YMMV / Super Mario 64

• Accidental Innuendo: The name to get one of the Power Stars in Dire, Dire Docks is called "Pole Jumping for Red Coins."
• Awesome Music: Has its own page.
• Awesome Video Game Levels:
  • Bob-omb Battlefield, the game's beloved first level that's praised for teaching the games's mechanics and featuring a solid set of stars to collect.
  • Whomp's Fortress, which has numerous paths to reach each star and boatloads of coins. Whomp's Fortress proved to be so popular that it was even remade in Super Mario Galaxy 2!
  • Any of the slides. Careening down the slides, whether it be the smaller castle slide, the ice slide where you race the Big Penguin, or the mountain slide with more gaps and a trick path, is a fun experience that is made even better due to the high-spirited "Slider" that plays throughout.
  • Bowser's levels, a trio of linear platforming gauntlets that faithfully translate the series' 2D gameplay without being overly-punishing.
  • Big Boo's Haunt, for its creepy atmosphere and exploration-based design that successfully bring Super Mario World's Ghost Houses to the third dimension.
  • Once you get access to the Green Shell Block, Lethal Lava Land is by far the most fun level when it comes to getting a 100-coin star.
  • Tiny-Huge Island is well-remembered for being a fun Call-Back to Super Mario Bros. 3, with plenty of shrinking and growing puzzles to boot.
• Breather Boss: The Big Bully and the Chill Bully, both of whom are simple Ring Out Bosses who can only damage you if they knock you out of the ring.
• Breather Level:
  • Big Boo's Haunt has much less deadly hazards than the preceeding Cool Cool Mountain or the subsequent Basement levels.
  • Dire Dire Docks, despite having a tight 100-coin Star, has very chill objectives overall, with the only notable hazard being a whirlpool that's easily avoidable and only a real issue for the second star.
  • Wet-Dry World is overall the easiest of the upper castle levels thanks to the lack of Bottomless Pits (or freezing water in the case of Snowman's Land) surrounding the course, meaning less cheap deaths caused by platforming mistakes and bad camera. The fact that water is abundant there makes dying really unlikely as well due to the instant healing Mario receives when swimming on the surface.
• Broken Base:
  • While the game on its own is considered an all-time classic, there have been debates whether its focus on exploring large levels as opposed to linear platforming challenges make it a "true" Mario game. Some consider the formula an archaic Pragmatic Adaptation of Mario^note The focus on exploration likely stems from the inability of the N64 cartridge to hold a large amount of linear levels while considering games like Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario 3D World to be better translations of the franchise's roots to 3D. Others say Nintendo should use 64 as the permanent design standard for 3D Mario games, seeing it as an improvement over the original linear games. After the release (and, among fans, mixed reception) of Sunshine, the formula would not be revisited until Super Mario Odyssey, which was met with critical acclaim but also re-ignited these debates.
  • Has the game "aged well"? Not everybody can seem to make up their minds, some think the game is basically flawless, and that none of the later 3D Mario games have come close to its quality whereas others think it's started to show its age within the controls and level design. The latter basically finding later titles like Sunshine, Galaxy and Odyssey to be improvements in terms of control and level design. A lot of fans tend to chew you out if you dare say the game "hasn't aged all that well" in any way, shape or form to this day.
  • Which is better: the 1996 original or the 2004 DS remake? Some argue that the remake falls short of the original, due to the lack of analog control^note which, to be fair, is at least partially mitigated by playing on a 3DS and a character switching mechanic that reminds them of a certain other contested collect-a-thon game. Others argue that it's, in many ways, better than the original thanks to the improved graphics, new content, and vastly improved camera system. To this day, bringing the question up is likely to spark quite a bit of debate among fans.
• Camera Screw: In 1996, the C-button camera controls were actually regarded as very good in comparison to the other games available back then. But Technology Marches On, and new players may find that the unreliable camera makes the game much tougher than Bowser could ever hope to be. A good way to avoid a lot of the camera issues is to use the R-button, which switches the camera angle to one that is right behind Mario and shows you what is directly ahead. In normal cases, this viewpoint is ignored because the field of view is reduced to a small cone directly in front of Mario. But in stars that require negotiating tiny ledges and precarious pathways to get to a star, this actually helps, because you can see exactly where you need to go and if you're about to walk off a ledge.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • After completing "Li'l Penguin Lost", a lot of players can't resist dropping Tuxie off the cliff after putting up with her crying for the whole mission. You don't even get punished for doing so, and she respawns at the top of the level.
  • Tox Boxes are annoying, invincible enemies that can crush you for heavy damage, and they make traveling around the metal walkway in Shifting Sand Land difficult. As a result, in 64 DS, it's quite satisfying to use Wario, punch them from the inside, and see them go flying — either shattering against the metal walkway, falling into the sand and getting stuck, or getting immersed by the quicksand. This especially applies if you've played Super Mario Galaxy, where Tox Boxes are both more common and even more of a headache to deal with.
• Common Knowledge:
  • That the DS remake locks you in only eight directions when played in standard mode. Standard mode actually does give you 360 degrees of movement, by having Mario gradually turn when changing his direction on the D-Pad, rather than simply snapping him to whatever direction he's assigned to. On the other hand, his turns are much wider and more specific than they would be if the game was using true analog control à la the original. Naturally, a handful of areas were altered in the DS remake to accommodate to this change.
  • DOTA_Teabag's famous upwarp in Tick Tock Clock is widely believed to have been caused by a cosmic ray flipping a bit in memory. While a bit flip is the leading hypothesis, and cosmic rays can cause bit flips, neither of those things has actually been proven to be the cause of this specific glitch, and cosmic rays in particular are one of the least-probable explanations for a possible bit flip. The actual cause of the upwarp remains an unsolved mystery to this day.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Chuckyas are essentially much faster King Bob-ombs that are found in much more dangerous terrain, which can easily ruin your life as you get thrown off the course. You're better off just avoiding those guys instead of taking the risk of picking them up from behind to defeat them.
