So I'm a pretty big fan of SM64. It was one of the very first video games I ever played - although I didn't own it - and I was extremely happy when I bought it back in like 2009 or something for my recently-obtained N64. It's extremely addictive and fun and I know lots of people share my sentiments - it's Super Mario 64. Buggy as it is, with such a ridiculous physics engine that makes it possible to glitch up the endless stairs and beat the game with 50 stars (or 31, or 16... or 0 if you're a TASer), it's still a terrific play and I love it.
And yet... I simultaneously hate it. I have ever since I beat the game and got all 120 stars for the first time back in 2009 or whenever it was. There are a lot of things about that game that make me feel... unsettled, I guess, is the word, every time I play it. I have an inexplicable phobia of video game glitches and proof that games are unfinished - while I adore reading the Dummied Out, Urban Legend of Zelda, Game-Breaking Bug and Unwinnable pages on TVTropes I often make the mistake of reading them late at night and find myself unable to sleep for hours. Don't ask me why this is; I have no idea. My best idea so far is that I'm actually a robot and to a robot fear of glitches lines up with the idea of fear of death, pain or the unknown for humans, but of course that's an Epileptic Tree. But anyway - I find that a lot of things regarding Super Mario 64 manage to induce this unsettled, irrationally-scared feeling in me. I'm wondering if thinking about these things that bother me causes anyone else to feel similarly.
The first thing that bothers me is how empty the game feels. The game takes place in and around Peach's castle, with the border of the game world being the grassy hills surrounding the castle. To me this always gave me an incredibly closed-in feeling, as if Mario were trapped in a world from which he could not escape, not even into the several levels hidden behind the castle's paintings. By contrast, Super Mario Galaxy (the only other 3D Mario game I've played) feels much more open - despite having the same world boundaries (in spirit, anyway - point is you have a hub area leading to all the levels) it just feels more open and free because of the whole space locale. Not that I'm faulting SM64 for not taking place in space - I think the problem is that it almost feels like there's nothing to do. In both Galaxy and SM64 there is absolutely nothing to do in the levels after getting all 120 stars, but somehow the levels in SM64 feel much more enclosed than in Galaxy. Perhaps it's because the SM64 levels don't change between missions, whereas the linear-ness of Galaxy's levels means each mission has a different layout? Maybe because none of SM64's main levels possess secret stars (100 coins in each level is not 'secret') whereas Galaxy's do? I don't know. Point is, I always felt uncomfortably claustrophobic thinking about SM64's universe.
No doubt that feeling is compounded by the general loneliness of the locale. Between beginning the game and beating Bowser, the only characters with which Mario can interact on a positive level are the pink Bob-ombs (which all say the same thing anyway) and the Toads, only three of which ever need to be interacted with for completion - they do absolutely nothing for you, unlike in Galaxy where they show up in several levels and give you extremely helpful information or Stars and allow use of their ship in the level. In addition, Galaxy also has Rosalina and Luigi to interact with, not to mention the many Lumas, so as to make the game feel less lonely. Super Mario 64 just drops you into the game with no real directive beyond "find stars, save the princess" and no indication of what this means on a larger scale (how is finding stars supposed to help? or is it because of the many doors requiring a given number of stars to open? well, seeing as how it's possible to bypass all of these requirements to beat Bowser with 16 stars...) whereas Galaxy at least attempts to explain away why you're finding stars in that game, and provides a sense of scale for your accomplishments. SM64 just sort of... is. You get next to no help in your efforts, and nobody ever acknowledges what you've done save Yoshi on the roof - who promptly flies away, but not before giving you 99 unnecessary lives. Not like he did a whole lot. Mario never reacts to anything except for when he dies, either. This, combined with the claustrophobic sense mentioned earlier, almost gives me the impression that the SM64 world is some sort of twisted, ironic place - a bright and happy land of fun things, but one from which Mario cannot escape and no one ever acknowledges his existence. Like some sort of self-contained nightmare. That's the feeling I always got playing this game, anyhow.
