I left RUclips autoplay on while i went to sleep, and had really weird nightmares about Nintendo games that i barely remember. Woke up to find this video playing, with 12 other Dark Aspects videos in my history. 10/10 experience; would have my dreams invaded again
The castle itself always unsettled me. It was the definition on "It's quiet... TOO quiet." I kept expecting SOMETHING scary to happen, like Bowser appearing out of nowhere. To this day, I still have strange dreams of exploring Peach's Castle and having that happen. BTW, nice Korra reference.
That's a great way to put it...I think the fear of Bowser popping out of nowhere is aided by his laughing every time you try and enter another area of the castle without enough stars. It convinced me he was always watching, and it kinda scared me as a kid. The castle itself is a character in this game, and it's an unsettling one 😅 Glad someone appreciated the Korra reference, Zaheer's my favorite!
Well, I wasn't expecting the Boo in the hallway leading to the backyard to suddenly appear after collecting 15 stars the first time I played the game so it kinda had that effect for me.
A random sign in Wet-Dry World says the following: "The mystery is of Wet or Dry and where does the solution lie? The city welcomes visitors with the depth they bring as they enter."
That just tells you that how high up you were when you entered the painting directly correlated to how high the stage’s water level was; i.e. entering at the lowest possible point would set the water level to be just about ground level, and entering at nearly the highest possible would essentially flood the entire stage.
I feel like what helps make SM64 feel scary is that this is one of the first times many gamers felt immersed into a world beyond their own. It was not at all like the world that these gamers have experienced before, being fairly empty feeling and imposing at times. Furthermore, you did mention how Wet Dry Land has this mysterious aura surrounding it, however, I believe that can apply many, if not all levels in Super Mario 64. The world is immersive after all, seeing such abstract environments in this world can be very uneasy. These paintings also pose several questions about the Mario universe, sure, Mario games often never made sense, but this is the first time we are seeing this in a 3D environment, where everything looks different. It's like there's a story here much deeper than what meets the eye. The game is often very atmospheric, even to this day. That, combined with the world looking unfinished, where there is clearly a void beyond the outer edges of the world and the low poly characters, give a sorta suffocating feeling. I think another thing that's worth mentioning are all of the hidden secrets throughout the whole game, giving the impression that this world is practically endless in terms of potential hiding behind it. Anything can appear, whether it's a giant sea monster under a swamp, a toxic gas maze, a living piano creature, etc.
My brothers told me rumors about several of the game's levels and terrifying monsters that could supposedly show up in them. In some cases, they were real (like the piano, unagi, and the shark). But they also warned me about terrifying elemental spiders that would show up if you spent too much time in Wet Dry World's Town, or that the center of the Dire Dire Docks Whirl pool housed a piranha that you could free and that would chase you. I avoided Jolly Roger Bay entirely in my childhood playthrough, only ever visiting it one time after watching one of them do the cavern star, thus I never got to even see the world's main attraction in the floating/sunken ship.
The entrance to Bowser in the Dark World scared the crap out of me when I first played the game as an 8 year old. I remember having dreams about it. Also the castle is a strange place. It looks more like a museum as none of the rooms have any sort of household objects. No living quarters, no throne room, no kitchen, etc. Just paintings hanging in sterile rooms.
There's one more 'Dark Aspect' that you skipped: The giant black hole in Dire, Dire Docks. What's the point of even including it in the level anyway? All the hole does is frighten me.
5:15 No you're right. As a kid playing this game I walked into the castle, heard this, and noped my way back into the courtyard. It took weeks for my sister to convince me to go back into the castle 😂 and when we did and the pleasant music started playing from Peach's castle, I was infinitely more at ease.... Until i ran into the first Goomba in bob-omb battlefield. No joke, I wouldn't leave the spawn point because of the Goomba.
Finally someone talks about the personalised Mario 64 thing without sounding super serious. You just said it like it is. A really interesting bunch of people that are surprised to see their childhood game is not how they remembered it. Lovely video :)
Of all the things you mentioned, Mario's drowning animation is the one that stuck with me the most as a kid. One you kind of touched on was the "sky" box in the first Bowser stage. I remember looking down over the edge of one of the floating platforms and being chilled by the appearance of an infinite vastness below, and nothing but a relatively thin platform (held up by nothing) separating me from an endless darkness. By comparison, the second and third stages felt a lot safer since a floor of lave still felt like a "floor" of sorts, and the the third one implied that the stage took place in the "sky" so I felt like there was land down there, eventually. But that first stage is underground, and I thought I could almost feel the void "inviting" me to jump down, just to see. *shudder*
In regards to Mario's death animations, I think it's important to look at, of all things, Donkey Kong 94 for the Gameboy, it's a prequel to the series as a whole, and hugely influenced the development of Mario's animation and moveset, even going forward into the 3D era. And that game has a massive amount of death animations just like Mario 64.