  • The Heave-Hos are sorta like prototypical Cataquacks, launching Mario high up into the air for Fall Damage if they catch him — and anyone who has played Super Mario Sunshine probably has an idea of how bad that is. While they are more of an annoyance when you first meet them in Wet-Dry World (in fact, they can even be Helpful Mooks if you manage to position yourself correctly), their presence in Tick Tock Clock is absolutely brutal should the player be caught by their plates, as the chances of being thrown out of the level are incredibly high and there's zero way to get rid of them.
• Difficulty Spike: The game has a relaxed learning curve, so most of the levels on the first floor aren't hard at all. The basement levels are trickier, especially the likes of Lethal Lava Land and Shifting Sand Land that are filled with environmental hazards, but nothing that can't be bypassed with basic jumping skills. But once you get to the upper floors, the game starts picking up the pace in challenge with levels like Tall, Tall Mountain or Tiny-Huge Island, which will harshly punish mistakes with deadly Bottomless Pits. Once you get to the top floor with Tick Tock Clock and Rainbow Ride, the gloves come off and the game really starts challenging your skills.
• Event-Obscuring Camera: The Lakitu Bros. can get caught on some piece of the scenery. In some levels (notably, in Big Boo's Haunt), they can't move at all from certain spots.
• Fan Nickname:
  • The DS remake is sometimes dubbed Super Yoshi 64 by fans because Yoshi is the only playable character from the start, and even though Mario takes over for the main protagonist only a few Stars in, fans will probably never live down the game giving Yoshi (without Mario riding him) A Day in the Limelight outside his home sub-series, though both Super Mario Run and Super Mario Bros. Wonder would afterwards also feature Yoshi as an independent bipedal character instead of a Power Up Mount.
  • To a lesser extent, the long jump became known to fans as the "Yahoo Jump" due to the sound Mario makes when he executes it. The nickname allegedly originated in an unofficial guide published by Brady Games.
  • Among Japanese speedrunners, the Backwards Long Jump glitch is commonly known as "Ketsu Waapu" (ケツワープ), roughly translatable as the "Ass Warp," because Mario propels himself ass-first when performing it.
  • Partially thanks to speedrunner SimpleFlips, softlocks are often referred to as "Gay baby jails".
  • The homing 1-Up mushroom gained the nickname "Green Demon" from hardcore players, among whom a Self-Imposed Challenge is popular entailing triggering a homing 1-Up mushroom and attempting to complete a mission before the extra life reaches them.
  • Similarly to Gay Luigi, this game's Off-Model depiction of Bowser is often called "Gay Bowser" by fans, due to the Memetic Mutation of Mario supposedly saying "so long, gay Bowser" when throwing him. According to Charles Martinet himself, the line in the script was actually "So long, King-a Bowser", however the inflection on the word "king" is hard to make out.
  • The Jumbo Star at the end of the game is sometimes referred to as a "Grand Star" due to both it being unnamed in-game and it being a giant plot-important Power Star.
  • The modding community commonly refers to the Mario head on the title screen as "Goddard", after its programmer, Giles Goddard, who graciously gave out its source code to the decompilation team.
• Fanfic Fuel: It's not hard to imagine, when people see famous paintings, what adventures lie ahead of Mario when he jumps into them.
• Fanon: Due to the DS remake having a vastly different story than the original, fans typically consider it to actually be a direct sequel plot-wise. It helps that nothing exists to deny that both games happened in the same canon so far.
• First Installment Wins:
  • Even though the Nintendo DS remake added plenty of content, sold just as well, and is even considered the superior version by many fans, when people talk about Super Mario 64, they're likely referring to the original N64 version.
  • There is a large portion of the fanbase who consider this game to be the best 3D Mario game.
• Franchise Original Sin:
  • The divisive "BAH" sound effect in the New Super Mario Bros. games actually originated in here. When Mario jumps into the portal for any level, the Star Select screen's theme is the first notes of the original Super Mario Bros. theme done exclusively with the "BAH" sound effect. Not particularly annoying in this game, but it being used frequently in the levels of New Super Mario Bros. games can be considered annoying, New Super Mario Bros. 2 uses a slightly higher pitched version which can be particularly grating.
  • The common problem in the collect-a-thon genre of certain collectables being obscurely out-of-the-way and unintuitive to find started with Super Mario 64, where a fair number of missions aren't adequately spelled out to the player and consequently rely more on both guesswork and heavy backtracking to figure out how they're supposed to be completed. However, the game offsets it by making these less intuitive missions take up only a sliver of the game, and it's possible to beat it without playing any of them. Additionally, the game is fairly light on collectables, with the 120 Power Stars being the only things actually needed to achieve 100% Completion; the only related requirement that involves collecting is the yellow and red coins, which aren't difficult to gather except in a few difficult levels, and the player isn't required to collect every single coin in the game to 100% it, only 8 red coins and at least 100 coins overall per level, each rewarded with one of the aforementioned Power Stars. Compare this to late-era collect-a-thons like Donkey Kong 64 and Banjo-Tooie, where these more obtuse collectables are far more critical and the amount of collectables needed to beat the game — let alone 100% it — are overambitiously high, leading much of one's total playtime to be occupied by constant backtracking as a result.
  • The infamous control stick spinning mechanic in the original Mario Party that was used in certain minigames dates back to this game. In all of the Bowser fights, you have to grab Bowser by the tail and rotate the control stick to spin him around fast enough to fling him into a bomb. This mechanic isn't minded as much here because the highest speed you can reach doesn't require you to spin the stick very fast, and you're not doing it competitively either so there's no pressure to find the fastest way to do it. Mario Party took the element and implemented it into a competitive setting, and the faster you could spin it, the better you would do — which led to dozens of hand injuries from players using their palms and going to town.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Luigi in SM64DS can do almost everything Mario can, but better. Luigi's basic jumps come with the Scuttle, which slightly slows his descent and gives greater air control. His Power Flower move grants him invisibility and intangibility, which allows him to avoid enemies and pass through wire grates, making several things much easier. His form of the Backward Somersault transitions into a twirl, allowing Luigi to gently fall anywhere he wants. He also has by and far the fastest swim speed of the playable roster, which can hasten the repeated long swims in Dire, Dire Docks and Wet-Dry World. The only things Mario has over Luigi are the Wing Cap, Balloon Mario and wall jumping, all of which are required for a minimal amount of Stars and can be easily remedied by giving Luigi the Mario cap. That said, Mario is required to fight Bowser in Bowser in the Sky as Luigi is disallowed from fighting the Koopa King for that level and there are also various levels that specifically require other characters such as The Secret Under the Moat (The entrance is covered by by a black brick block which only Wario can destroy) and Yoshi's Ice Sculpture in Snowman's Land (The green dino's the only one who can melt the ice blocks with his Power Flower induced fire breath).
