A Look Back at Making Mario 64

Press the Buttons has commentary on a short, interesting piece at the Miyamoto Shrine site. There, they look back at the making of Mario 64. From the article: "Possibly the most important part of Mario 64 was making sure Mario was easy to control. Before any of the levels had been created Mr. Miyamoto had Mario running around and picking up objects in a small 'garden' which he uses in all his games to test gameplay elements. 'Alot of the animation was actually in there before any of the game' explains Goddard. 'The Mario that he had running around basically looked the same as he did in the final version. Mario's movement is based on good physics, but you have bits on top that you plug in so you can do things you shouldn't be able to do. They spent a lot of time working on the swimming, it's harder than running to get the feeling right, they didn't want you to avoid the water, the wanted to make it an advantage and fun to dive in.'"

Comments

Mario 64 Completion in 16 minutes

[Anonymous Coward]

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6493722340 610946105

Re:Cameras Still Don't Work

[david.given]

I have to say that I didn't like Mario 64 very much --- that kind of collect-all-the-tokens, do-every-level-500-times adventure bores me stiff. But I agree with you completely about cameras; most of them suck.

(I was once playing Banjo and Kazooie (another game I tired of very quickly) and died because I fell down one side of a wall and the camera fell down the other side and couldn't get back to me. I could hear that I was being eaten by something, but couldn't tell what.)

The best camera work I've ever seen was in, surprise surprise, Ocarina of Time. It just felt natural most of the time, even doing things like panning up when you approached an edge so that you could see over. Interestingly, the camera in Wind Waker wasn't as good, for reasons I can't quite put my finger on; I found it annoying me in ways that it didn't in Ocarina.

Re:Cameras Still Don't Work

[MBCook]

That kind of collecting is a matter of taste. I enjoyed Banjo-Kazooie too. But if the games were released today, I don't think I would go collecting all 120 stars. But back then there was nothing else like it anywhere so each star was a totally fresh and new experience.

I've had things like what you mention with Banjo-Kazooie happen too, and it is almost funny some times (depends on how critical it is that you stay alive then). I must say that while I've played all the Zelda games, I don't remember the camera system in any of them (except that they use Z-Targeting). I guess that means they had an excellent camera system (otherwise I would remember them being a pain).

Actually, I do remember one thing. In small rooms, the Zelda camera systems would lock your view from one or two points (almost like from security cameras) to avoid many of the problems that I've mentioned with the camera "running into things". Most areas were easily large enough to not run into any problem, which is probably a testament to good level design more than anything else.

Re:Cameras Still Don't Work

[skyman8081]

In OoT, what they did for a lot of rooms was that the camera was locked to a specific point, and then used a 2D pre-rendered bckdrop, and put the characters, pots, chests, cows, and doors over it.

Very clever stuff.