User:Nintendo101



Casual Nintendo historian. Otherwise an artist and a field ecologist. Bio degree. I've had an account here since 2012.

I wrote the character sections for Super Mario 64, Super Mario Galaxy 2, and Super Mario Odyssey. I contributed much of the article for Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Sunshine.

I have been a fan of Nintendo since a very young age. My first Mario games (and three of the first video games I ever owned) were Super Mario World: Super Mario Advance 2, Super Mario 64 DS, and Mario Kart DS. These games were good company for a young kid who moved around a lot and had difficulty keeping long-lasting friends.

During the, I sequentially played some of my favorite games in the Super Mario series to 100% completion. This includes, in order, Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, and Super Mario Odyssey. It's been really fun! These are great games, and I always wanted to marathon a series like this before but never had the time. It has been interesting to see where the series began and where it has ended up. The design philosophies, the characters, the art directions, world building, level design, narrative, etc. All good stuff. It might be fun to write something about it some day.

My favorite video game character is Yoshi.

Setting
Super Mario 64 takes place within the walls of Princess Peach's castle in the Mushroom Kingdom. It is the first Super Mario game to explicitly include the Mushroom Kingdom as a location since Super Mario Bros. 3 (1988). The game's levels, called "courses", are not naturally occurring places on Mario's world. They were created by Bowser using the Power Stars he stole from Peach. Most of them are accessed through paintings that hang in the castle's walls, but some are more cryptically hidden or require the player to accomplish a task in the castle before becoming accessible. Some paratextual material and subsequent titles present the courses introduced in this game as visitable places outside of the paintings.

Generally, a course is a sprawling location with interactive environmental elements and several levels of elevation. Courses often have subareas and collectibles obscured in the landscape that passively encourage the player to rotate the camera and explore. Most courses feature prominent landmarks, such as the mountain in Bob-omb Battlefield or the volcano in Lethal Lava Land, that provides the player with a consistent point of reference that mitigates their chance of getting lost. Like its more immediate predecessors, courses are themed after real-life s (i.e. deserts, mountains, seas) and more fantastical settings (i.e. haunted houses, clock towers, rainbow roads in the sky). The theme informs the type of objects that can be interacted with in the level; the types of enemies that can be encountered; and the non-playable characters that can be spoken to. For example, cactus enemies, a condor, and quicksand are in the desert-themed Shifting Sand Land. Penguins, slippery ice, and deep snow appear in Cool, Cool Mountain and Snowman's Land. Most courses contain switches and strikable objects that modify elements of the course, such as the Crystal Taps in Wet-Dry World.

Unlike the levels of prior two-dimensional entries, the courses in this game are open-ended and largely do not funnel the player towards one goal. This was an intentional departure from the level design principals of prior games because the development team did not believe they could be replicated for a fun experience in a three-dimensional environment. Director and series creator Shigeru Miyamoto wanted Super Mario 64 to be a game where players "create their own vision", a decision partially influenced by the technical difficulty of making a precise jump in a 3D environment. This mindset manifested in levels where players were largely free to interact with the world in ways they wanted to, with larger platforms and sprawling spaces that encouraged exploration rather than carryout precise actions to reach a goal. The courses themselves were created using hakoniwa or "box garden" design principals. A hakoniwa is a intricately-arranged miniature garden within an enclosed space, with layers of depth and detail that become apparent to an onlooker when carefully examined. Applying these principals allowed the development team to create complex levels that surprise players, another important tenet during development. In, where creating miniature gardens is not as culturally prevalent, these types of levels are most often likened to.

Courses
Most of the courses are accessed through paintings inside Princess Peach's Mushroom Castle, the of the game. The surface of a painting ripples like water when near, and Mario is brought to the course it represents by. Accessing levels in this manner is a departure from the overworld system in previous platform games (see below). However, the castle is divided into several floors that are analogous to the world structure of proceeding games, where multiple levels are available to the player on a single floor and the player must complete a boss-dedicated course in order to gain access to the next batch. As Mario advances through the castle, he encounters some courses that are accessed through portals other than paintings, such as Shifting Sand Land, which is accessed through what looks like a brick wall at a dead end in the basement, or Tick-Tock Clock, which is entered through a clock face. The location of courses on subsequent floors is generally more complex and are puzzles in themselves, such as the painting for Snowman's Land only being viewable through a mirror.

Rather than present a unilateral scenario that leads to a single spatially-fixed goal, most courses in the game host multiple objectives called "missions" that each have a goal in a different location from each other. For most courses, entering a painting (or equivalency) brings the player to a mission selection screen, where selecting one sends Mario to the course within the confines of the mission's specific scenario and its unique goal. In nearly all courses, this goal is a Power Star, a collectible token resembling the Super Star power-up of prior entries. Touching one completes the level and returns Mario to the castle. The number of Power Stars collected is tracked by the game and communicated to the player on the in the upper right corner of the screen. Accumulating Power Stars is how new courses become accessible to the player. On the first floor, some ★ doors that seal away certain paintings only open after Mario has collected a specified number of Stars. Mario can only access a new floor after clearing the current one's Bowser course, itself only becoming accessible after a specified number of Power Stars have been obtained. However, there are 120 obtainable Power Stars in a game that only requires 70 to access the final level. The player has some discretion on how many or which ones are obtained to finish the game, as well as the order.

