Super Mario 64 (N64)

Hey, welcome back, it's Super Adventures 9th birthday etc. But never mind that, I've got TERRIBLE NEWS for you. Some quirk of Blogger has retroactively screwed up all my damn 256 colour images, removing shades and leaving them more dithered than they should be.

It only ruined little bits of them, only a few of the colours, but ideally you want your screenshots to be 0% ruined.

So I've got GOOD NEWS for you: mecha-neko wrote a thing and I did a thing and over Christmas we replaced something like 14,000 images over 1000 posts. So now the site is entirely fixed... or mostly broken, or somewhere in between. Why not click a few old posts and find out! I mean after reading this one.

Developer:

Nintendo

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Release Date:

1997 (1996 in Japan + US)

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Systems:

N64, DS, iQue Player

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This week on Super Adventures, it's Super Mario 64!

It's a game that needs no introduction, so instead I'll start off by talking about how much I hate 3D platformers. Actually I don't hate them, as long as they keep their distance and don't bother me, but they've never been my genre. I like 2D platformers, I like games where you wander around in 3D, but somehow when you combine the two I lose interest. Maybe it's because I don't like slipping off narrow platforms and misjudging depth.

Actually I will give the game a bit of an introduction, because I like trivia. Super Mario 64 was designed by pioneering Nintendo game genius Shigeru Miyamoto, who's been making Marios since the first Donkey Kong arcade cabinet. He'd already set the template for the 2D platformer genre with Super Mario Bros. so they were hoping he could pull off the same trick in 3D. And he did... though he took a few months longer than planned. Unfortunately Mario 64 was meant to be the big launch title that got people buying the Nintendo 64, so they had to delay the console for months as well. They probably made the right choice though, as the PlayStation and Saturn were well established even before the delay and the N64 needed to show off some actual magic to lure people over to a cartridge-based machine without videos, voices or CD music.

Personally I love the N64 and I've got a lot of nostalgia for it, but Mario 64 not so much. I've maybe played the game twice and the furthest I've gotten is the stone slab boss that falls on you. But some people seem to like it, and it's "acclaimed as one of the greatest video games of all time", so I'm going to give it another few hours to win me over.

Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins (GB)

Developer:

Nintendo

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Release Date:

1992 (JP)

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Systems:

Game Boy

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Today on Super Adventures I'm playing the final game of my Mario Marathon Month, finishing off the first decade (or so) of Mario's big platformer games. So if you were hoping to see Hotel Mario or Mario is Missing show up then I'm afraid your princess is in another castle, so to speak.

Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins is also the final game in the Mario Land series before the villain hijacked it and turned it into the Wario Land series (like how Yoshi stole the Super Mario Bros. series and turned it into Yoshi's Island after the fourth game). Don't feel bad for Mario though, he had things like Super Mario Kart, Super Mario RPG and Super Mario 64 to keep him busy through the mid-nineties (when he wasn't playing Go Fish in Mario's Game Gallery.)

Most of the other Mario games I've played so far I've been very familiar with, but this one's a big question mark (block) for me. I've only seen about 10 seconds of gameplay and I don't even know how others rate it, so I get to go in entirely blind for once! As usual I'll give it an hour or two, share my first impressions, maybe a few second impressions, then find something about it to nitpick afterwards.

Super Mario World (SNES)

Developer:

Nintendo

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Release Date:

1990 (JP)

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Systems:

SNES

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Today on Super Adventures I'm taking a brief look at Super Mario World (AKA. Super Mario Bros. 4: Super Mario World in Japan). After this the numbering gets a bit crazy though, as you've got Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, which presumably counts as Super Mario Bros. 5, and then it jumps right up to Super Mario 64! No 'Bros.' for that game though, as Mario decided to go solo that time.

Every Nintendo console but the Wii has had a Mario (or Luigi) game as a launch title, and this is the game that was relied upon to kick off the era of the Super Famicom in November 1990. This and Mode 7 racing game F-Zero, but don't expect to see that on the site any time soon as I am astoundingly terrible at it.

