The Great Super Mario 64 Incident

I have always loved the Mario series. I've played games such as Mario & Luigi: SuperStar Saga, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door and Hotel Mario with true delight. I loved the cartoon shows based on Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World, they were amazing and perfect and good cartoons. Nothing I felt could come between me and the love I felt for Mario, but then it happened, then it all changed. I made a mistake that would cost me dearly, I played a Mario platformer.

Oh god no

The details are somewhat vague to me. Was it a year ago? Or two years? Either way, it all happened when I tried to play Super Mario 64, a game generally regarded as amazing and recommended by a guy from Finland. I like Finland. Finland seems nice. But Finland has done me wrong, because playing Super Mario 64 has changed me as a person, and not for the better.

As I picked up the controller and started Super Mario 64 I was excited. I've never played a N64 game like this before, it would be a first, and surely this game would be a wonderful introduction, right? WRONG. 

I was so wrong

The moment I started playing I felt nothing but agony. Agony and pain. I had been betrayed. Gaming conventions and dear friends had stabbed me in the back with a 1,000 degree knife, yet that still didn't hurt as much as playing this game did. As soon as I started to move around I knew something was wrong. Something didn't feel right. No, nothing felt right.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Every step Mario took was as if I was walking on knives. The momentum of the movement, the acceleration, the way the camera moved. I could feel the depths of my stomach retching as Mario moved around in a way that was so alien, so bizarre. This game took my expectations of this 3D platformer, sneered at it, glared me in the eye and spat in my face. But the worst had yet to come. That came when I pressed the jump button.

Holy mother of god no

What happened was awful. As I saw Mario move I could hear the voice of Charles Martinet laugh at me and taunt me, shouting with every jump in an attempt to mock and belittle me. As I experimented more I realized that not only the jumping physics were awful and made me want to jump out of the nearest window, there were actually multiple types of jumps. Jumping combos where you would use momentum and repeated jumping to jump far or high. A mechanic that baffled and disgusted me so much, it almost made me quit the game right there. The details are vague to me but the feeling it gave me I shall never forget.

I was nearing my limit

I couldn't take it. I sought refuge in a painting of a mountain that also had a mountain. Bomb-Omb mountain or something like that. It seems in very poor taste to me, a mountain filled with bombs, what sort of mountain is that, anyway? As I tried to move around, I found out the game had enemies. That was it. I'd given up. Dealing with platforms was bad enough, but moving enemies? I decided it was enough, and let Mario stand next to an enemy, get repeatedly hit as Charles Martinet screamed in pain, and saw Mario die. It was the only part of Super Mario 64 I liked.

My mind was in tatters.

I closer Super Mario 64 and got rid of it. Never would I make my hinds dirty playing with this pile of poop again, never. I sought shelter among my friends, to share with them my experiences and to warn them, but as I did I was met with opposition from the person who instigated this incident in the first place. He mocked me, laughed at me, said my tasted were not refined and suggested I had to get better at the game. Since then the topic would sometimes come up when discussing games. But now I have settled the score, now everyone can know that Super Mario 64 is literally the worst video game ever made, barring The Witness which is even worse but for other reasons I won't get into right now. 

He must have thought himself funny, the fool

In an attempt to broaden my horizons, I decided to give the series another shot. Not Super Mario 64, of course, since it's awful, but some of its 2D precursors, namely Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World. But it turned out those games were just Diet Super Mario 64, having the same horrible, nasty and awful floaty momentumy controls, as if Mario was permanently in an ice level in which the air was also somehow made of slippery ice. It felt awful. It was nasty. I quickly realized the whole series of Mario platformers was like this, and realized it was a waste of time.

Me looking for a good Mario platformer, finding none.

Since then I haven't touched any Mario game that was a platformer, since the series is clearly better at making RPGs and cartoon spin-offs. That is unless Shigeru Miyamoto Mario, father of Mario Mario and Luigi Mario, the devil on Earth, also gets his grubby fingers on those by making it more like the Mario platformers. 

I suggest you learn from my mistakes, and play one of several games which is better at platforming than Mario platformers, such as one of the following:

-Rayman

-Spyro

-Croc

-Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon & Link: The Faces of Evil

-Disney's Donald Duck© Qu@c!< "Att@ck"?*!

-Shovel Knight

-Toy Story 2

-VVVVVV

-Paper Mario

-Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door

-Mario & Luigi: SuperStar Saga

-Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time

-Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story

-Hotel Mario

-Resident Evil 3: Nemesis

-Chip's Challenge

-The Witness

-Medal of Honour: Underground

-Smackdown® vs RAW® 2007

-Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

-James Bond 007©: Nightfire™

-Card Hunter

-Roundabout

-Rollercoaster Tycoon

-The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth II: The Rise of the Witch-King: Edain Mod Patch 4.2: nathla elvellon

-Dog's Life

-Knights and Merchants

-The entire Heroes of Might&Magic series

-NBA Live 2003

-Formula One 2000

-Portal

-The Talos Principle

-Antichamber

-Gone Home

-Papers, Please

-Undertale

-The Stanley Parable

-Rock of Ages

-FRACT OSC

-Castle Crashers

-Dragon Age: Origins

-Mega Man 8

-Earthbound

-Final Fantasy IX

-Mother 3

-Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

-Medabots

-Pokémon

-Mr. Triangle's Adventure

-Surfasaurus

-Void Pyramid

-The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time & Majora's Mask

-Façade

-Final Fantasy Tactics

-Phoenix Wright

-999: Nine Persons, Nine Doors, Nine Hours

-Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward

-Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma

-Steven Universe

-The Amazing World of Gumball

-Gargoyles

-Kung Fu Dino Posse

-Lazy Town

And many more!