Super Mario 64: Революция в 3D-платформерах

1996 video game

Super Mario 64 is a 1996 platform game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64. It was released in Japan and North America in 1996 and PAL regions in 1997. It is the first Super Mario game to feature 3D gameplay, combining traditional Super Mario gameplay, visual style, and characters in a large open world. In the game, Bowser, the primary antagonist of the Super Mario franchise, invades Princess Peach's castle and hides the castle's sources of protection, the Power Stars, in many different worlds inside magical paintings. As Mario, the player collects Power Stars to unlock enough of Princess Peach's castle to get to Bowser and rescue Princess Peach. Director Shigeru Miyamoto conceived a 3D Super Mario game during the production of Star Fox (1993). Development lasted nearly three years: about one year on design and twenty months on production, starting with designing the virtual camera system. The team continued with illustrating the 3D character models—at the time a relatively unattempted task—and refining sprite movements. The sound effects were recorded by Yoji Inagaki and the score was composed by Koji Kondo. Super Mario 64 was highly anticipated by video game journalists and audiences, boosted by advertising campaigns and showings at the 1996E3 trade show. It received critical acclaim, with reviewers praising its ambition, visuals, level design, and gameplay, though some criticized its virtual camera system. It is the best selling Nintendo 64 game, with nearly twelvemillion copies sold by 2015. Retrospectively, Super Mario 64 has been considered one of the greatest video games of all time. Numerous developers have cited it as an influence on 3D platform games, with its dynamic camera system and 360 degree analog control establishing a new archetype for the genre, much as Super Mario Bros. did for side scrolling platform games. It was remade as Super Mario 64 DS for the Nintendo DS in 2004, and has been ported to other Nintendo consoles since. The game has attracted a cult following, spawning many fangames and mods, a large speedrunning presence, and enduring rumors surrounding game features.

Super Mario 64 is a 3D platformer in which the player controls Mario through various courses. Mario's abilities are far more diverse than in previous games. He can walk, run, jump, crouch, crawl, climb, swim, kick, grab objects, and punch using the game controller's analog stick and buttons. He can execute special jumps by combining a regular jump with other actions, including the double and triple jumps, long jump, backflip, and wall jump. The player can adjust the camera—operated by a Lakitu broadcasting Mario—and toggle between first person and third person view.

Unlike many of its predecessors, Super Mario 64 uses a health point system, represented by a pie shape consisting of eight segments. If Mario has taken damage, he can replenish his health either by collecting three types of coins—yellow, which replenishes one segment; red, equal to two yellow coins; and blue, equal to five yellow coins—or by walking through a spinning heart. Underwater, Mario's health instead represents how long he can hold his breath, slowly diminishing while underwater and replenishing when he surfaces. As in previous Super Mario games, he starts with a number of extra lives, lost when his health is depleted or he falls into a bottomless pit. The game ends if Mario loses all his lives. When Mario finishes a course, he gains a life for every fifty yellow coins the player collected, and extra life mushrooms are hidden in various places such as trees and may chase Mario through the air or fall to the ground and disappear shortly if not collected. In absence of the power ups normally found in previous games, such as the Super Mushroom and Fire Flower, three colors of translucent blocks—red, green, and blue—appear throughout many stages. Three switches of the same colors can be found in secret areas that turn their corresponding blocks solid and allow Mario to obtain three types of special cap power ups. The Wing Cap allows Mario to fly after doing a triple jump or being shot from a cannon; the Metal Cap makes him immune to enemies, fire, noxious gases, allows him to withstand wind and water currents, perform on land moves underwater, and have unlimited air capacity underwater; and the Vanish Cap renders him partially immaterial and invulnerable, and allows him to walk through some obstacles. A shell remains after stomping a Koopa Troopa, which Mario can use to surf on water, lava, and quicksand.

The hub world takes place in Princess Peach's Castle, which consists of three floors, a tower, and a basement, plus a moat and a courtyard outside the castle. The player's main objective is to look for paintings that bring them via jumping into courses containing Power Stars, which upon their collection unlock more of the castle hub world. Each of the fifteen courses has seven Power Stars, and an additional fifteen are hidden as secrets and as bonuses, for a total of 120 Power Stars in the game. The courses are filled with enemies as well as friendly creatures that provide assistance or ask favors, such as Bob omb Buddies, who will allow Mario to access cannons on request. Some Power Stars only appear after completing certain tasks, often hinted at by the name of the course. These challenges include collecting one hundred yellow coins or eight red coins on a stage, defeating a boss, racing an opponent, and solving puzzles. The final level of the game is blocked by "endless stairs" similar to Penrose stairs concept, but Mario can bypass them by collecting seventy Power Stars. The music in the endless stairs before collecting seventy Power Stars has a similar shepard tone theme. There are many hidden mini courses and other secrets within the castle, which may contain extra Power Stars required for the full completion of the game. If the player returns to the game after collecting all 120 Power Stars, Yoshi can be found on the roof of Princess Peach's Castle, who will give the player a message from the developers, accompanied by one hundred extra lives and an improved triple jump.

