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Comment by bennysonething | Hacker News Reader

Mario 64 has 209 mario animations. I think this is probably the reason other 3d platformers at the time felt stiff in comparison.

Also they realised at some point in development that mario just wasn't fun to control so they put a lot of effort into that. I feel games today seem to put a lot of effort into content instead.

My favourite games are all ones with deep satisfying controls that require practice to get good at, wave race 64, 1080 snowboarding, Tony hawk's 2, Goldeneye eye. Or maybe I'm just old!

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I grew up in the same era of N64 gaming and we're just old. I go back and play goldeneye now and it's fairly clunky. TH2 and M64 hold up pretty well though. All is not lost to the past though as newer Mario games are control strong that offer options not available in the past to a player, like Cappy. Gang Beasts is an interesting experiment in character control because it seems to be a game that is really difficult with regards to the controls. You can get around and have fun but if you want to be good there's a steep learning curve for the controls. Once you have a pretty good handle on how to manipulate your character and interact with others it's fairly satisfying.

I've been playing quite a bit of Goldeneye on retro arch same for 1080 and waverace, the higher res helps, but I think they are still great games that I don't think have been matched since :(

I've an everdrive and an n64, but it looks too awful on a modern even with an ossc upscaler. Well it's not an upscaler really, but a line doubler, the results are awful on n64 (and ps1). I even rgb modded my n64 to use the ossc. Waste of money!

Basically every Mario game after Mario 64 had some sort of mechanic to help you correct a badly aimed jump, which is very handy since platforming is a tricky thing in 3D. Mario Sunshine had FLUDD's hover nozzle, Mario Galaxy had the spin, Mario Odyssey has Cappy.

Going back to Mario 64 now does feel quite primitive and can feel frustrating at times.

> I go back and play goldeneye now and it's fairly clunky

Haha, yes, played so much multiplayer and after playing modern games you go back to golden eye and the controls are wacky, the speed is slow, can't jump or fall off of ledges ... it's just a different era.

> Also they realised at some point in development that mario just wasn't fun to control so they put a lot of effort into that.

The story I recall is that before they did anything else they worked on how Mario felt to control, having him jump around in an empty room until that alone was fun to play with.

Mario is the one visual element that you stare at the entire game. If you're going to put effort into anything, it's that.

There's a slew of games out there nowadays that have continued this trend, usually indie ones; I can definitely recommend Hollow Knight for great animations and feel, as well as Hades and Celeste; all of those also reward practice to get good at them.

If you're stuck in the office, have a go at the pico-8 version of Celeste at https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?pid=11722

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