and insists on creating “shortcuts” for the player.

But wait – there's more. Simply pounding Chain Chomp's post will get you a Star. Merely shooting yourself into the wall of Whomp's Fortress with a cannon will get you a Star. Hell, simply talking to Toads in Peach's Castle will get you several Stars! Don't think this isn't consistent throughout the game. In the final mission of one of the game's final stages, Tick Tock Clock, each red coin is placed on stable platforms right next to the start with zero hazards. Two coins per platform, to add to that! Granted, the game does have some harder missions. Reaching the very top of Tick Tock Clock with time unfrozen is no easy task, since one wrong step could send you tumbling all the way back to the bottom. Getting out of the Hazy Maze alive before the toxic fumes consume your breath is nerve-racking. Yet these challenging missions are way too few and far-between. By the time you think the game has finally ratcheted up the difficulty, it throws another stinker mission at you right after.

The game's camera is simply unforgivable. Though supposedly “free-range”, the game only permits you to shift the camera at one set shift per tap on the C-Pad, and only in select places. You can't provide your own angles to make your view easier, but rather must stick within the limit of the game's pre-set angles. Quite a few times, after you're done shifting the view, the camera will insist on shifting right back to its original position, creating a constant invisible battle between you and the game's angles. Since the camera cannot pass through walls easily, it also has a high tendency to get stuck in certain locations. Particularly in close corridors such as Peach's Castle and Big Boo's Haunt, the whole screen will begin violently shaking due to the game's inability to maintain a steady position when cut off by walls. Other times you may find the camera trapped behind a solid object, rendering your view of Mario impossible, often costing you a life or serious damage. And yet the game is still praised for setting the standard for the 3-D camera, leading following developers to believe that it's okay to half-ass their games' camera angles.

Beginning to see some sort of chain reaction? Mind you, however, that not all is empty in the world of Super Mario 64. Though its stages may appear linear, they give you some unexplainable incentive to simply goof off. Perhaps this is due to the various glitches scattered throughout the game, something which a game is not supposed to feature in the first place, but there are so many endless possibilities outside the designated missions that you won't feel the need to play the game that was designed for you, but rather a game of discovery. One of the special items in the game, the Wing Cap, enables Mario to fly for a temporary period of time. Despite the fact that midair movement is near-impossible to control, you're given a sense of freedom in the air that allows you to access virtually any area in a stage. The slides are some of the best places to simply goof off and break records and such. In fact, one of the cheap aspects of the game I mentioned earlier can also be taken in the complete opposite. Though the game sets one particular path for you to take for each Power Star, there are generally numerous ways to acquire it, and discovering these ways with your own little in-game experiments can be fun and rewarding, if not still a little too easy.

The game definitely isn't quite as visually-appealing as the majority of the Nintendo 64's later titles. The character models lack any form of shading or reflections. Most landscapes appear flat and jagged, with no real contrast. I suppose that being the first flagship title on the console can enable some slack to be given, however. Koji Kondo has once again done a great job with the soundtrack, however, even for the now-outdated MIDI format. While most of the tracks I would not really consider “masterpieces” (save maybe the majestic Jolly Roger Bay theme), they're the type that stick in your head long after the system is turned off. Charles Martinet does a great job with Mario's voice, especially for Mario's first title to feature more than a simple “jump” chime.

Don't get me wrong; Super Mario 64 is a fairly solid game in its own right. Yet, the credit it receives from the masses seems undeserved at times. Skill is hardly a necessity the majority of the time, and lots of that skill is centered around keeping the uncooperative camera under control. “…But it was revolutionary!” the masses will scream. Yet a revolution is not enough to keep me satisfied, I'm afraid. I demand substance. I demand a feeling of accomplishment. There's no sense of accomplishment when the game does half the work for you. Perhaps I simply feel the need to state a cause. Perhaps I'm just damned sick of other titles in the genre getting the shaft simply for not being “first”. Or perhaps I'm expressing my fears and concerns for a supposed upcoming revolution in a more metaphoric way. It's easy to fall prey to the game's charm, but don't let that suck you into Nintendo's false reality. It's true that Super Mario 64 was the foundation for all future third-dimension platform games. But it was only the foundation, and nothing more. Games like Banjo-Kazooie and Super Mario Sunshine added a little thing called substance to this foundation, and thus are much more polished platform titles deserving of honorable recognition.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 04/25/05, Updated 05/03/06