The game begins with a letter from Princess Peach inviting Mario to come to her castle for a cake she has baked for him. When he arrives, Mario discovers that Bowser has invaded the castle and imprisoned the princess and her servants within its walls using the power of the castle's 120 Power Stars. The Power Stars are hidden in the castle's paintings, which serve as portals to other worlds where Bowser's minions keep watch over the Stars. Mario explores the castle and enters these worlds, gaining access to more rooms as he recovers more Stars. Mario unlocks two doors to different floors of the castle with keys obtained by defeating Bowser in hidden worlds. After getting at least 70 of the 120 Stars, Mario breaks the curse of the endless stairs that block the entrance to Bowser's final hiding place.

Peter Main, Nintendo's vice president of marketing at the time, stated Super Mario 64 was meant as the killer app for the Nintendo 64. The million marketing campaign included videotapes sent to more than five hundred thousand Nintendo Power subscribers and advertisements shown on MTV, Fox, and Nickelodeon. Super Mario 64 was officially released in Japan in June1996, becoming the best selling video game of 1996. It was also the best selling game overall from 1995 to 2002. During the first three months of 1997, it was the second best selling console game at 523,000 units. By early 2001, it had sold 5.5million units, and 5.9million by September2002. At the 1999 Milia festival in Cannes, Super Mario 64 won a Gold ECCSELL prize for earning revenues above million in the European Union in 1998. It had become the second most popular game on Wii's Virtual Console by June2007, behind Super Mario Bros. By March2008, Super Mario 64 sold 11.8million copies worldwide, being the best selling Nintendo 64 game. By 2015, Super Mario 64 was the 12th most sold Mario game, with 11.91million copies sold.

An enhanced remake, Super Mario 64 DS, was released for the Nintendo DS in 2004. As with the original, the plot centers on collecting Power Stars and rescuing Princess Peach from Bowser. In contrast with the original, Yoshi is the starting character, with Mario, Luigi, and Wario as unlockable characters. It features improved graphics, slightly altered courses, new areas, powerups, and enemies, more Power Stars to collect, touchscreen mini games, and a multiplayer mode. Reviews were mostly positive, with critics praising the graphics and add ons to the original game but criticizing the controls and multiplayer mode. By September2021, 11.06million copies had been sold worldwide.

A version of Super Mario 64 was used as a tech demo for the Nintendo 64 Disk Drive (64DD) floppy drive at the 1996 Nintendo Space World trade show. Like Wave Race 64, Super Mario 64 was re released in Japan on July 18, 1997 as which fixed various bugs, added support for the Rumble Pak peripheral, included the voice acting from the English version, among other changes. In November2003, it was ported to China's iQue Player as a limited release demo. which added enhanced resolution and compatibility with the GameCube and Super Famicom Classic controllers. In September2020, Super Mario 64 was one of the three Super Mario games to be included in the Super Mario 3D All Stars collection on Nintendo Switch. It made another Nintendo Switch appearance in October2021 as part of the Nintendo 64 lineup for the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack.

Super Mario 64 set many precedents for 3D platformers as one of the most influential video games. The game is known for its nonlinear, open freedom, which has been acclaimed by video game developers and journalists. 1Up. com wrote about its central hub world, which provides a safe tutorial and a level selector, and is now a staple of the 3D platformer genre. Its mission based level design inspired game designers such as GoldenEye 007 (1997) producer and director Martin Hollis and the development team of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. Dan Houser, a prominent figure in the development of the Grand Theft Auto series, stated, "Anyone who makes 3D games who says they've not borrowed something from Mario or Zelda [of the Nintendo 64] is lying". Square Enix has stated that a coincidental meeting with Disney employees resulted in the creation of the Kingdom Hearts series, inspired by Super Mario 64 use of 3D environments and exploration. Chris Sutherland, who served as the lead designer for Banjo Kazooie, agreed that Super Mario 64 set the benchmark for 3D platformers and claimed that any other game in the genre on the Nintendo 64 would inevitably be compared with Super Mario 64. This camera system became the standard for 3D platformers. Nintendo Power praised the game's camera movements along with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time addition of the lock on camera and concluded that the two games were trailblazers for the 3D era. PC Magazine K. Thor Jensen considers Super Mario 64 to be the first truly realized 3D platformer with the integration of camera control into its core gameplay, which he called the medium's true evolutionary leap. Super Mario 64 use of the analog stick was novel, offering more precise and wide ranging character movements than the digital D pads of other consoles. At the time, 3D games generally only allowed the player to either control the character in relation to a fixed camera angle or in relation to the character's perspective. Super Mario 64 controls, in contrast, are fully analog and interpret a 360 degree range of motion into navigation through a 3D space relative to the camera. The analog stick allows for precise control over subtleties such as running speed. In 2005, Electronic Gaming Monthly ranked Super Mario 64 the most important game since they began publication in 1989, stating that, while there were 3D games before it, "Nintendo's was the first to get the control scheme right". In July2021, a pristine, sealed copy of Super Mario 64 was auctioned for $1560000, the largest amount ever paid for a video game. Heritage Auctions's video games specialist said, "It seems impossible to overstate the importance of this title, not only to the history of Mario and Nintendo but to video games as a whole".