Amazingly for a series with such highly regarded soundtracks, in Japan this was the first of the Super Mario games to have music on the title screen (though the Western version of Super Mario Bros. 2 does have a tune.) Even more amazingly... I don't really like it all that much. It's twee and grating and sounds like it belongs more in a nursery rhyme than a Mario game. Here have a youtube link, listen for yourself.

Super Mario Land (GB)

Developer:

Nintendo

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Release Date:

1989

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Systems:

Game Boy

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Today on Super Adventures, Mario Marathon Month drags on even longer with Super Mario Land, for the Game Boy! There's our heroic plumber up there on the top of the sign in fact, shaking his fist at the sky and yelling at strangers to get off his Marioland.

This was the fourth Super Mario game in Japan and Europe, but the third to come out in America. It doesn't count as part of the main Super Mario Bros. series though because Luigi hasn't bothered to turn up this time. Can't give it the Bros. label without Mario's bro around.

Though if it was a Bros. game it would've been the first Mario Bros. produced by Gunpei Yokoi since Mario Bros., and the first created without the involvement of Shigeru Miyamoto. It's also the first developed for a proper cartridge-based handheld system, and if you're wondering where you've heard the name Gunpei Yokoi before, it's possible that you remember him as being the designer of the Game Boy itself. Super Mario Land was a launch title for the system and was originally intended to be the first pack-in title until Nintendo was persuaded that Tetris would have more universal appeal... because it's Tetris.

Can't really disagree with that logic, especially as 25 years later I still haven't even really played Super Mario Land yet, but it says that it's "his best adventure yet" on the box, so I'm pretty hyped.

Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES)

Developer:

Nintendo

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Release Date:

1988 (JP)

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Systems:

NES, SNES

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Today on Super Adventures my Mario Marathon Month continues with Super Mario Bros. 3, the final Super Mario for the NES! It's not the last game he showed up in on the console though, as he got his medical degree just before the SNES was released. Sadly his career as Dr. Mario lasted just four months and then it was all Yoshi games and edutainment after that.

I've timed this one better than most, as today is the game's 25th anniversary... in the US. It's not a particularly special date to me seeing as it came out 18 months later in Britain and a year or so earlier in Japan, but I'm being impatient considerate of my American readers. Whoa, I just did the math there: that's three years that we were left waiting for this, while Americans were already playing Super Mario World! I say 'we'... I didn't get a NES until something like 2001, so it's not like I was personally inconvenienced by any of this.

Super Mario Bros. 3 has actually appeared on Super Adventures before, about four years ago now, but I wasn't the person who played it and the guy who did absolutely hated it. Seriously, I found someone who dislikes Super Mario 3, how amazing is that? Uh, not that I'm implying that I like it, I'm not giving that away until the end, but I have definitely played it before and I have... opinions.

Super Mario Bros. 2 (NES)

Today on Super Adventures, my Mario Marathon Month continues with a tale of two Super Mario Bros. 2s.

Back on the Famicom and NES in the late 80s there was a bit of a trend for sequels to be radically different to the original. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link added RPG elements and swapped genres to become a platformer, Castlevania II: Simon's Quest evolved into more of an open world RPG with NPCs and a day/night cycle, Final Fantasy II encouraged players to beat up their own team-mates to level up skills etc. But Super Mario Bros. 2 managed to be both more of the same and a reinvention of the formula at the same time, by cheating and being two separate games:

The Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2 (AKA. Super Mario Bros. The Lost Levels in the West) is the next step on from Super Mario Bros. and arcade game VS. Super Mario Bros., with even more challenging levels and a badge on the box saying "For super players" to make sure that regular players realise that it's going to kick their ass.

The American Super Mario Bros. 2 (AKA. Super Mario USA in Japan) is a localisation of an entirely unrelated platformer, repurposed as a replacement Mario sequel due to the Japanese Mario 2's dated visuals and punishing difficulty level making it more likely to scare players away from the unproven NES than win the undying love that the Famicom was currently enjoying in Japan.

At least that's how I think it goes. I'll give each an hour or two and see how they play.

