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It’s easy to divide the Super Mario franchise into two buckets: 2 chiều games & 3D games.
While the 2d Mario games have been progressive, often building from the one that came before, the 3 chiều entries tend to lớn diverge pretty wildly from one another. The 3d Marios have introduced new mechanics, while veering off in unexpected directions. Sometimes it’s for better, và sometimes for worse.
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Nintendo has now collected three of the most memorable 3d Mario entries into a single package for Nintendo Switch: Super Mario 3d All-Stars includes Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, và Super Mario Galaxy. Despite every entry being a 3 chiều Mario game, the titles are vastly different from one another.
Whether the collection is right for you really depends on how you feel about each individual game, and the Switch-specific enhancements that have been brought to them.
Super Mario 64
If you weren’t playing games when Super Mario 64 came out (maybe because you didn’t exist yet), it’s hard lớn describe what a revelation it was. There had been 3d games before, but none of them felt as fluid and alive as Mario 64.
The first time I dropped into the courtyard of Princess Peach’s castle, it melted my brain. I just ran around, climbing trees, sliding in the grass, & swimming through the moat, simply for the fun of it. No game before Mario 64, including the 2d Mario games, had made bouncing around the world while doing nothing this much fun.
And remarkably, even 24 years later, that’s still true. Mario 64 is a blast to lớn just mess around in, in the same way that rolling over sand dunes in Super Mario Odyssey is endlessly satisfying. Mario may not have every single one of his newer tricks at his disposal, but some of his vi xử lý core staples — the long jump, the triple jump, và the backflip — were all first introduced in this game, giving the player a wide array of options to tackle the many platforming challenges ahead.
Image: Nintendo
But while the core chơi game has held up against the ravages of time, the visuals aren’t always so ageless. Mario 64 on Switch has been upscaled for modern devices, while still maintaining the original game’s 4:3 aspect ratio. This means that clean lines and solid blocks are sharp as diamonds. Mario may look a bit boxy, given that he’s made up of just a handful of trungvietlaptop.coms, but he never looks blurry or washed out. Any single-color objects in the world — lượt thích Mario’s overalls, or a koopa’s green skin — still look great, as single-color textures scale up perfectly to higher resolutions.
But much of Mario 64’s world consists of textures that aren’t just single colors. The grassy hillside outside of Peach’s castle & the surface of the water in Dire Dire Docks both look lượt thích they use textures that were created two and a half decades ago, for a system running at 320x240. Bring that resolution up to modern standards, và those textures look lượt thích a blurry mess. Purists should be thrilled, as updating a classic game with new textures is fraught with its own problems, but if you’re looking for a more modern twist on Mario 64, you won’t find it here.
Other enhancements that have been added over the years khổng lồ Mario 64, like the different playable characters in the Nintendo DS version, are also absent. This is as close to lớn what people played back in 1996 as you can get these days.
If you can overcome some of the dated visuals & a lack of new features, Mario 64 remains one of the greatest platforming games ever made. Far from just a museum piece, it’s a challenging thrill khổng lồ play, even alongside modern platformers directly inspired by it.
Super Mario Sunshine
Nintendo took six years after the massive success of Super Mario 64 khổng lồ release another 3d Mario game. What we got was one of the worst Mario games ever made: Super Mario Sunshine.
I have no doubt that there are Super Mario Sunshine defenders out there. And, lớn be fair, it’s not a truly terrible game. But there’s a magic lớn the precision that Nintendo brings lớn its biggest franchises, whether it’s a mainline Zelda or Mario or Metroid game. That precision, that Nintendo magic, is missing from Super Mario Sunshine.
Image: Nintendo
Sunshine doesn’t work on a number of fronts, but the simplest explanation for its failure is that it’s clumsy. The trò chơi centers around Mario using a water-powered jetpack lớn solve various platforming challenges. Unfortunately, I constantly find that I’m fighting with the trò chơi to try to lớn get it to vày what I want, thanks to lớn cumbersome controls and a weak camera system.
Platforming sequences that would take me one or two tries in any other 3d Mario trò chơi take me more than a dozen in Sunshine. Maybe it’s because the jump input đầu vào didn’t register properly, or maybe it’s because the camera wasn’t behaving. Or maybe it’s because I didn’t switch my backpack to the right mode at the right time.
There’s a lot working against the core gameplay of Super Mario Sunshine, & that doesn’t even begin khổng lồ address the terrible idea of fully voicing this monstrosity, a mistake that Nintendo has never made again with a Mario title.