A sequel was planned for the disk drive add on, under the codename Super Mario 128. In July1996, Nintendo insiders stated that Miyamoto was assembling a team consisting mostly of developers who had worked on Super Mario 64. Miyamoto affirmed that work on the sequel had only commenced at the time of the E31997 convention. The project was canceled due to its lack of progress and the commercial failure of the Nintendo 64 Disk Drive. Super Mario 64 successors include Super Mario Sunshine for the GameCube and Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii, building on its core design of power ups and its 3D, open ended gameplay. Super Mario Galaxy 2 includes a remake of Super Mario 64 Whomp's Fortress level called Throwback Galaxy. Super Mario 3D Land and Super Mario 3D World are departures from the open ended design, instead focused on platforming reminiscent of 2D games. The Nintendo Switch game Super Mario Odyssey returns to Super Mario 64 open design; it includes numerous references to the latter. The Mario 64 Suit' and 'Mario 64 Cap', which change Mario's appearance to his in Super Mario 64, can be purchased after completing the main storyline. Additionally, Mario can travel to the Mushroom Kingdom, which includes Princess Peach's Castle and its courtyard. The Kingdom's Power Moons resemble Super Mario 64 Power Stars.

Rumors spread rapidly after the game's release. The most popular was a pervasive rumor that Luigi existed as an unlockable character. In 1996, IGN offered a prize of $100 if a player could find Luigi, to no avail. Fueling the rumor was a very blurry message on a statue in the courtyard of Princess Peach's Castle, thought to say "L is real 2401". This was disproved in 1998, when a fan received a letter from Nintendo that the programmers included the text as a joke and it was not supposed to say anything. Satirical conspiracy theories about the game became popular in 2020, and were grouped into the "Super Mario 64 iceberg", an Internet meme of an iceberg, with the less likely theories representing places closer to the bottom of the "ocean". One popular rumor involves a "Wario Apparition", based on an E31996 presentation with Charles Martinet voicing a disembodied Wario head. Some fans believed that the Wario head remained in some copies of the game. Conspiracy theorists also spread the rumor that "every copy of Super Mario 64 is personalized", claiming that certain bizarre phenomena existed in only certain copies of the game. In the years since the game's release, players have used glitches to reach previously unreachable parts of the game, including, in 2014, a coin not meant to be collected. Speedrun techniques include the Lakitu skip, a glitch that disables a dialog box explaining camera movement; the Bob omb clip, which uses a glitch in a Bob omb's explosion animation to clip through walls; and the backwards long jump glitch, which involves the player performing a repetitive move, the "backwards long jump", allowing Mario to reach very high speed values and has numerous applications in speedrunning; the latter was patched in the 1997 "Shindō" re release (Rumble Pak version). The Super Mario 3D All Stars re release also patched this as it was based on the Shindō version. In 2013, YouTuber Vinesauce posted a compilation of various corruptions of the game, replicated with a program named naughty. Another YouTuber, Pannenkoek2012, creates highly technical and analytical videos of Super Mario 64 glitches and mechanics, which have been covered many times by the video game press. The game has also inspired challenges that attempt to beat it with certain restrictions, such as not being able to press the A button, requiring deep understanding about the game's mechanics and bugs.

In 2013, a study was conducted to see the plasticity effects on the human brain after playing Super Mario 64—chosen for its navigation element and the ability to play in a three dimensional environment—for at least thirty minutes every day for two months. The study concluded that doing the previously mentioned activity caused the gray matter (a major part of the central nervous system) to increase in the right hippocampal formation and the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex—brain areas thought to contribute to spatial navigation, working memory, and motor planning.