In most courses, one mission correlates with one Power Star, and its name on the mission selection screen hints at the Star's location in the course. However, some Power Stars can be encountered outside of their dedicated mission and collected. Some mission-dedicated Power Stars only become available to the player once they have cleared specific missions (e.g. "Footrace with Koopa the Quick" only becomes available after completing "Big Bob-omb on the Summit") or accomplish tasks outside of the paintings (e.g. striking the Cap Switch in the Cavern of the Metal Cap makes the titular power-up accessible in "Through the Jet Stream", in which it is not optional). Certain actions completed within a course permanently change elements within it regardless of the mission subsequently played. A reoccurring example are the cannons found in most courses, which Mario can enter and launch from to quickly reach distant areas or access new ones. A cannon becomes permanently available in a course after Mario has spoken to a Bob-omb Buddy, a friendly non-playable character found in every course with a cannon.

Similar to Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (1995) and a departure from previous Super Mario games, there is no Time Limit in effect within courses, but there are some scenarios that are. Blue Coins only appear for a brief period of time once a Blue Coin Block is struck, and Mario must outrun Koopa the Quick in order to earn a Power Star. All power-ups in this game only change Mario's form for a brief period of time and they cannot be brought outside of courses even if he completes one while still under its affect - another similarity to Yoshi's Island.

There are four different types of courses in Super Mario 64. They are:
 * "Main courses" that contain six dedicated missions and an unlisted 100-coin mission. Some of the dedicated missions build off of each other environmentally or narratively. (i.e. The events that transpire in the completion of one mission are reflected in the events of the subsequent mission.) However, some Power Stars can be encountered before the mission-dedicated one and can be collected, resulting in some instances where the Stars are obtained out of the intended "order". These courses are the most intricate levels in the game. Most include objects that can enable quick traversal between areas, such as cannons and Warp Points. Some courses include accessible subareas, such as the volcano in Lethal Lava Land or pyramid in Shifting Sand Land. There are 15 main courses in the game, and they are the only levels explicitly numbered and listed on the pause menu. Power Stars obtained in the other types of courses are counted together as "Secret Stars".
 * "Bowser courses" that lead to an arena where Mario must defeat Bowser. Unlike main courses, these ones are narrow obstacle courses that emphasize precise platforming. Each Bowser course features a Power Star obtained by collecting all of the Red Coins, but this does not complete the level. In the first two courses, defeating Bowser allows Mario to collect a Big Key, a different kind of token that completes the level when touched. The Big Key is used to permanently unlock the door to another floor in the castle. In Bowser in the Sky, the final course, defeating Bowser releases a Jumbo Star. Collecting it does not contribute to the player's Power Star total, instead freeing Princess Peach. There are three Bowser courses in the whole game, one for each floor.
 * "Secret courses" that are cryptically hidden throughout the castle. All secret courses have at least one Power Star to collect, with the sole exception being The Princess's Secret Slide that has two. There are three in the game.
 * "Switch courses" where Mario is under the effect of a power-up immediately upon entering it that. A Cap Switch is located in the course. When one is struck, it causes the power-up to permanently become accessible within the main courses. They are analogous to the Switch Palaces in Super Mario World (1990), though unlike them, striking the Switch does not make Mario exit the course. These are the only courses in the game where Mario can fall down a pit without losing a life.

Including Mushroom Castle, there are 25 courses in the game. The chart below lists all of the courses. Each one is provided a screenshot, brief description, and a list of their missions. The order that the courses and missions are listed follows their organization in Pelland and Owsen (1996). Only the names of the missions in main courses are provided in-game. When available, the missions that lack in-game names, such as the 100-star missions, are also derived from Pelland and Owsen (1996). Where no such name exists, the mission assumes the name of its course.

Mushroom Castle and Castle Grounds
Most of the courses are accessed through paintings inside Princess Peach's Mushroom Castle, the of the game. The surface of a painting ripples like water when near, and Mario is brought to the course it represents by. Accessing levels in this manner is a departure from the overworld system in previous platform games, where the player can select levels on a map-like menu with a cursor. The cursor itself may represent the player character themselves, as is done in Super Mario World (1990) and Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (1995), but the degree of control the player has on the cursor is more limited than they would have in the actual levels. Super Mario 64 instead offers a fully interactive level with portals the other levels (REWRITE THIS LAST SENTENCE)


 * Offers a space for the player to familiarize themselves with controls; devs noted it was important to make Mario fun to simply move around, so having a space for the player to make their own fun was important