In addition, I feel like this game made very little attempt to be very light-hearted. Big Boo's Haunt was almost unbeatable for me for a time because I was scared shitless of the piano and the Boos. While there are similar ghost-themed levels in Galaxy, these levels seem more geared toward the light-heartedness the rest of the game seems to possess - the Boos have their tongues hanging out, which kind of seems reminiscent of dogs and makes them seem less like scary ghosts and more like adorable dog-puff-things. The ones in SM64 - tongueless, I may add - slowly chase you with that horrid cackle of theirs, and half the time you can't see them because of the way the camera is stopped. Not to mention the many eyeballs - which I never had a problem with but it seems like others did - and the flying books and chairs. The entire level is supposed to be spooky, and for what is otherwise meant to be a light-hearted Mario game it pulls that off in such a way that I refused to touch the level with a ten-foot pole for a very long time. Of course, that level is not the only one with such creepy things that don't express light-heartedness - how many people were afraid of the eel in Jolly Roger Bay? How about the fish in Tiny Huge Island? I get unsettled being in Wet-Dry World, Hazy Maze Cave and Jolly Roger Bay for reasons I can't explain.
Finally I find the game unsettling because, everywhere you look, there is evidence of that which never came to light and that which makes you wonder the programmers' intent. The evidence of things that were Dummied Out or otherwise questionable things include the stacks in the mirror room and the top of the volcano, the dead fire-spitters, metal cap and switch in Wet-Dry World's downtown (which can in fact be activated... more on that later), the toxic treasure chest in Jolly Roger Bay, "Dizzy Island" in Tiny Huge Island, and the sign in the art gallery that says "Shh! Walk quietly in the art gallery." And, finally, the tunnel that leads to literally nowhere in the midst of Hazy Maze Cave's maze - a tunnel you would be unlikely to stumble across unless you read about it, for it blends in with the wall texture.
All that is indicative of an unfinished game or unfinished designs... but even more mysterious is what was left in the game but not meant to be discovered. The most prominent of these things is the pipe leading into the town in Wet-Dry World. Before the DS remake offered the ability to get into this pipe from the town even as the water was drained, it was thought impossible to get in when the town was dry. Some tried swimming up very quickly from the crystal changing the water level to jump in the pipe, with no success. Others tried using the invisibility cap - again to no avail. Finally a way was discovered. On a rooftop nearby the pipe, there is a fire-spitter. By getting onto this roof and getting burned by the fire-spitter, one can run around on this rooftop to gain speed, then make a very specific jump toward the wall by the pipe, then jump off the wall to grab the grating by the pipe.
Here's the thing about the fire-spitter. There is no reason to be up on that roof. It's steep enough that you slide off normally (necessitating getting burned to build speed), so why is there a fire-spitter on a roof no one would access? To help players get in the pipe, perhaps?...
One would think. But then you get into the pipe and enough weird glitchiness happens that there's no way the developers intended you to be able to get in there with the pipe dry. So then what the hell is the point of the fire spitter?
Additionally, in the town, there are dead fire-spitters, as well as a metal cap and a switch which spawns a block inside the cage leading to the one star you need the invisibility cap to get to. Thing is, the star can easily be reached without use of the block, and the metal cap has no uses anywhere. It was discovered by some people messing with the dry pipe trick that it is possible to raise and lower the water in the town without the use of crystals. The dead fire-spitters reactivate when the water moves beneath the floor. It was also realized that, if the water at its lowest point with a crystal were just high enough that Mario had to swim, then the switch creating the block would be necessary to get to the star... and the metal cap would be needed to hit the switch! So it's almost as if this was all indicative of some difference in water physics in this area from production to the finished product... but what?
