Best remake ever?

Game Info.

Genre Action (3D platformer)

Publisher/Developer Nintendo

Release 11/21/04

Let's say you're a kid like me who was spellbound by Super Mario 64 in 1996. It was neither your favorite nor your least-favorite game, but its sheer originality just freaking blew your 9-year-old mind. 64 DS definitely won't do that for you, but it's still at least as enjoyable, and in my opinion moreso, than its N64 counterpart.

Gameplay
The biggest surprise most people who know nothing about this game prior to playing it will receive is that you don't start as Mario when a new file begins. Just like Peach, Mario, Luigi, and Wario have been trapped in paintings as well. Your job, as Yoshi, is to rescue the whole crew. Your abilities are the standards from Yoshi's Story/Yoshi's Island, but for the first time in 3D (does riding Yoshi in Mario Sunshine count?). Flutter jumps, ground pounds, eating enemies, and shooting eggs are all executed fantastically - shooting eggs home onto enemies, so you don't waste time aiming. I loved playing as Yoshi the first few levels, but naturally, I missed Mario's superior jumping. Luckily, you soon unlock him, and later Luigi and Wario, each with their signature jumping styles and attacks. You can switch back and forth between playing as these characters in what was once just the Princess' Secret Slide room.
Because certain stars require you to play as a specific character to attain them, the game also throws in color-coded transformation hats everywhere. Naturally, the red one turns you into Mario, the green one into Luigi, and the yellow one into Wario. Getting hit by an enemy will turn you back to your character's original form, but perhaps some mechanic for changing back other than forcing yourself to get hit by an enemy would've been nice. And also, for the few goals that require Yoshi's new fire-breathing attack, some way to transform into Yoshi would've been nice.
A few small new levels are also put into this game - one to unlock each of the three non-Yoshi characters. Each has a mini-boss fight at the end. Unfortunately, only the level in which you unlock Mario is very memorable. Its design is based around goombas and what their kingdom would look like. It's all gnarly and spooky with poisonous gas and rotten trees. The mini-boss is even the King of Goombas first seen in Paper Mario; an awesome throwback. Luigi and Wario's "unlock" levels both use familiar bosses and art design, and are thus somewhat forgettable. Even then, none of the levels have more than one goal in them (besides the standard "find eight red coins" and "collect 100 gold coins"), so they're pretty much minor additions. Full-scale levels would've been appreciated, but these get the job done and do their best not to offend purists who might dislike the idea of all new levels. Including new secrets, some of which are interesting and some of which are just tedious, there are 30 new stars total in this remake. When you consider that each stage only has 7 stars and one "100 coins" star, 30 new ones is pretty significant.
In summary, Mario 64 DS's gameplay is every bit as great as Mario 64's. I don't see a reason in this section to put down the game, since it's Mario 64 plus new characters, moves, goals, and secrets. Even if all those sucked, which they don't, I'd still give the gameplay a near-perfect score.
9/10

Control
Nintendo's first 3D handheld doesn't have analog control. So controling this game is just a tad less intuitive than it would be if you had a stick or, like the PSP, an analog "nub". Instead, you move with the regular control pad and hold Y to run. This may take veterans a while to get over, but I found no real issues with it in practice - I never died cause I had to hold Y.
There are two other control schemes besides the "all-digital" scheme described above, that make use of the DS's touch screen. The first lets you move the character with the touch screen with all the controls on the right-hand side's buttons. Because this might feel unnatural for a left-handed person, the second extra control scheme maps the control buttons onto the control pad, allowing you to use your right hand on the touch screen. These are very interesting to play with, and work more well than you'd think. In fact, my colleague, Alex, used the first touch screen control scheme to play through basically the entire game. I couldn't quite get myself feeling comfortable with it, especially since putting your fingers on the touch screen covers up the map, and I find the map somewhat more useful than most reviewers do, but the feature still does its intended job very well.
All in all, yes, the control does move down a notch from the Nintendo 64 edition, which sounds flat-out disgusting to the casual gamer - "how could 8 years make a game control WORSE?" But you have to keep in mind that Mario 64 was an N64 game. The DS, while graphically able to support N64 games, is the DS. It's a downpoint for this game specifically, but in perspective, I'm sort of glad Mario 64 doesn't control perfectly. The last thing I wanna' see the DS become is an N64 port machine the way the Game Boy Advance has become for the SNES and NES.
7/10

Graphics
For its day, Mario 64 had top of the line graphics. It wasn't revolutionary per se, but it was enough to impress at the time. 64 DS improves most of the textures and models throughout the game, which is great to look at for die-hard fans of the original. Today, these are top of the line visuals for a handheld system, but as we all know, the PlayStation Portable's gonna' have some even better-looking games next month. The DS is still new, though, and this is really just a port. So it's anyone's bet whether future DS games will look as nice as some of those on the PSP, or if this really IS the best the handheld can do.
8/10

Sound
Mario games always have some of the best music. Of course, Super Mario 64 was no exception. The DS's twin speakers are surprisingly effective at creating a stereo experience, even though they're no more than 3 inches apart. Honestly, the waterfall and birds outside of Peach's castle never sounded so good.
9/10

Replay Value
Rare's 3D platformers, like Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64, while they aren't particularly awful games, have way too much crap to go around and collect. Most of it makes no sense in the greater context of the game, too. "Let's see, I need bananas of five different colors, crystal coconuts, feathers, grapes, peanuts, pineapples, and regular coconuts, battle crowns, banana camera film, banana fairies, banana medallions, banana coins of five different colors, blueprints of five different colors, and a much better reason to keep playing this game." Super Mario 64 introduced just the basics - "collect a bunch of stars" - and that was, and remains, enough for an engaging, replayable game. A handful of the new secrets in 64 DS are just totally lame (the eight white bunnies that only reward you with a single freakin' star come to mind), but not so much as to ruin this score.
9/10

Overall
I've reviewed a few remakes before, and what it always comes down to is no matter what you add to the original, it's still got the original game at its core, so how could it be any worse? Again, I liked Super Mario 64 a lot. In its day, it was by far the best example of what "3D gaming" could mean in the future. It's appalling how often Nintendo's pioneering efforts are ignored here (among countless other places as well). Then again, I also believe Super Mario Sunshine was a superior game, if only because it had the Mario 64 gameplay refined and with loads of new features.
Mario 64 DS falls somewhere in-between. It doesn't quite take full advantage of Yoshi's, Luigi's, and Wario's uniqueness as platforming characters, but it gets the job done. New moves like Mario turning into a balloon ala Super Mario World are great, but go almost unused. One new level is very cool to play, while the others sort of fall flat. The control schemes work fine, but don't match the intuitive quality of Mario 64's. The graphics are, however, obviously better, and the core game remains fully intact. That's why, in my opinion, Super Mario 64 DS is one of if not the greatest remake ever. My one major complaint has nothing to do with the game itself, and it's just that I wish it weren't the DS's only worth while launch title. That fact alone may just ruin the system's future. We'll have to see.

FINAL SCORE: 9/10
=Amazing=
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