  • Yoshi can make the 100-coin stars easier. Swallow an enemy that gives you more than one coin, turn the enemy into an egg, throw the egg at enemies that only give one coin and they all give you the same amount of coins as the enemy Yoshi ate.
  • Because there isn't a separate "air" meter, you can completely refill your health simply by touching the surface of any body of water that you can swim in (with one exception — the water in Snowman Land — and that’s justified by the water being cold enough to cause hypothermia). This one's especially useful if you've gotten most of the coins in the level. Becomes Fridge Brilliance when you realise that the gameplay function of the oasis of water in Shifting Sand Land is literally that; to give an oasis of health refill in a very hazardous level.
  • Wario is by far the strongest character in VS. Mode. After attacking another Yoshi, causing him to drop a star, he can then pick up and throw him for another star, which can be repeated indefinitely in a Cycle of Hurting the other player can't escape from. Expect rounds to be more of a race for the Wario cap than for stars, especially in smaller courses.
• Gameplay Derailment: While the game was always known for being relatively non-linear in its progression and gameplay, the sheer number of Good Bad Bugs, Sequence Breaking techniques, and Self-Imposed Challenges that players have discovered or invented for Super Mario 64 since its initial release have made the game downright legendary for this, to where an entire sub-community of modders and speedrunners exist to pick apart the game down to its very last number of code, and it's actually considered one of the biggest draws of the game now beyond its already famous status as a pioneering and fun 3D platformer.
• Genius Bonus:
  • The skybox for Wet-Dry World◊ is based on Shibam, Yemen, and is made to resemble an underwater city. Due to the similar building structure, it was previously believed to be a picture of Casares, Spain.
  • The theme of the Endless Stairs is built around the auditory illusion known as the Shepard tone, which gives the impression that the song is infinitely ascending in pitch.
• Genius Programming: The entire game used numerous cheats and clever technical knowledge to maximize the performance of the game. The entire game was extremely economical in memory; altogether, all the game data amounts to a mere 8MB, or the size of two average MP3s.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Fly Guys, who have a range of attacks (dive, spit fire) and erratic AI, making it difficult to defeat them before they drain all of your health.
  • Bullies as well, who frequently appear in groups, which makes it very difficult to defeat them.
  • The Flame Chomps are hated for their homing fireballs, which cause Mario to lose control if hit.
  • The Amps are despised for their erratic patterns and doing a fair chunk of damage when they hit Mario.
• Goddamned Boss:
  • Despite being a Warm-Up Boss, King Bob-omb can be obnoxious for new players. While he can't harm Mario directly, merely throwing him off the stage with the chance of inflicting Fall Damage, this comes with the penalty of being forced to start the battle over, with all his health regained. Attempting to throw him out of the arena — which will be the first instinct of most players — will also cause the battle to start over, with his health regained. For as slow as he walks, he can still turn quickly, making it difficult to circle around him to pick him up from behind.
  • Wiggler on Tiny-Huge Island can be a bit of a chore to get through. He has four text boxes, and with each hit, it pauses the game briefly to have to display it. And while he's not one of the harder bosses in the game, his erratic movement can be annoying and can take a while.
  • All three fights against Bowser are by no means difficult, as it's a relatively simple pattern of running behind him, grabbing him by the tail, and throwing him into spike bombs, and his supposedly powerful attacks can all be cancelled mid-animation by grabbing his tail. They make up for it by being incredibly annoying, however, as getting him to hit a spike bomb is dependent on reflexes, and more often than not, the player will end up throwing Bowser either too early or too late, causing him to just barely miss taking damage. The Bowser in the Sky battle is especially annoying, as not only does Bowser need to be hit three times, but his aerial fire attack spawns bouncing blue fireballs that can interrupt Mario mid-spinning.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • The Backwards Long Jump, in which Mario can build up ludicrous speed and zip across the stage and through walls and doors in seconds, the key to speedrunning and Sequence Breaking. It famously allows players to completely bypass the Endless Stairs. This is due to a discovery that led to players discovering that Mario actually has no negative horizontal speed cap, meaning you can move at blinding speeds if you can do the right tricks. The Rumble version and DS remake fixed this glitch.
  • The Hyper Speed Wall Kick. By doing frame perfect wall kicks in very quick succession, Mario's speed will increase until he's fast enough to go through certain barriers like the endless stairs. This takes advantage of the fact that Mario's speed slowly but constantly increases while he moves in the air without interruption. This glitch however is not possible to perform non-TAS.
  • Even the DS remake has a few useful glitches. For starters, there's a new glitch called the Dive Reset, which lets you bypass the Endless Stairs. And then another glitch was found to bypass the stairs without the Dive Reset.
  • In the Vanish Cap course beneath the moat, Mario can inexplicably crawl along the very steep slope. And it's not just that slope. Many unwalkable slopes in the game can be crawled along — both ultra-steep slopes in Bob-omb Battlefield and the mound where one of its cannons resides, for instance. In fact, the only slopes that can't be crawled up are ones specifically coded to be super-slippery (such as those at the edges of a world), or that are already about twice as steep as those Mario can run up, with the Vanish Cap course's slope being just barely shallow enough. Crawling to climb slopes seems to actually be intentional.
  • Inside the volcano of Lethal Lava Land, there is the lava equivalent of a waterfall. Jumping into it will get Mario's butt burned as usual, but with some precise jumping, Mario will somehow stick to it and continue going upwards. Doing it just right can save a big part of the track upward to the star. Doing it deliberately wrong can end up catapulting Mario towards the very top of the level, which looks hilarious.