The part that always bothered me about this game is the paintings of peach throughout the castle. She had this shocked look while staring at you as if trying to tell you that something bad is gonna happen or has already happened and is warning you.
I remember having nightmares about this game as a Kid, because this was my first 3d game I didn't understand how things worked, like, I have nightmares of a weird Game Over screen where Mario is running away from the castle while all the courtyard it's on fire and hearing a distorted Bowser laugh, shit was scary as fuck
Back then, i was more impressed than scared of Marios death-animations because of the change from 2-D to 3-D, mario got more lively and believable. The real scary things, like many of us said, were the empty castle and from the courses especially wet dry world.
I was going through my captured footage to find a clip of him actually jumping into the painting, but the failed attempt was the first one to come up and I thought, "perfection"
Also in a Nintendo Power guidebook, it confirms the Monty Moles in Hazy Maze Cave are a family. What makes this disturbing is that in the manga (KC Mario and a few of the 4koma) Mario goes out of his way to brutally murder this Monty Mole family (in one of the 4koma he even threw a freaking molotov into the maze to kill a Monty Mole and Sniffit. In KC Mario he also injured (and possibly killed one member) of this Monty Mole family with the metal form. Mario downright maliciously grinned when doing this to the Monty Mole family who was not even attacking him). I wanted to point this out because I see nobody talk about it and it is both interesting and disturbing (and yes, the Nintendo Power guidebook did canonically say that the Monty Moles in Hazy Maze Cave were a family).
His laughing whenever you die and/or try to enter another area of the castle without enough stars certainly adds to his creepiness! It makes him seem omnipresent, at least in the castle walls...I was scared of this Bowser too as a kid 😅
I also wouldn’t be surprised if some of the creepy stuff people have experienced in Mario 64 where actually 100% real. It was just that instead of the game being cursed or haunted it was just a faulty cartridge or dirty connection that could cause visual and audio bugs and glitches. I mean think about it. If you were a 5-7 year old kid in the 90s and your Mario 64 game suddenly started glitching and making strange sounds you would probably be pretty freaked out by it. And it wouldn’t be that hard to imagine this happening. We already know that Mario 64 can glitch in strange ways when the cartridge isn’t connected properly and some dust or corrosion could easily cause those types of problems. If someone experienced that type of glitch when they were younger but never experienced it again when they got older it’s not too hard to believe when people would say 20-30 years later that there game was cursed or haunted or some kind of secret version that should never have been released. Remember that the internet didn’t exist in the form it does today so it wasn’t really possible to just google the issue online to see what was really happening. Especially if you were a kid at the time you most likely had no or limited computer skills and access witch meant that you were unlikely to search for those types of things in the first place.
It's just that Mario 64 feels more of a dream than an actual thing that happened in the Mario lore. The levels are so dream core and out of place that It doesn't even make sense sometimes. For me It's just that when I was a kid playing 64 DS was kind off weird, because there is this endless pits and voids in some levels that you think "where does this go" or "Why there are 4 towers in the Sky" or "why there is a giant aquarium which It looks like in the middle of the Sky" or "why there is a house in the sky with no one inside" "why there are no actual rooms like the throne, bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen, sites, atleast there is the playroom from where Peach was a kid and the backyard which It isn't connected to the exterior at all". Idk, the Castle was so misterious that I was trying to find something that It wasn't there. Hazy Maze Cave was weird to me as a kid, like It was mostly Dark and I didn't even know where I was going, that giant thing on the lake just made me nope, I'm not going there, and just leave the course.
The underwater sections and shifting sand land are the scariest stuff! The wide open space and the large and sudden appearances of the creatures makes them still chilling! Look forward to seeing this channel cover Sunshine next!