The overly unfinished feel and the utter lack of a post-game are definite contributors to my unease regarding this game. That, the non-light-hearted feel, and the sense of claustrophobia are things I've been mulling over for a long time... but I've never known anyone to share my feelings. (Well, it doesn't help that some of my feelings are borderline crazy. For instance, the "you just found a secret" jingle inexplicably scares me.) Which is why I'm finally posting here. Thoughts?
And yet... I simultaneously hate it. I have ever since I beat the game and got all 120 stars for the first time back in 2009 or whenever it was. There are a lot of things about that game that make me feel... unsettled, I guess, is the word, every time I play it. I have an inexplicable phobia of video game glitches and proof that games are unfinished - while I adore reading the Dummied Out, Urban Legend of Zelda, Game-Breaking Bug and Unwinnable pages on TVTropes I often make the mistake of reading them late at night and find myself unable to sleep for hours. Don't ask me why this is; I have no idea. My best idea so far is that I'm actually a robot and to a robot fear of glitches lines up with the idea of fear of death, pain or the unknown for humans, but of course that's an Epileptic Tree. But anyway - I find that a lot of things regarding Super Mario 64 manage to induce this unsettled, irrationally-scared feeling in me. I'm wondering if thinking about these things that bother me causes anyone else to feel similarly.
The first thing that bothers me is how empty the game feels. The game takes place in and around Peach's castle, with the border of the game world being the grassy hills surrounding the castle. To me this always gave me an incredibly closed-in feeling, as if Mario were trapped in a world from which he could not escape, not even into the several levels hidden behind the castle's paintings. By contrast, Super Mario Galaxy (the only other 3D Mario game I've played) feels much more open - despite having the same world boundaries (in spirit, anyway - point is you have a hub area leading to all the levels) it just feels more open and free because of the whole space locale. Not that I'm faulting SM64 for not taking place in space - I think the problem is that it almost feels like there's nothing to do. In both Galaxy and SM64 there is absolutely nothing to do in the levels after getting all 120 stars, but somehow the levels in SM64 feel much more enclosed than in Galaxy. Perhaps it's because the SM64 levels don't change between missions, whereas the linear-ness of Galaxy's levels means each mission has a different layout? Maybe because none of SM64's main levels possess secret stars (100 coins in each level is not 'secret') whereas Galaxy's do? I don't know. Point is, I always felt uncomfortably claustrophobic thinking about SM64's universe.
No doubt that feeling is compounded by the general loneliness of the locale. Between beginning the game and beating Bowser, the only characters with which Mario can interact on a positive level are the pink Bob-ombs (which all say the same thing anyway) and the Toads, only three of which ever need to be interacted with for completion - they do absolutely nothing for you, unlike in Galaxy where they show up in several levels and give you extremely helpful information or Stars and allow use of their ship in the level. In addition, Galaxy also has Rosalina and Luigi to interact with, not to mention the many Lumas, so as to make the game feel less lonely. Super Mario 64 just drops you into the game with no real directive beyond "find stars, save the princess" and no indication of what this means on a larger scale (how is finding stars supposed to help? or is it because of the many doors requiring a given number of stars to open? well, seeing as how it's possible to bypass all of these requirements to beat Bowser with 16 stars...) whereas Galaxy at least attempts to explain away why you're finding stars in that game, and provides a sense of scale for your accomplishments. SM64 just sort of... is. You get next to no help in your efforts, and nobody ever acknowledges what you've done save Yoshi on the roof - who promptly flies away, but not before giving you 99 unnecessary lives. Not like he did a whole lot. Mario never reacts to anything except for when he dies, either. This, combined with the claustrophobic sense mentioned earlier, almost gives me the impression that the SM64 world is some sort of twisted, ironic place - a bright and happy land of fun things, but one from which Mario cannot escape and no one ever acknowledges his existence. Like some sort of self-contained nightmare. That's the feeling I always got playing this game, anyhow.