  • Parallel universes. Thanks to how the game calculates Mario's position, if he moves fast enough with methods such as multiple BLJs or pushing against certain walls where he can slowly build up speed for 12 hours, his position will be rolled over when checking for ground at that location. This lets the player move Mario out of bounds to where the game thinks other parts of the level are, then back inbounds to entirely different parts of the level as if Mario teleported. PUs are what allow Tool-Assisted Speedrunners to beat the game with only one of the two required castle keys and beat certain levels with as few A presses as possible.
  • Also related to TASing in few A presses as possible: By luring a Scuttlebug to a door and going to the other side of it, you can "raise" the Scuttlebug by getting close enough for it to lunge and then moving away to freeze it mid-jump, only to repeat the process and get the Scuttlebug to ladder up.
  • The "Death Star Glitch". When Mario dies by either falling into a bottomless pit or going out of bounds, you actually still have control over him during the iris out as he does not have special animations for when either situation happens. TASers took advantage of this by collecting stars in certain levels while in these situations, as the animation for when Mario falls out of a portal after dying is shorter than after he properly gets a star, saving time in a full run.
  • In DS, falling down Tall, Tall Mountain and using the teleport spot on the mushroom has a chance of causing the mountain to flood with water when your character reaches the other side, resulting in them being able to swim where normally there should be air. The water will go up to where the Chuckya is, and jumping out will cause the water to disappear. This can also enable Yoshi to grab Chuckya using the underwater grab move and hold him in his hands, even though Yoshi can normally only grab crates and never enemies.
  • In DS, by going to the Tick Tock Clock room, climbing to the second stair on either side, and doing a slide kick into the corner, your character can clip out of bounds. This usually results in them instantly dying and spawning outside Peach's Castle, but it also has a chance of launching the character into the sky. This can allow you to maneuver them to the other side of the mirror in the mirror room, which can let characters other than Luigi, including Yoshi, enter the blank void room and the Chief Chilly Challenge. You can also manage to land them at the top of the Endless Stairs, which can let non-Mario characters enter Bowser in the Sky. Defeating Bowser with someone who isn't Mario makes the credits a lot sillier, as your character will spawn in seemingly random locations in the level scenes. This has a chance of causing them to die during the credits, which will abruptly end them and spawn your character on the bridge like a normal castle death, with half of the game's sound effects being completely gone until you quit the game.
  • Another one from DS: Due to an apparent collision detection bug, angling the cannon at Bob-omb Battlefield in just the right way will cause you to get shot up ridiculously high into the sky, only to land on top of the mountain where King Bob-omb usually stands. This can be used as a handy shortcut. It triggers the Fall Damage mechanic, though, so remember to do the Ground Pound trick before you land. This glitch is known as "Fence Flying" and can be triggered in a number of other places, including some where it allows you to go out of bounds, although it is significantly harder to pull off.
  • Also in DS: Jumping towards a tree near the cannon on the outside of Peach's Castle in a specific way (this can take a few tries) allows you to clip through the ground and into the water below. This allows you to sequence break massively, as it lets you swim towards and use the cannon to reach the castle roof, which is otherwise impossible to do without collecting all the Power Stars, since the cannon remains locked until then. This has to be done before you do the "Secret Under The Moat" bonus level, though. Once you do that, the water level in the moat remains lowered, and while you can still clip through the ground, the water is not high enough to reach the cannon.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The DS remake has a hidden White Void Room — which contains a Secret Star that can only be accessed using Luigi's Vanish power to get to it — on the second floor. Weird, but not much to dwell over at the time. The Wham Episode of Super Paper Mario, released just a few years later, features a similar area in the Sammer Kingdom... though for a much, much darker reason.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Around the time Super Mario 64 first came out, there was a Got Milk? commercial that showed Mario in Wet-Dry World, having trouble jumping, whereupon he hops out of the TV, drinks some milk, grows extremely large, and then hops back into the level, plowing through everything in sight. Almost 10 years later, you can now kinda do it for real.
  • Mario's midair kick gives him a minor boost in height, acting like a Double Jump. The effect is very small and using it too close to a wall will push Mario away, making it infeasible for grabbing ledges, but it's still frequently abused to clear impossible-seeming distances. The spin from Super Mario Galaxy, particularly its double-jump function, feels very much like an evolution of the jump-kick-jump, only this time, the game is clearly designed with it in mind.
  • Those who were terrorized by the Mad Piano in this game probably found Amadeus Wolfgeist's boss battle downright cathartic in Luigi's Mansion 3. Not only does Wolfgeist possess a piano to attack you with, but you also get to smash it to pieces during the fight, which is likely the closest thing players will get to quashing their childhood nightmare. Even before that, Kirby: Triple Deluxe had a very similar Mad Piano-esque enemy in King Phanta's mid-boss battle, which you get to suck up with the Hypernova power.
  • "L is Real 2401". Thanks to a massive source code leak in July 2020, 24 years and one month after this game's release^note And on a date that took place on the 25th (24+01) of July (the Seventh month, 2+4+0+1) , Luigi's player model and several other materials have been obtained and put back together by fans. What really makes this a Contrived Coincidence is that the memetic line in question is misinterpreted from a compressed sign whose true text is still unknown^note The uncompressed source texture wasn't included in the Gigaleak, but font analysis by fans show that it probably says "A secret star lies here". Furthermore, this came on the heels of the "every copy of Super Mario 64 is personalized" memes regarding unused and pre-release content for the game seeing a rise in popularity.
  • In Princess Peach's letter at the beginning, she says that she baked a cake for Mario, but she didn't make it (likely due to being kidnapped), and it's only when she's rescued that she bakes it. Therefore, the cake was (somewhat of) a lie 11 years before Portal made it famous.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: The Super Mario 64 port in Super Mario 3D All-Stars is a straightforward upscaled emulation of the original game (specifically the Rumble Pak version), making people feel that even as part of a compilation that includes Sunshine and the first Galaxy, $60 is asking too much, in particular when considering that Activision's PlayStation 1-series Compilation Rereleases — Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, Spyro Reignited Trilogy and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 — are only $40 for two-three whole remakes each. Additionally, another group was disappointed they didn't use Super Mario 64 DS, which added a bit more to the game, and some feel that 64 doesn't age well compared to most other games. Further exacerbating things is that the 3D All-Stars release came hot on the heels of a fanmade port (which is completely legal if one dumps their own Mario 64 ROM to compile it) that runs on a hacked Switch (or PlayStation Vita) and features widescreen, increased draw distance, and a fixed smoke texture, whereas the 3D All-Stars emulation runs in 4:3 and still has the original draw distance and the smoke bug. This is a noticeable contrast to the same compilation's ports of Super Mario Sunshine, which is criticized for being too awkwardly changed from the original release, and Super Mario Galaxy, which is generally praised for making a relatively graceful transition to the Switch.
