I suppose this is what getting older feels like.
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.
It’s not an anniversary the Jedi would celebrate…
Should’ve told him you have the high ground.
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.
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
Yeah the controls on the early N64 games weren’t as intuitive as controls now. It wasn’t really until Halo that 3d games felt good to control.
turok was good on the n64.
quake was good in the 90s
you can relive that experience with a cheap VR headset!
Here’s Mario at nearly 30 years ago (29 years):
Mario 64
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.
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.
I remember playing the Mario 64 demo in a kiosk at toys r us. I was blown away by it. I struggled to get Mario to walk in a straight line.
I was pretty young, but played tons of snes.
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
“NOSEWAT”
Spasim is a 3d space simulator from 1974, first person and multiplayer.
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.
Can’t wait for New Super Mario Bros (New)
new³ super mario bros
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.
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
We’ll know there’s been a new tech revolution when HL3 comes out
The original Mario Bros compared to Mario 3 was huge.
And that was on the same system.