Super Mario Bros. (NES)

Developer:

Nintendo

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Release Date:

1985 (Japan)

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Systems:

NES

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It's always nice to have another 'Super' game on Super Adventures, even though Nintendo had to go and confuse me by releasing it on the Famicom/NES instead of waiting five more years to put it on the Super Nintendo. Fortunately they'd learned to match the title with the system by the time Super Mario 64 came out; they didn't end up calling it Super Mario Cube or something.

Super Mario Bros. is the second game I'll be playing for my Mario Marathon Month. It's also the something like the eighth game to ever feature Mario, the seventh in which he's playable, the fourth to have his name in the title, and the first to be developed exclusively for home consoles... I think (and that's not even counting the Game and Watch games). He's a busy guy, and it's hard to keep track of all the places he turns up.

While I'm throwing out numbers, this was something like game #64 for the two year old Famicom, but when the NES reached the US this was out at launch, and you can bet that it wasn't Gyromite and Duck Hunt that made the system such a massive success in the West, resurrecting the American console market after the 1983 video game crash. Super Mario Bros. was the best selling single platform exclusive for three decades... though that seems a bit less impressive somehow when you know that Wii Sports was the game that finally beat it.

Anyway I'm going to play it for an hour or two, show some screenshots and shout out everything that enters my mind as I go.

Mario Bros. (Arcade)

Super Adventures is four years old today, and yet somehow in all that time I never did play a proper Super Mario Bros. platformer for the site. I looked at the Game Boy version of Donkey Kong a while back and that had a bit of jumping in it if I recall, but otherwise I've stayed well clear of the classics. I figured that I'd have nothing to say about the games that hadn't been analysed and argued about a thousand times by now, making my trivia trite and all my observations entirely pointless. But that excuse is four years old now as well and I've grown bored of it, so I decided to kick off Super Adventures Year Five with a month-long MARIO MARATHON, showing off the top titles from the iconic plumber's first 10 years in the hero business! I'll also throw a few non-Nintendo requested games in there as well, because too much undiluted Mario could drive anyone crazy.

Also, if you scroll up you'll see that I've made the site a brand new, slightly more dynamic hand-pixelled logo for its birthday! Kinda starting to wish now that I'd baked a cake instead though.

Developer:

Nintendo

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Release Date:

1983

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Systems:

Arcade, plus a couple of others.

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Wario Bros? Ohhhhh...

Today on Super Adventures I'm having a quick go of the original Mario Bros. This was Mario's third role I believe, after Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr, but the first to feature his name in the title. Nintendo were still exclusively an arcade developer at the time this was released (if Wikipedia is to be believed, and I trust them implicitly), but this only lasted about... say a day or two longer before the Famicom was launched on 15 July 1983. Only a lunatic would decide to launch their début console right in the middle of the great American video game crash of '83 though, and that's why Sega launched their first console on the same day!

Mario Bros. didn't quite make it onto the new console as a launch title in Japan, but I suppose they had to get some money out of the arcade machines before letting people play it at home. Two months later Mario Bros. though was able to join the rest of the Mario Trilogy as the sixth ever Famicom game.

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (N64) - Replay

Developer:

Nintendo

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Release Date:

2000

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Systems:

N64

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Super Adventures is teetering on the precipice of becoming four years old, and it's become a tradition for me to use each anniversary as an opportunity to look back at five or six of the games I played back in the earliest days of the site and give them another try. Traditions are boring though, so this year I'm only replaying a single game, the latest one, and I'm putting it up on the wrong day.

You could argue that I didn't really give Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask a fair chance last time, but I wouldn't bother because I'd only end up agreeing with you. I mean what could I say in my defence, that quitting before I'd even encountered the defining mechanic of the game was justified because I was bored?

It's a game about fighting through dungeons, earning masks, and rewinding time, and I didn't get far enough on my first try to do any of that. I played hide and seek and lost, and then a moon fell on me, the end. But I figured it'd be thematically appropriate to give it a second look, in the hope that we can both do better this time around. I was actually thinking of scheduling this for three days ago as well, but then that would've just been confusing.