• Low-Tier Letdown: Wario, as he has mediocre jumping and running abilities in comparison to the rest of the playable cast, and good speed and jumping ability is a must for a platform game like this. The upsides he does gain, on the other hand, are incredibly niche: destroying black bricks is only relevant when those objects are around, the player will practically never need to put his faster carrying speed to use, and his doubled attack strength isn't a game-changer since most Mooks go down in one hit anyway, and the other characters don't struggle when fighting bosses.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Ever since the "0.5 A Presses in 'Watch For Rolling Rocks'" video became a meme, the Scuttlebug has become really popular.
  • Although Mario was already a badass since his debut, his badassery boosted even more after the 0.5x A presses video and meme where it was discovered that Mario practically has the power to travel to parallel universes without even jumping, basically having godlike powers. And then, his badassery skyrocketed after Jeremy Chinshue made a video of him versus another fellow Memetic Badass, "Melee Fox".
• Memetic Molester: From the DS version, we have Wario's star selection screen◊, which shows his face with a rather creepy grin and underneath him are the words "Touch Me". Granted, all the characters have the same interface, but it's the creepy grin that really drives it home for Wario.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • L Is Real 2401, aka the many urban legends regarding how to unlock Luigi as a secret hidden character in the original game. The original line comes from the sign in the castle courtyard, which is compressed to illegibility but was often claimed to read the aforementioned message^note for the record, it actually says "A secret star lies here". This has spawned numerous jokes about the secret to unlocking Luigi involving the player performing a chain of ludicrously specific and repetitive, time-consuming actions in-game. With Luigi being playable in Super Mario 64 DS, unlocking Waluigi became the new urban legend, with the most iconic legend being a fabricated magazine article entitled "Purple Prizes". Theories revolve around a black box found by shooting on a specific castle wall^note It's actually an artifact from an E3 demo and by oversight is still seen in the file selection screen in the final game, a purple "Rabbit King", and the white door on the character selection room.
  • L IS NOW REAL ^ExplanationOn July 24th of 2020, a major leak at Nintendo resulted in lots of SNES, Game Boy and N64 game files getting leaked, including dozens of earlier builds that had never been seen by the public. On the 25th, it was discovered that files for Luigi were in fact in early builds of Super Mario 64, and people took no time in trying to reconstruct the green plumber. The efforts saw Luigi rise to #2 on Twitter's trending tab due to the infamously longstanding rumor finally getting some backing. Many also took note of the "2401" number on the misread statue, and pointed out that Luigi became real exactly twenty-four years and one month after the release of Super Mario 64, as well as the fact that the number adds up to the date he was found; adding 2, 4, 0 and 1 equals 7, while 24 and 01 gets you 25, equating to 7/25.
  • "Super Mario 64 Bloopers", usually remembered as the poorly-made, mid-2000s YouTube attempts at making Machinima. One notable aspect from these videos was the tendency to use Scatman John's music, causing a bit of Song Association.
  • The backwards long jump glitch and the ensuing "Yahoo! Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-"^ExplanationThe Backwards Long Jump is a speedrunning trick that, among other things, makes Mario repeat and interrupt his "Yahoo" soundbyte from a normal Long Jump dozens of times, which is then proceeded by flying through scenery at crazy speeds.
  • R.I.P. Backwards Long Jumping ^ExplanationAs the 3D All-Stars port is the Shindou edition, this means that the iconic glitch has been fixed and you cannot hear Mario go "YAYAYAYAYAYAYA-".
  • "So long, Gay Bowser!" This often-misheard phrase has been used, among other things, to criticize corporations for dropping the LGBT symbol as soon as Pride Month ends.
  • "Bye bi!" ^ExplanationWhen Super Mario 3D All-Stars was shown off, one clip contained Mario throwing Bowser... and all he says is "bye bye!" instead of "so long, gay Bowser!", as in the Japan-only Shindou edition of the game and Super Mario 64 DS. In order to keep the spirit of Gay Bowser alive, people quickly started joking that Mario was actually referencing Bowser being bisexual and saying "bye bi!" instead.
  • Super Mario 64 conspiracy theories^ExplanationA series of facetious Pop-Culture Urban Legends and Urban Legend of Zelda claims (sometimes going into Creepypasta territory) about alleged removed, unused, or hidden content in the game, which took off in popularity in the first half of 2020. Much of it lies in exploiting the childhood allure of schoolyard rumors in the context of one of the most widely-dissected games in Nintendo's library.
  • The Iceberg^ExplanationThe Tweet that kickstarted all of these conspiracies by gathering various secrets, mysteries, and conspiracies related to the game and arranging them in five levels of an "iceberg," with the levels of depth representing how well-known the subject was at the time the image was made. They range from simple memes like the Half-A Press/Parallel Universes to conspiracies regarding early versions and the game's history. This format had previously seen use covering RealLife subjects, but the Super Mario 64 variant (as well as this video by Mish Koz analyzing it is credited as the one who turned the icebergs into an entire trend, leading to the creation of other icebergs about multiple topics/fandoms and dozens of YouTube videos explaining them in return.
  • The Wario Apparition^ExplanationA popular element of the conspiracy theory trend that claims that Wario's floating, ghostly head can be found in the Dire Dire Docks hall in Peach's castle, based on an E3 1996 presentation featuring an early performance of Charles Martinet as Wario. The theory became a source for fan recreations and fanart, often including the presentation quote "you want fun? Wario show you fun!"
  • Every copy of Mario 64 is personalized^ExplanationBy and large the most ubiquitous aspect of the fake conspiracy theories, this catchphrase acts as a hyperbolic claim that every individual copy of the game is personalized, being coded to adapt itself in subtle ways to fit the player's unique style and experiences, resulting in no two copies being exactly the same. Supposedly, this is why people who played the game as kids find it distinctly "off" when playing a different copy at a friend's house or via emulation (whether it be through Virtual Console or unofficial emulators).
