We chat about videogames and videogame accessories.

Nobody seems willing to admit that Mario did not make a smooth transition to 3D. Mario 64 can only be evaluated based on how good it was when everyone was a kid and how influential it was, not on its own merits 15 years later. It's untouchable.

OBJECTION

I didn't play Mario 64 until it came out on the DS, and I still liked it. There are some differences in the DS version, but it's still the same basic game, and I still enjoyed it. Certainly some aspects of it haven't aged well, but it was fun enough to motivate me to beat it 100%, and that's a rare feat.

Sunshine is still superior in pretty much every way, though. Great game.

I loved Galaxy, too, but it felt... different. It was a lot more linear than the other Mario adventures, and a lot more cinematic, which isn't surprising given the trend of ever-increasing spectacle in AAA games. I miss the open-ended feel of the older Mario adventures.

That said, Galaxy still has some of my favorite art and music of just about any game ever.

Galaxy 2 was a bit disappointing - it didn't feel like it had as strong of a direction, I guess. Most of the stages in 2 felt like one-off challenge levels with no real personality. The first Galaxy, for all its railroading, at least let you return to the same stage several times to see different parts of it.

Also 2 reused a lot of content and didn't even bother with a plot and that's lame