Superior N64 game - Mario or Zelda OoT?

[G-type | 2,482]

I still need to play Ocarina... probably should have gotten it when it came out for 3ds.. Mario 64 I first played on the DS and I enjoyed that a lot (well except for use the touch screen as a joystick). I actually really liked how they updated it to include different characters instead of Mario having different forms.

[fcgamer | 4,728]

32 minutes ago, G-type said:

I actually really liked how they updated it to include different characters instead of Mario having different forms.

This sounds traumatic to me

[G-type | 2,482]

35 minutes ago, fcgamer said:

This sounds traumatic to me

doesn't really change the gameplay. Instead of transforming to metal mario, you switch to Wario

[Sumez | 2,965]

On 8/14/2021 at 5:14 AM, the_wizard_666 said:

generic 3D platformer

 

[Sumez | 2,965]

As much as I think Ocarina is a bit overrated, imagine thinking that game isn't a "trendsetter"? It pretty much shaped the foundation of every single 3D character action game to follow, including games still coming out today. Even if you took nothing else from it outside of the Z-button lock-on mechanic, its lineage would still be absurd.

And even if Mario 64 did come before Crash Bandicoot, it would have taken absolutely nothing from it. The first Crash game is pretty much a 2D platformer in a 3D environment, with Mario 64 actually reinventing the concept from the ground-up, truly expanding it into a completely new experience, making full use of both depth and verticality. It's effectively the anti-crash bandicoot.

Edited August 16, 2021 by Sumez

[Californication | 1,477]

20 hours ago, G-type said:

I still need to play Ocarina... probably should have gotten it when it came out for 3ds.. Mario 64 I first played on the DS and I enjoyed that a lot (well except for use the touch screen as a joystick). I actually really liked how they updated it to include different characters instead of Mario having different forms.

Kind of curious about what others think, but I think the N64 controller was part of thr experience.

[Tanooki | 4,934]

19 hours ago, Sumez said:

As much as I think Ocarina is a bit overrated, imagine thinking that game isn't a "trendsetter"? It pretty much shaped the foundation of every single 3D character action game to follow, including games still coming out today. Even if you took nothing else from it outside of the Z-button lock-on mechanic, its lineage would still be absurd.

And even if Mario 64 did come before Crash Bandicoot, it would have taken absolutely nothing from it. The first Crash game is pretty much a 2D platformer in a 3D environment, with Mario 64 actually reinventing the concept from the ground-up, truly expanding it into a completely new experience, making full use of both depth and verticality. It's effectively the anti-crash bandicoot.

Well said.  Ocarina, that fits, trendsetter.  Enough games in some respect copied what they did after that point because it mostly worked well (lack of jumping aside.)  Some games that had problems that came before it, they got later iterations on N64 or upgraded on PC after the fact, to use those innovations.  A game that's kind of a control, camera and combat dumpster fire on PC is Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine, but it got a N64 release late (2000-01?) and they adapted the Ocarina camera, control, z-lock and the game plays fantastic compared, a real upgrade across the board.

And yeah Mario 64 is the blueprint for people to get good ideas from and use a good year or two plus after it came out.  Some didn't learn, and well not being remembered and middling scores nail that down.  Those that did take some lessons like Rayman 2 and Rare with their stuff, those are your 8-10 rated games in the field.

[Sumez | 2,965]

6 hours ago, Tanooki said:

A game that's kind of a control, camera and combat dumpster fire on PC is Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine, but it got a N64 release late (2000-01?) and they adapted the Ocarina camera, control, z-lock and the game plays fantastic compared, a real upgrade across the board.

Oh wow, that's surprising to me. I loved the PC version, and didn't find the controls lacking (I also never thought of it as a Zelda-esque game). What I've seen of the N64 version looked very inferior to me, but now I feel like I'd have to dig up a copy and try it out.

Just really sucks it's an import title.

[erac | 78]

Why do you think the N64 Indy looks worse? To me it looks a lot better than the PC ver. Also, while it was never released in PAL-land, there is a leaked PAL ROM, you can play that on an Everdrive.

[WhyNotZoidberg | 585]

On 8/16/2021 at 2:11 AM, Sumez said:

As much as I think Ocarina is a bit overrated, imagine thinking that game isn't a "trendsetter"? It pretty much shaped the foundation of every single 3D character action game to follow

In that sense I would say Mario 64 shaped OoT. 

 

Ocarina blew my fucking mind when I played it initially, but with all this time passed I think Mario 64 has more staying power. If I had to pick just one of the two games to play this afternoon, it's always Mario 64.

[Sumez | 2,965]

I think Mario 64 and OoT are quite different takes on how to take a traditional 2D game and expand it into the third dimension. I feel OoT's legacy more often in modern video games than I do Mario 64 - but if I have to compare the two, I'd say what Mario 64 did is overall more impressive. It's hard today to imagine just how mind boggling it was to first experience that game when it came out!