  • Mario smoking a fat blunt^ExplanationAn edited piece of artwork for the game depicting Mario smoking an oversized marijuana joint, which caught on as a result of its sheer ridiculousness. The image is frequently reposted in response to Mario-related content online, and inspired an even more popular offshoot themed around Ralsei from Deltarune.
  • From 2019 onwards, it became increasingly popular to recreate well-known songs and even entire albums using the game's soundfont, even in (or especially in) cases where one wouldn't think the music's original genre would translate well, like Heavy Metal or Grunge.
  • The letter Princess Peach sends to Mario at the beginning of the game is a source of parody, by replacing either the characters or the content of the letter.
• Minimalist Run: Speedrunners of the game have attempted several of these:
  • First, there's just beating the game with the minimum 70 stars required to access Bowser in the Sky, which is done in casual speedruns.
  • The 16 Star Run, which needs 15 Stars to get MIPS the Rabbit to spawn, who is needed in order to perform a glitch that lets you bypass the door to Dire, Dire Docks and Bowser in the Fire Sea, which normally requires 30 Stars to open. You must then collect the first Star from Dire, Dire Docks in order to unlock Bowser in the Fire Sea. After getting the second key from Bowser, you can then skip straight to Bowser in the Sky using Backwards Long Jumps. This is by far the most popular speedrun category.
  • The 1 Star Run, which involves glitching into a wall in the castle lobby in order to do a Backwards Long Jump allowing you to bypass the door to Bowser in the Dark World to get the first key, then doing a second, extremely difficult Backwards Long Jump in the basement to bypass the door to Dire, Dire Docks and Bowser in the Fire Sea, getting the first Star in Dire, Dire Docks and the second key from Bowser in the Fire Sea, and Backwards Long Jumping up to Bowser in the Sky.
  • The 0 Star Run, which is exactly the same as the 1 Star Run, except you build up even more speed with the second Backwards Long Jump so that you shoot straight through the entrance to Dire, Dire Docks and can access Bowser in the Fire Sea without needing to get the first Star from the former.
  • There's also the "No Coin Run", where you play through the game without grabbing a single coin. The challenge cuts you off from over 1/3 of the game's stars, meaning you only need to collect 70 stars as well.
  • Some particularly creative runners who have mastered the games mechanics inside and out, such as pannenkoek2012, have created three more types of challenges that take the Minimalist Run to the absolute extreme — the Minimal/No A-Press Run and the Minimal/No B-Press Run (it's impossible to beat the levels without using either of them, and some levels are impossible to beat them without some button presses, even with glitch exploitation, so both types of challenge can overlap in the same game), and in some levels, the No Joystick Run!
• Most Wonderful Sound: The "correct solution" sound is a soothing sound that is always nice to hear, especially when the correct solution puts Mario out of harm's way.
• Older Than They Think:
  • This game was not Charles Martinet's first time voicing Mario; that honor goes to the Super Mario Bros. pinball machine, and Super Mario Bros. Mushroom World released four years earlier in 1992 by Gottlieb ^note  According to Martinet, he wasn't credited for voicing Mario for both of the pinball games.. Even as far as video games go, Martinet had previously lent his voice to Mario's Game Gallery in 1995, one year prior to the release of 64. It was, however, the first international game to use his voice, as the previous games and pinball machines did not leave America.
  • This was not the first game to give Mario a ground pound or acrobatic moves. Much of his moveset from this game were originally his moves in Donkey Kong '94, Yoshi's moves in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, or Wario's moves in Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3. The triple jump, wall jump, and long jump originate here, however. The second game was also the origin of red coins and the extended remix of the Starman theme.
  • When the 3D All-Stars port was revealed, a lot of people were surprised at the removal of "So long, King-a Bowser"^note Or as the fandom believes, "So long gay Bowser", being replaced with "Buh-bye!" This was previously the case of the updated Japanese version and the DS remake.
  • The DS version isn't the first game where Mario isn't playable from the start. The single player version's starting roster of Mario Golf 64 in fact only has Baby Mario, Peach, and two other humans playable, with Luigi, Wario, and Yoshi being unlocked before Mario himself.
  • The more flourished version of the Starman theme that plays when Mario grabs a Wing or Invisible Cap actually made its debut a year earlier in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island.
• Once Original, Now Common:
  • All things considered, the game is still universally considered a milestone of video game history and very playable to this day, especially in comparison to lots of contemporary games that had problems with their Video Game 3D Leaps. From a technical perspective though, the game is inevitably showing its age now, with its very simplistic, low-polygon models and now-rudimentary and barren-looking stage design, plus the abundant amount of exploitable glitches. And many of its once-unique features (a fully controllable, free-roaming 3D character and world, with a controllable camera and analog stick controller) are now considered the bare minimum of acceptable game design. Alongside the modern video game blockbuster titles that constantly push 3D graphics to their limits (e.g. God of War, Grand Theft Auto, Final Fantasy, etc.), including this game's own follow-ups, like Super Mario Sunshine and Super Mario Galaxy, it just seems rather quaint. The wobbly movements and unintentional Camera Screw don't help much. This complaint also applied to the addition of the game in Super Mario 3D All Stars, as the original game is emulated with zero changes.
  • The DS remake, while still quite impressive that Nintendo managed to successfully convert Super Mario 64 to the Nintendo DS and even expand upon it in many respects, the concept of a fully 3D game on a handheld doesn't carry the same "WOW factor" today as it did in 2004, now that handheld systems like the PSP, PSVita, and even Nintendo's own 3DS have made console quality 3D gaming the norm on handhelds.
• One-Scene Wonder: Everybody remembers Unagi (now known as Maw-Ray) the Eel and the Mad Piano due to the pure Nightmare Fuel they brought to the minds of many children. Thankfully, there's only one of each in the whole game, and in the case of the musical instrument, you only need to mess with it once (to obtain a red coin) and then never again.