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (N64)

Developer:

Nintendo

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Release Date:

2000

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Systems:

N64

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Today on Super Adventures it’s the very last and final game of my year long alphabetical gimmick event: The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask! I couldn't finish off the alphabet without the biggest 'Z' in gaming; the entirety of the ‘Majora’s Mask’ text is taking up about 1.3% of the pixels in that title screen, while the ‘Z’ on its own covers a massive 3.4%! Anyway after this game I’ll be free to play whatever I feel like and I never have to worry about titles again... until I come up with some other dumb idea.

I don't really like talking about these Zelda games to be honest, as I always feel like I'm wrong about them. I've criticised critically acclaimed games before, I'll point out flaws when I see them, but if reviewers were able to measure a game's entertainment value using a universally recognised SI unit, they'd be using kiloZeldas. This series sets the standard that other games are judged against, and if any professional reviewer were to give them a low grade, people would likely consider them to be at fault. I say likely, because I can't even find one single truly negative review for a 3D era Zelda on metacritic.

But I’ve put a few hours into Wind Waker, Twilight Princess and Ocarina of Time now and I walked away from each of them unimpressed. I’m not going to say they’re bad games, and I’m definitely not about to start throwing about words like ‘overrated’, but either I’m immune to their charms or they sure take their time getting to the good bit. So I’m coming into Majora’s Mask with zero nostalgia and a little bit of apprehension. I’ll give it an hour or so to win me over, I’m here to learn, not to hate, but there’s a fair chance this is going to end in tears and you should adjust your own expectations accordingly.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64)

Super Adventures at Christmas 2012 - Game 2:

It took me forever to decide what shot to use from this title screen sequence.

Okay it's taken me a decade or so to get around to it, but today I'm finally going to have a look at Ocarina of Time, the fifth game in the main Legend of Zelda series. Actually to be honest I did play this back in the day, though not for long. It didn't exactly win me over then, but I think it's about time I gave it a second chance.

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX (GBC)

I've finally reached game four in the Zelda series (and the first on handhelds): Link's Awakening. Actually I'm playing the colourised DX version that came out five years later on the Game Boy Color. I've heard it's basically the same game though, except it has a little extra content and it's a whole lot prettier in screenshots.

All the other Zelda title screens so far have featured a sword placed before an epic view of mountains, waterfalls, lakes etc. but they decided to mix things up this time by replacing them with a giant... Yoshi egg?

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (SNES)

I remember playing this one before a few years back, though nothing much about what I actually did in it. But it was requested so I'm playing it again. It seemed like a good time for it anyway, seeing as it's the game's 20th anniversary today... in Europe.

This was originally called 'Triforce of the Gods' in Japan, but it was changed for the English release because Nintendo of America were getting rid of references to religion at the time. Also it was an excuse to stick Link's name in the title again. Zelda always gets all the fame, and she's barely even in the games.

Metroid II: Return of Samus (GB)

For some reason I always assumed Metroid 2 was a NES game like Zelda 2 or Castlevania 2. But no, the franchise jumped to the Game Boy for one game, so I'm stuck showing black and white screenshots again. Sorry.

Metroid (NES)

Apparently Metroid is a portmanteau of the words "metro" and "android". Though that doesn't really explain anything.

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (Game Cube) - Guest Post

Endless Wednesday posts are high in content and feature an extreme amount of words and images, to a degree that some readers might consider excessive. You have been warned.

In 2000, Nintendo showed off a tech demo at Spaceworld. The following year, they announced Wind Waker, and the fanboys started slinging shit because of the game's cel-shaded style. I was a bit disappointed at first, having seen the Spaceworld demo myself, but I quickly changed my mind after playing the demo included on the pre-order disc. So, in we go!

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (NES)

Finally, a Zelda game where I get to play as Link for a change.

The Legend of Zelda (NES)

Yeah I have played this before, a while ago now, but I haven't seriously played it. I walked a couple of screens, got killed by monsters, and turned it off.