Super Mario 64

I have a little bit of a nerdy problem considering a certain videogame company called Nintendo. So if you're not interested in video games, don't read this one.

Before I could play video games myself, I learned to play them by watching my best friend next door play games. He had a Nintendo 64 with Super Mario 64 on it.

This was the first 3D Mario game, but I didn't see it that way, because I hadn't played the 2D Mario games before. I wasn't even aware 2D Mario games existed before this game.

I never had a Nintendo 64 at home, but I did have a Nintendo DS, however, and there was a remake of the game on that system. The remake wasn't really that good in hindsight, but it did the trick for me at the time, and it was really awesome that you could play it on the go.

I now have the HD version on the Nintendo Switch. I've made it to 112 stars. I still need to get 8 stars to get to the magic number of 120, but it's too damn hard. The tick-tock clock level is not a level that I particularly enjoy playing.

Now that I've finished it I'm asking myself this question: was it really a great game, or am I just a sucker for nostalgia? Well, it turns out that a lot of people are suckers for nostalgia, because Nintendo is a company that really knows how to pull your nostalgia strings, and they are quite successful in earning money from nostalgic millennials like me.

Yes, Super Mario 64 was, and still is a great game, but there are a lot of tiny things that annoy me about the game: a crappy camera being the biggest issue.

But I want to talk about a different complaint right now. Something about the company Nintendo in general surrounding their nostalgic/retro content. Why are they so slow with releasing more games from other retro consoles? I'm done with Mario 64, so I want the other 64 games now. They've launched some sort of Netflix-style streaming platform to play their old games, but somehow they've only released NES and SNES games, and everybody's waiting for the N64 games to show up.

So everybody just wants to know: why? Is it the pandemic that slowed the company down? Are they waiting for the next iteration of the Switch console? Are they planning something bigger? What's the deal?