• Polished Port: The version of the game on Super Mario 3D All-Stars. While it's based on the Nintendo 64 version (specifically the Shindou version), the resolution was bumped to 720p and several textures were upscaled. There's also a lot less slowdown compared to the original N64 version of the game (which can be played on the Expansion pass). And it allows portable play.
• Porting Disaster: The initial Wii U Virtual Console port of the N64 version suffered from dark screen filters and input lag that can deter some players, even making the game outright unplayable for them.
• Sacred Cow: If not for the series, then for 3D platforming. To this day, many look at this game as an example of 3D platforming done right, and it is held as a touchstone for the genre.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The controls for swinging Bowser around have been criticized for how janky they feel, since it requires constantly rotating the (already easy-to-wear-out) joystick to maintain speed, which also makes it harder to line up when to throw him in time. The DS remake improves this by allowing you to use the touch screen to swing Bowser.
  • Fall Damage. Full Force. It's the worst in this game, and in order to cheat your way to avoid taking any fall damage, you need to ground pound or perform a dive at JUST the right moment. If Mario ground pounds too early, he will hurt himself, and if he falls really high, he will lose half of his energy. Given how vertical some of the levels get, this runs counter to the overall design encouraging exploration. There's a reason Sunshine would end up nerfing fall damage to simply take away 1 hit point and allow a ground pound/dive to be activated at any time to negate the damage (in fact, using a ground pound at such height is a requirement for its Final Boss), whereas Galaxy and onward removed it entirely.
  • Performing the side-flip can be a bit wonky considering Mario needs to be skidding in order to do it. Some people have claimed it simply outright not working for them, with Mario not transitioning to his skidding animation or turning around in a complete 360 turn and jumping to his death.
  • The Wall Jump is... quirky to say the least, especially compared to Sunshine and onward. Mario doesn't slide down a wall if you hug it; instead, he bounces off and you have to be very precise in order to make him jump from wall to wall. The DS remake averts this, making the physics and controls for the Wall Jump more like Sunshine and later games, although only Mario is able to perform the ability.
  • Committing the camera control to a physical character in the game (Lakitu) was a neat concept in the infancy of 3D games to convey this concept to a new audience, but it really shows its share of warts in its execution, compared to future games. With the use of the C-buttons for camera control you can only adjust the camera in intervals, and it often simply doesn't work since there's no room to allocate Lakitu's physical position. As a result it tends to wobble in tight areas, during the times when you really need it the most. Sunshine would have a much smoother camera and allow seeing through solid objects, while Galaxy's level design would keep its camera limitations in mind.
  • The 100-coin stars. Having to collect 100 coins in each of the 15 regular courses to get a star slows the pace of the game to a crawl, and dying at any point resets your coin collection to zero, forcing you to start over. Some courses are plentiful in coins if you choose the right mission, but some courses, like Dire Dire Docks, are scarce in coins no matter what.^note There's just over 100 coins in Dire Dire Docks, and it requires the red coins, which are impossible to get until Bowser's Sub is gone (which requires defeating him for the second time). This actually forces you to retrieve a string of 5 coins in front of the Nightmare Fuel black hole on one of the walls to make the total (this hole has a pull when you near it and the coins, and getting caught and entering it will kick you out of the stage and the castle, dumping you in the moat outside; if you don't already have the 100-coin Star when and if you enter this hole, you have to start the Star over). Not helping things further is that you only get one chance to get coins from enemies and blue coin blocks, forcing you to start over if you miss them. Yoshi can make these stars easier to get in the DS remake by generating bonus coins from defeating multiple enemies with a single egg.
  • The Wing Cap controls are not the most flexible for Video Game Flight on either version of the game and thus gets its share of scorn because of it.
  • The physics of coins are really off, causing any non-static coin that's released to slide across the ground like it's been oiled. This makes it really easy to lose coins simply by them skidding off a platform. 64 DS fixes this, stopping the coins when they land.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: Has its own page for it.
• Signature Scene:
  • The game saying "It's a me, Mario!" upon booting up. Basically the introduction of Mario to a new generation, which has since led to his title phrase becoming one of his catchphrases.
  • Bob-omb Battlefield and Whomp's Fortress are the most famous levels in the game, to the point where Super Mario Galaxy 2 remakes the latter level as Throwback Galaxy.
  • The Bowser fights, particularly Mario swinging him by the tail. It's shown in the game's Attract Mode, was used in a pre-release ad for the game, and was even parodied in Conker's Bad Fur Day.
  • The Mad Piano in Big Boo's Haunt. There is a reason WHY it's the picture of the game's Nightmare Fuel page.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • The flat, two-dimensional trees that always face you, no matter where you look – using a technique called "billboarding" common to many 3D games. This wouldn't be too notable if attempting to climb them didn't make Mario look like he's hovering in front of the tree, grabbing onto thin air. In the DS version, the low resolution masks this a bit, and the trees have a nice fade-out when the camera goes through them.
  • Peach's castle having no back to it wouldn't matter so much if you couldn't easily just turn the camera around and have a clear view right through the back of the hollow castle.
  • When you fall into a bottomless pit that isn't black, you can still very clearly see Mario's shadow below him. There are also pits where, if Mario slams down, clearly shows they have a bottom as the level transitions. Tellingly, this is the only death where a normal iris out is used for the transition instead of the Bowser Iris Out of Doom, as that would've spoiled the illusion further.
  • In the original version, the endless stairs were near seamless and done pretty well. The introduction of the map on the bottom screen of the DS version, however, quickly shatters the illusion by revealing that you're simply being warped back downwards every few steps.
  • Dorrie, while still very cute, doesn't look alive because his animation is so very stiff and slight, particularly in his head and neck. He looks like a giant Loch Ness Monster floating toy instead of a living animal. This is very forgivable because of the game's age, but even still all the other models in the game look more animated and alive. DS would update him to look like this.◊
• That One Level: Has its own page.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The 1997 Shindou Edition is widely disliked among speedrunners due to fixing many of the Good Bad Bugs, most notably the backwards long jump, that are used for Sequence Breaking. Needless to say, said speedrunners were unhappy to learn that the 3D All Stars release is based on the Shindou Edition.
