If someone was to ask me what game tipped the iceberg for video games I would whole heartily say Super Mario 64
In Super Mario 64, your world is flipped upside with the amount of direction and control you have of Mario. You have tools such as the triple jump, backflip, long jump and many more that truly revolutionized gaming for the time to come.
If we were to analyze Super Mario 64, the main focus would be on the core gameplay. It has been said that Shigeru Miyamoto (one of the core developers for Super Mario 64) spent most of his time on just the movement alone for Mario and it shows to this day.
The level design of Super Mario 64 is also very ground breaking with its enormous amount of choice it gives you. In Super Mario 64 your goal is collect a bunch of Stars from levels that are scattered through the game so that you can get to Bowser, beat him and save the princess, that’s it. The game gives you little to no direction to go, creating a world where each individual player will have their own little journey when playing this game.
In order to analyse a piece of content, we need to create a “lense” to look through and the view and understand that text. This involves three different categories of analyzing, explained on this diagram:
Technique – This would be when you would look into the mechanics of the game.
Nostalgia – The way that past experiences are perceived by people who have had those memories. In most cases, nostalgia plays a big role in videos games
Community – The people who are engaged with the game in some way and choose to participate in discussion about the game whether that discussion be in person or online
Now sadly, I wasn’t around when this game was in its prime so i missed the hype around it, but when Nintendo brought out the “Super Mario 3D All Stars” bundle for the Mario Anniversary I got to experience that history that Erikki Huhtamo highlights in “Slots of Fun, Slots of Trouble”
After playing a bit of Mario 64, I now see its impact its had on videos games as a whole and even some of my personal favourites.
For example, the expiration and discovery that you get to experience in “Zelda: Breath of the Wild” is super similar to the hub world and choice of level in Super Mario 64.
References:
Huhtamo, E. (2005). Slots of Fun, Slots of Trouble.
James Mackay - Portfolio 
Reblogged this on Game Cultures.
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