I love what you've had to say in this video & the N64 Zelda analyses about the draw distance/sudden pop in of uncanny creatures in these early 3D games being a fear factor for you, it's a great point to make! I bet the Eely-Mouth from Sunshine and its dark water den brings up fond memories 😅 While on the topic, how do you feel about the use of distance fog? I always thought it provided an unintentionally unsettling atmosphere unique to these games that had to save on rendering far-off objects & characters...
@@ThaneGaming Distance fog is scary too! I remember there was this one game I played, Rayman 3. It had a few levels with distance fog, and that creeped me out! I only saw the silhouettes of the enemies and they were so faded I couldn't see them! That's probably why the haunted wasteland from Ocarina of Time scares me!
I randomly stumbled upon your channel looking for stuff to listen to while I'm at work and I have to say I have learned a lot about both Zelda and Mario through your channel I never heard of or learned anywhere else, thank you man
Great video! Btw something that creeps me out aside from the game is the thank you screen at the end of the game. There’s a face or something behind the star, it’s so unsettling. The room the cake and yea are in is also really dim and isolated from the rest of the castle.
I've always loved the unsettling factor this game had on 4 year old me. Compared to the more lively games I played at the time (Mario Party, Banjo-Kazooie, OOT) SM64 had this loneliness to it but in a way that felt like someone was here before. Mario Party was something I played with my brother and sisters and it was always playing cheery music and Bowser was just screwing with you, in Banjo you played as a duo character while often bantering with Bottles and other random animals, whenever you saw a town or building in Zelda people were living there. By comparison in Mario 64 music was often cheery yes but also was often sinister and Bowser genuinely wanted to kill you and wanted Peach for more then "lol I'm an incel" that newer games make him out to be, you are completely alone on the journey, there were buildings and signs that suggested stuff goes on around here but you rarely saw anyone. Bob-omb Battlefield had the most NPCs in it but they were at war with each other
I think of the 3D Mario games, the most "unsettling" one is Galaxy, with it's sad and melancolic music and galaxies, making you think how lonely and small Mario is, and by extension you...alongside his eletric caused deaths
Agreed! Mario Galaxy just gives off this overall melancholic vibe throughout the whole game, and it’s ending rivals Super Paper Mario’s in terms of emotional weight. You should absolutely do an episode on the Galaxy games sometime, Thane!
I was 4 when I first played SM64, and I don’t recall anything scaring me (maybe except the piano), if anything; I always loved this game to the point of discovering emulation as a kid from being upset that 64 was too outdated to play. I still play it from the 3D All-Stars collection and this game being terrifying is pretty new to me.
I first played this game on the DS. I had borrowed the cartridge from my friend and decided to load up his save file. Not knowing where I was going, I stumbled into Bowser in the Dark World unintentionally. The surreal, cavelike skybox and the fact that the stage was literally named after the Dark World made me assume that I had somehow stumbled into hell itself. I was more than a little spooked. I guess I wasn't the only dumb kid who got creeps from this game.
as an 11 year old first playing this in 1997, the first time I went into the back hallway and completely unexpectedly saw the huge boo waiting at the end of it, I was scared shitless. also, there were some pretty creepy internet rumors about having to do something in the mirror room in order to see luigi. lots of crazy unsubstantiated rumors on the 1997 internet.
imo, it's largely the visual and audio design of the game that makes it scary. At the time, Nintendo designers were pioneering a new way to represent a fictional world in 3D space, so some decisions, such as making realistic death animations, could be seen as attention to detail and world-building. As if to make Mario feel like he really exists in this more "realistic" graphical setting than any of his games previously leading up to this point. The low-quality textures are taken straight from graphics packs and are actually just edited, color-shifted, stretched and cropped images of simple real-life objects like peanut butter or the side of a rock. This creates an incredibly bizarre atmosphere that seems made up of imagery that is largely left up to the player's imagination to fill in the details that aren't really there (which is why people usually feel as though the game looked much better as a kid than it does to us now today) However, with this room for imagination, can instead be a sense of uneasiness or mystery, as us kids had to use our imaginations, something that adults today don't really have the same ability to do. So, what we instead see is what the game really is, a primitive time-capsule of a different time period in video game development.
While a lot of the creepypasta and similar things are obviously fake, there's something to be said about people getting unsettled or get nightmares from early 3d games, simply because the world seems uncanny and mysterious. I remember getting nightmares or being unable to sleep if I played too much of certain levels in sm64 (surprisingly not Wet-Dry, I love that stage actually lol). SM64 was a lot like other games at the time, that with the limited amount of internet access and people not ripping apart the game right away, it had a mysterious feel to it, like something was hidden if you looked hard enough.