  • Among more general fans, the Shindou Edition is also disliked for removing the now-iconic "so long, King Bowser" voice clip, replacing it with a generic "bye-bye," and altering the speed and pitch of the rest of Mario's lines. The discovery of this via the first 3D All Stars trailer, which uses the Shindou Edition instead of the original 1996 release, stoked just as much ire among these fans as it did among speedrunners.
  • This is the main criticism some people have of the DS remake, as it replaces the original's analog control with D-Pad and touch screen controls. Other changes, such as removing the eyes from the Bomps on Whomp's Fortress or updating the designs of Thwomps and Scuttlebugs to their modern appearances reduces the Early-Installment Weirdness charm the original had. Some also didn't care much for the new content, feeling it made the game too bloated.
• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • Unfortunately, all three cap power-ups suffer from this. The Wing Cap, on top of being difficult to control, is only needed for a few stars. The Metal Cap does make you near-invincible, but since platforming takes precedence over combat, it's mainly used for the odd puzzle here and there. The Vanish Cap is even more underutilized and basically just serves as a key to get a handful of stars, and it shows up in areas where its own invincibility properties can't really be used. The DS remake mitigates these somewhat by tying them to specific characters, though while Luigi is sure to get plenty of mileage out of his invisibility, Wario and his metal form probably won't be seeing much use outside of a Self-Imposed Challenge or Wario/Metal Cap-specific stage anyway.
  • In the first floor of the castle, several areas are locked from access, with each requiring the player to collect a certain amount of stars before being able to access them and enter the levels within them. On the other floors of the castle however, only the doors to the Bowser levels and the door to the top floor require having enough stars to access, with every other level being immediately accessible upon gaining access to the floor they're on.
  • If you have the Wing powerup equipped and hold the jump button after a jump, your character will slow their fall with the wings. This is never told to the player, though it does make sense if you're familiar with the Mario series' standard of gliding powerups. Even if you're aware of it though, it requires you to have the powerup at all and be doing regular platforming with it - an unlikely scenario considering the main use of the Wing Cap is for its Video Game Flight. And since the game's platforming is designed for characters who don't have the ability to glide, this move doesn't have any places where it can do anything you couldn't already do either with regular jumps or by just initiating flight and maintaining cruising altitude over to where you're trying to go.
  • In DS, Luigi has the ability to run on water. Sounds neat, but he can only do it for two seconds before he sinks in, and he can only run on it, which requires the ground to extend into the water, like at a beach shoreline; if Luigi jumps onto water, he falls into it like normal, so this ability has very few levels it can be used in, and has very little use anyway, as it basically only lets you go a little bit farther along a surface of water before needing to swim through it, something that the fastest swimmer in the game doesn't really need in the first place.
  • Wario retains only one his unique abilities from Wario World in the form of the Wild Swing Ding. Unfortunately, it's only ever used in the Misbegotten Multiplayer Mode.
  • Two of Mario's attacks tend to never go used by most casual players. The slide kick does basically exactly the same thing as the dive but with one extra step required, and tends to only see use to pull off a few glitches. The roundhouse kick is even more of a joke — it's pulled off by having Mario crouch and then pushing the attack button, but the only added utility is that it attacks in all directions where the punch only attacks in one. You will rarely if ever find yourself in a situation that calls for this, and even if you do, your first instinct will probably be to jump out of the danger instead of trying to fight your way out. Reportedly, this attack was supposed to be used as the only way to kill certain enemies, but this didn't happen and as a result most players end up never using it.
  • Dire, Dire Docks introduces a mechanic that allows Mario to wear two caps at once, simultaneously granting the effects of the Metal and Vanish Caps. However, outside of the mission "Collect the Caps...", the mechanic isn't necessary for any other Star in the game, in fact it's not even needed for this level; you can get the Star with just the Vanish ability alone, and are actually required to do so in the DS version due to the change in powerup mechanics. The only other level where it's even possible to wear two caps at once is Wet-Dry World, where there's no obvious benefit doing so.
• Viewer Gender Confusion:
  • Dorrie the sea monster. Despite having a feminine-sounding name and a cutesy appearance, Dorrie is officially a male. But then the description of one mini-game (Dorrie Dip) in Mario Party 3 refers to Dorrie as a "she" as do the Nintendo Power and Prima strategy guides.
  • Many people assume Tuxie is a boy, when actually she's a girl. In fact, both baby penguins are girls.
• Vindicated by History: The DS remake became this thanks to the 3DS and its Wii U release. On release, some hated the DS version for being supposedly unplayable due to the DS's lack of a control stick (although many didn't really mind the D-pad). But with the 3DS's circle pad and Wii U's control stick, many have found it to be much more enjoyable and playable (despite the inability to walk by tilting the pad), thanks to it being a far more suitable alternative to a control stick. Additionally, there were people who were disappointed that the Super Mario 3D All Stars version used the original version of the game as opposed to the DS version, feeling like that version was an "upgrade".
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • The visuals look very primitive and outdated now, but they were nothing short of jaw-dropping for their day. The use of crisp cartoon shading and the N64's built-in features like anti-aliasing (which made the character models look incredibly smooth-looking for the time), tri-linear filtering (which made the textures look very smooth instead of chunky and pixelated), perspective correct texture mapping (which prevented the textures from warping as the camera moved, as was common on other 3D systems of the time), and dithering (which gave the colors more depth than they really had) alone gave it a huge advantage over the jagged-looking PlayStation launch titles out of the starting gate. Even after the technical sheen wore off, the appealing cartoon art has helped take the burden off the aging graphics, which is more than what can be said for many other 3D games of the time period. And even today, it's a fantastic use of the N64's color palette. It might not have been as sharp as stuff today, but it certainly looked nice regardless. On top of that, Mario was probably one of the most elaborately animated CGI characters for video games of the time, featuring very smooth and incredibly varied, context-sensitive animation that would only be matched by fellow developer Rareware — even developers of more realistic games like would-be fellow launch title Shadows of the Empire^note which was ultimately only released that way in Europe, after having been advertised as such along with Mario 64 and PilotWings 64 looked up to Mario 64 as a milestone to follow.
  • A big selling point of the Nintendo DS remake is that it had superb graphics that were superior to the original game, which was especially awesome since it was released on a handheld gaming system.

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