In addition, I feel like this game made very little attempt to be very light-hearted. Big Boo's Haunt was almost unbeatable for me for a time because I was scared shitless of the piano and the Boos. While there are similar ghost-themed levels in Galaxy, these levels seem more geared toward the light-heartedness the rest of the game seems to possess - the Boos have their tongues hanging out, which kind of seems reminiscent of dogs and makes them seem less like scary ghosts and more like adorable dog-puff-things. The ones in SM64 - tongueless, I may add - slowly chase you with that horrid cackle of theirs, and half the time you can't see them because of the way the camera is stopped. Not to mention the many eyeballs - which I never had a problem with but it seems like others did - and the flying books and chairs. The entire level is supposed to be spooky, and for what is otherwise meant to be a light-hearted Mario game it pulls that off in such a way that I refused to touch the level with a ten-foot pole for a very long time. Of course, that level is not the only one with such creepy things that don't express light-heartedness - how many people were afraid of the eel in Jolly Roger Bay? How about the fish in Tiny Huge Island? I get unsettled being in Wet-Dry World, Hazy Maze Cave and Jolly Roger Bay for reasons I can't explain.
Finally I find the game unsettling because, everywhere you look, there is evidence of that which never came to light and that which makes you wonder the programmers' intent. The evidence of things that were Dummied Out or otherwise questionable things include the stacks in the mirror room and the top of the volcano, the dead fire-spitters, metal cap and switch in Wet-Dry World's downtown (which can in fact be activated... more on that later), the toxic treasure chest in Jolly Roger Bay, "Dizzy Island" in Tiny Huge Island, and the sign in the art gallery that says "Shh! Walk quietly in the art gallery." And, finally, the tunnel that leads to literally nowhere in the midst of Hazy Maze Cave's maze - a tunnel you would be unlikely to stumble across unless you read about it, for it blends in with the wall texture.
All that is indicative of an unfinished game or unfinished designs... but even more mysterious is what was left in the game but not meant to be discovered. The most prominent of these things is the pipe leading into the town in Wet-Dry World. Before the DS remake offered the ability to get into this pipe from the town even as the water was drained, it was thought impossible to get in when the town was dry. Some tried swimming up very quickly from the crystal changing the water level to jump in the pipe, with no success. Others tried using the invisibility cap - again to no avail. Finally a way was discovered. On a rooftop nearby the pipe, there is a fire-spitter. By getting onto this roof and getting burned by the fire-spitter, one can run around on this rooftop to gain speed, then make a very specific jump toward the wall by the pipe, then jump off the wall to grab the grating by the pipe.
Here's the thing about the fire-spitter. There is no reason to be up on that roof. It's steep enough that you slide off normally (necessitating getting burned to build speed), so why is there a fire-spitter on a roof no one would access? To help players get in the pipe, perhaps?...
One would think. But then you get into the pipe and enough weird glitchiness happens that there's no way the developers intended you to be able to get in there with the pipe dry. So then what the hell is the point of the fire spitter?
Additionally, in the town, there are dead fire-spitters, as well as a metal cap and a switch which spawns a block inside the cage leading to the one star you need the invisibility cap to get to. Thing is, the star can easily be reached without use of the block, and the metal cap has no uses anywhere. It was discovered by some people messing with the dry pipe trick that it is possible to raise and lower the water in the town without the use of crystals. The dead fire-spitters reactivate when the water moves beneath the floor. It was also realized that, if the water at its lowest point with a crystal were just high enough that Mario had to swim, then the switch creating the block would be necessary to get to the star... and the metal cap would be needed to hit the switch! So it's almost as if this was all indicative of some difference in water physics in this area from production to the finished product... but what?
The overly unfinished feel and the utter lack of a post-game are definite contributors to my unease regarding this game. That, the non-light-hearted feel, and the sense of claustrophobia are things I've been mulling over for a long time... but I've never known anyone to share my feelings. (Well, it doesn't help that some of my feelings are borderline crazy. For instance, the "you just found a secret" jingle inexplicably scares me.) Which is why I'm finally posting here. Thoughts?
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