[ThePhleo | 2,185]

Mario 64 is vastly superior to Ocarina of Time.

Ocarina Of Time isn't even the best Zelda game for the N64.

[T-Pac | 7,560]

I couldn't get into either of these games when I tried them for the first time a few years ago. It's definitely a "me" problem, though.

It's a shame given how highly-regarded these titles are, but the 3D era is essentially where gaming falls out of my personal favor. It just feels like an entirely different medium sometimes.

-CasualCart

[JamesRobot | 5,805]

5 hours ago, ThePhleo said:

Ocarina Of Time isn't even the best Zelda game for the N64.

That's arguable.  But M64 certainly isn't the best Mario on the system.

[Dr. Morbis | 2,089]

For anyone who's faulting OOT for not having user-controlled jumping: Miyamoto said in an interview many years ago that this was done intentionally because Nintendo's fear, at the time, was that if Link could jump, everyone would just think the new Zelda game would be nothing more than "Mario 64 with a sword."

I personally also wish you could control Link's jump, but it's by no means a deal-breaker, and I can definitely see why they made the decision they did at the dawn of the 3D age...

Edited August 18, 2021 by Dr. Morbis

[Tanooki | 4,934]

On 8/17/2021 at 4:10 AM, Sumez said:

Oh wow, that's surprising to me. I loved the PC version, and didn't find the controls lacking (I also never thought of it as a Zelda-esque game). What I've seen of the N64 version looked very inferior to me, but now I feel like I'd have to dig up a copy and try it out.

Just really sucks it's an import title.

Buyer beware just to be fair to you.  I've been a big indy fan since like the 80s, so when I found out this was going, then not going retail at stores widely and instead being a rental game with a small lucasarts website only sale of them direct to consumers, I bought one as they went live.  The game got a minimal run, and worse, yet I met the last guy on the project in 2000 at E3 in the back of the Nintendo booth, he had some emotionally charged words about how much of a scumbag Lucas was.  Seemingly due to the SW movies at the time, he cut the budget, cut the team, and left one guy to serviceably made it done to shove it out.  The game is a buggy mess.  There are reproduceable 100% crash bugs in the game, and it has a memory leak (worse in some stages over others) where it will violate the memory space, crash the game in this rainbow spew of barfy squares all over the screen so bad you have to power down as the reset button loses function!

Despite that, there's added materials, an added stage (good one too), the Ocarina of time camera, lock on, and controls are added.  They also lifted all the cutscenes, and every scrap of music and spoken words from the PC to the game, and it's well done, not tinny due to compression (like RE2 and Megaman64 from Capcom are.)

[AmandaCathedral | 148]

I'd say Ocarina of Time is a way better first playthrough, but is unsatisfying to replay. Mario 64 on the other hand is a rough first playthrough, but is way more fun to replay as you improve and get fancier every time.

I think Mario 64 is the better game overall, but I'll also say it's the oldest and worst 3D Mario game. Every single 3D Mario improves on what Mario 64 did, making the game more and more of a relic as time goes on.

That being said, the Mario series does keep looking back to the winning elements of Mario 64 for advice, where the modern Zelda games have been distancing themselves from Ocarina of Time, and looking back to earlier games in the series for advice. I feel that alone shows how much better Mario 64 is than Ocarina of Time.

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

On 8/14/2021 at 10:28 AM, Californication said:

I actually didn't realize Mario was before all those PS1 games.

Me either.  To be fair though, I wasn't exactly considering Japanese release dates either, so that's where my brain fart came in.  Although with regard to Sonic, I was thinking more along the lines of 3D Blast, CD, etc...Sonic Adventure I knew was later   But then, the fact that I don't like ANY of the games I mentioned makes it a relatively moot issue anyway.  I'm just not a fan of platformers in general, and 3D platform games just felt like a gimmicky version of something I already disliked, so I was never gonna be a fan anyway

On 8/14/2021 at 9:38 PM, Californication said:

I bet he doesn't like Super Mario 3 because Earthworm Jim and Donkey Kong Country 2 were so much better.

I remember renting SMB3 as a kid and being bored pretty quickly.  It actually felt like a massive step back after SMB2, which made a lot more sense when I learned about SMB2 when I got older. 

[Sumez | 2,965]

Do you like video games?

[Jaden | 151]

Both games are absurdly overhyped imo. Maybe it's just because I grew up with Spyro, but I just don't see why anyone would play Mario 64 when there are such better platformers on other systems. And as for Zelda, I'd rather just play the original or Link to the Past (or Link Between Worlds, which is my favorite Zelda!).