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Which is a shame because, visually speaking, Sunshine looks terrific. Going directly from Mario 64 to Sunshine in the 3D All-Stars pack is eye-opening, thanks to lớn Sunshine’s full 1080p resolution (when the Switch is docked) & widescreen presentation. While some of the textures look a little washed out when put alongside a modern title like Odyssey, the tropical setting has aged quite well, with simple but clean environments that never strive for realism, opting instead for legibility.
But yeah, sorry, the game itself isn’t fun lớn play. You can try khổng lồ gut it out, but it’s a miserable experience that should have been expunged from the Mario canon long ago.
Super Mario Galaxy
After that unfortunate detour, we’re back on track! Super Mario Galaxy dropped five years after Sunshine, and it’s clear that in that time, Nintendo clarified what makes a good 3 chiều Mario game: tight controls with constantly surprising, và evolving, platforming challenges. With very little voice-over.
Super Mario Galaxy was universally praised when it debuted, thanks to lớn its ingenious level design. There’s really no telling what a Mario Galaxy level is going khổng lồ throw at you. One minute, I’m long-jumping across the surface of an asteroid trying to lớn escape its gravitational pull, and the next, I’m side-scrolling through a classical 2D-style level, before being shot like a rocket through space to lớn handle a huge boss khủng fight. Galaxy is packed with unexpected moments lượt thích these, making each new batch of levels a surprising treat.
Image: Nintendo EAD Tokyo/Nintendo
But, despite the praise back in 2007, there was a common refrain: People wished it wasn’t so reliant on motion controls. In the original version of Galaxy, every spin attack required a waggle of the Wii Remote (among many other motion-centric features in the game). There wasn’t a great chơi game reason for it; it likely had more to do with Nintendo having recently launched a motion control-based console.
With Super Mario Galaxy’s arrival on Nintendo Switch, the most glaring motion control sin has been rectified. Yes, you can now spin-attack just by pressing a button, thank God. But there are still many remnants of that era in this version of Galaxy, usually lớn the detriment of the game itself.
A simple example: If you’re playing on a docked Switch, selecting menu items requires you lớn use a pointer, powered by the gyroscopes in your controller, lớn aim at them. This pointer appears throughout Super Mario Galaxy, & it’s used khổng lồ collect and fire colorful Star Bits that show up around the world. If you happen khổng lồ be playing in handheld mode, the pointer can be controlled by your finger, swiping the screen to lớn collect Star Bits và tapping it khổng lồ fire them at enemies. Have you ever tried taking one hand off the controls in the middle of a Mario game? Imagine having to vị that multiple times in every level. Think about the heft of the Switch, held in one hand as you awkwardly swipe at the screen with the other while trying lớn maneuver Mario with the left stick.
Neither of these motion control options — in docked or handheld mode — is great, and they distract from the overall fun of Super Mario Galaxy, which has some of the finest platforming levels Nintendo has ever produced. A version of Super Mario Galaxy stripped of all of these motion control features would simply be a better game. Having the spin attack assigned to lớn a button now seems khổng lồ be an acknowledgment of this; it’s just a shame that Nintendo didn’t go all the way with that approach.
And yet, Super Mario Galaxy is easily able lớn overcome the annoyance of the lingering motion controls, reaching heights that few games can manage. If you missed out in 2007, count yourself lucky to lớn be able khổng lồ experience this game for the first time in full, HD glory.
The ups và downs of 3 chiều Mario
Super Mario 3d All-Stars is a perfect re-creation of an imperfect batch of games. In the case of Super Mario Sunshine, those imperfections are far too consistent and devastating to recommend the game.
Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Galaxy, though, are both fantastic. The quality of both titles is so high that some unfortunate drawbacks (dated visuals in the former, motion controls in the latter) aren’t enough to stymie the pure excellence on hand.
If anything, Super Mario 3d All-Stars shows the breadth of what a 3d Mario game can be, & much of that is truly excellent.
Though seriously, y’all, Mario Sunshine sucks.
Super Mario 3 chiều All-Stars will be released Sept. 18 on Nintendo Switch. The game was played using a download code provided by Nintendo. Vox media has affiliate partnerships. These vị not influence editorial content, though Vox truyền thông media may earn commissions for products purchased via tiếp thị liên kết links. You can find additional information about trungvietlaptop.com’s ethics policy here.