Here's Mario at nearly 30 years ago (29 years):
Mario 64
this post was submitted on 02 May 2025
758 points (100.0% liked)
RetroGaming
22614 readers
158 users here now
Vintage gaming community.
Rules:
- Be kind.
- No spam or soliciting for money.
- No racism or other bigotry allowed.
- Obviously nothing illegal.
If you see these please report them.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I remember everyone gathering around the TV to see this because it was so unbelievable.
A buddy of mine bought an N64 with Super Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64 on launch day. We didn't know that it would sell out so quickly. He worked at a retail store and got into talking to a customer about him having the N64. Apparently the guy was a father that was desperate to get an N64 for his kid. He offered to pay 4x what my buddy paid at retail. It was a lot of money for a young guy in his late teens. He sold it to the guy out of his trunk the next day for the cash. It would be 6 months before inventory returned in stores and he was able to rebuy an N64.
load more comments
(1 replies)
It still bugs me that your life count reset to 4 if you turned off the console.
Mario games have done that for a few episodes after this too. And also for 2D games that baffling thing where you can only save after finishing a castle or fortress.
Then Super Mario Odyssey just gets rid of lives completely, and nothing of value was lost.
This was Mario 40 years ago:
Fun fact: New Super Mario Bros turns 19 this year.
Yes, that means we’re close to the turning point where New Super Mario Bros gets older than what Super Mario Bros was when it was released.
load more comments
(2 replies)
That's what's mind blowing to me. The difference between games used to be staggering. The original Mario Bros compared to Mario 3 was huge. And jumping up to Mario 64 in less than a decade was even bigger still.
Obviously games have continued to improve since then, but we'll never have such rapid massive leaps again.
The original Mario Bros compared to Mario 3 was huge.
And that was on the same system.
Honestly, I believe technical progress has grinded to a halt. Moore's law was broken with regards to hardware. I cannot think of novel tech after smartphones. Now, it feels like everything new is a wealth hoarding scheme by corporate greed.
the industry is also dogshit these days, only place you reliably see new interesting ideas is from indie devs
load more comments
(1 replies)
One of my University students asked me the other day if I was doing anything special for the 20th anniversary of Revenge of the Sith.
I told him he needs to remember I control his grade.
Should've told him you have the high ground.
load more comments
(1 replies)
The first time I played Super Mario on the N64 I can still recall how it made me slightly dizzy, which delighted me. That effect only lasted a short while, but it was a lot of fun to feel that disoriented by a video game, if but briefly.
you can relive that experience with a cheap VR headset!
It was the first time I remember people struggling to mentally map the controls.
Your grandma or little sibling could understand how to move NES Mario around (not necessarily being good at it, of course), but 3D was too intimidating for a lot of people to even try.
to be fair the sort of primitive camera controls took some getting used to
load more comments
(2 replies)
Super Mario 64 is 29 years old.
The bottom picture is Super Mario Sunshine. Released in 2002, so will be 23 years old this summer/fall.
load more comments
(6 replies)
Why would you say this
load more comments
(1 replies)
Yes, the original is lines and crude unlike some of the other examples of "old 3D games", but this is (maybe) the first actual 3D space game, so it has to start somewhere.
Guess I should have been more specific on first home system 3D space game. Yes, there were arcade and mainframe things before. But their game world wasn't as big. :P
Atari Star Wars arcade game came out in 1983. One year prior to Elite in 1984:
Vectrex Starhawk was 1979
load more comments
(3 replies)
What you think 3D games looked like 20 years ago:
The thing is, 5 years before that games did look like triangle-boobed-Lara-Croft. There was just an enormous wave of tech progress in the 3D accelerator world from the late 90s to mid aughts
Nvidia, when the doom music kicked in.
God of War 2018 isn't the same as God of War 2005, I'm not that old.
I think what's more interesting is Mario today doesn't even look much different than Mario 20 years ago. The Switch just never bothered, plus graphics in general are flattening out.
On a still picture taken in the right place, maybe. Bright, cartoony graphics also help. The Mario style is probably not the kind that's best to showcase graphic power.
Anyway, animation, lighting and physics is where you can see the gap between Odyssey and Sunshine. Also richer, bigger environments, even though Sunshine used a lot of tricks and already looked rather impressive for the time on that front. Well, until framerate dropped into single-digit halfway through Noki Bay.
load more comments
(3 replies)
You shut your mouth, the 90s were definitely like 10 years ago right?! :P
Yes. The 90s will always be 10 years ago.
Like that post said on here some weeks back: the 90's was ten years ago. 2005 was also ten years ago. Doesn't make sense but that's how it feels in my brain.
Wait, the 90s ended?
Not in Portland.
Crysis is roughly as old now as Super Mario Bros 3 was when Crysis first released.
It got worse after a closer look - realizing this is Sunshine, and not something earlier...
load more comments
(1 replies)
I feel like I'm the only one here who actually likes it when games I loved when I was younger become old/retro. I see it as a badge of honour, like them getting to enter the hall of fame.
Super Mario World isn't a bad game just because it's old, it's just as great now as it was in the 90s. Same with Sunshine. And it makes me happy knowing I grew up with these games - no amount of aging or growing old could take that away from me.
load more comments
(1 replies)
yeah... PS3 is "retro" now!
I honestly don't agree with that at all. 360 and PS3 are old but their games aren't very different compare to the big budget games of today. A few fads ended and others took their place, but that's it. To me retro systems end with the Wii, mainly because Wii was just an overclocked Gamecube.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Halo 3, Modern Warfare, Mass Effect, GTA4, Super Mario Galaxy, Rock Band, Assassin's Creed, and Portal all launched closer to the original Sonic the Hedgehog than today.
Hey... Shut up.
I remember in the early 3D days, 2 sequels with a 7 year gap would have looked vastly different. I just started KCD1 after finishing KCD2 and even though it is 7 years older, it looks identical.
To put into perspective: the gap between MGS1 and MGS2 was just 3 years.
load more comments
(3 replies)
This year the original SMB will be forty years old.
Still remember being blown away by the flight in banjo tooei, that I saw in a store, now everyone just starts at such mechanical depth.
2 more years and crisis is 20 years ago
Next year "Psych" would be 20 years old. It is not a video game but I find it just as mind blowing...
load more comments
(2 replies)
view more: next ›