Totally! Early 3D games and their hardware limitations especially made for some uncanny environments, two-fold when paired together with the imaginative mind of a kid who spent a lot of their free time wandering these worlds! For me, the use of fog in many of these games (SM64's Tick Tock Clock for example) to save on rendering distant objects makes for a slightly unsettling atmosphere unique to early 3D too...
Actually, Super Mario 3D Land was the first mainline 3D Mario game to feature a death animation resembling the 2D games, unless you were just counting the “open-world” games. Also, I think it’s pretty interesting how it took them until Odyssey to localize the eel’s name from “Unagi” to “Maw-Ray” (a pun on “moray”, I’m guessing), and how they also brought back the creepy, cloudy pupils they removed in Mario 64 DS. What contributed the most to the Secret Aquarium’s creep factor for me was the really blown-up wall, floor, and ceiling textures. Really added to the feeling of being in a huge, enclosed room you can’t stay in very long before drowning more than, say, the Eely-Mouth boss room from Sunshine. One thing that sorta bugs me (by which I mean “annoys me” and not “creeps me out) about the Endless Stairs, is that in the Mario 3D All-Stars release, either because of the increased resolution or because they accidentally made the room a little less foggy, you can kind of see the point where the game warps you back down the stairs to create the illusion the endlessness if you look closely at the top of the screen.
Mario 64 Much like Metal Gear Solid Resident Evil those 90s games really had a look and feel really unrivaled in gaming since.. the way there worlds are nonsensically laid out , The Uncanny 3D interpretations of (faces) from metal gear ,zelda, and .any others.... What a great time to be alive .... It was truly a Unforgettable experience exploring a 3D World for the first time
I love these comments about the disctint uncanny feeling early 3D games offer (even if in some cases it was unintentional due to their hardware limitations). There's nothing quite like it! Great point about the nonsensical nature of some of these level layouts, the surrealness makes for an unmatched air of mystery...
They say video games cause violence. In a sense, they’re right, but not in the traditional shoot ‘em up way they believe. My psychopathic tendencies stemmed entirely from Super Mario 64’s ability to drop the baby penguin off the edge. True story.
Has anyone done a deep dive into Bowser's stages? Maybe it's through the power of the stars, but it's weird that these places are somehow in the castle
Super Mario 64 is my favourite game of all time, despite the multiple recurring nightmares I used to have about it as a child. One of the most prominent ones was where Mario would run into a room in the castle that looked like a normal castle room but completely empty and there was just this continuous scream the whole time he was in there. Creeped me the f out.
The Mini-Chill Bully in Snow Man's Land that was removed because it kept causing the Game to crash, the Star located in the Box next to the Turtle Shell for the Stage used to be a Box containing Coins for Mario to get. The Stage seems smaller due to a lack of a Second Platform to fight the 3 Mini-Chill Bullies for their star in a mirrored Lava Bully's "Bully the Bullies" mission only for Snowman's Land. The Castle at had the hidden One up from breaking the wall had cracks to indicate it was there. Every copy of Super Mario 64 is Personalized.
Unagi, Mario Sunshine's Eely-Mouth, and the Deep Pythons of Majora's Mask certainly contributed to my fear of what lurks beneath the ocean depths in our world too...why are Nintendo eels in particular so scary 😅
For me the lethal lava land having a big firey face Instead of some kind of view of the level made me think of the devil Of course now I know It was a podoboo
I feel like with Super Mario 64 it kinda gave us dream scenarios that would never happened in the actual game but since when we were kids we would believe em. For example, when I looked at the Super Mario 64 cartridge, I used to think there's a way to battle Bowser outside of Peach's Castle to stop him for good and you would need that cannon to stop him (this was before I knew what it's real purpose was there for). All I'm saying is that Super Mario 64 is like a mystery in its own. It gave gamers different experiences on it and we tell these stories to our peers and we're still talking about the game.. I think it's amazing how Nintendo created something that we can relate to. 😀
That mural was on the side of Fangamer's new office location in Tucson, Arizona! I'm very lucky to live about 10 minutes away 😅 it's crazy to think I'm so close to Mato, Poe, Chewy, and so many other prominent EB community members! Since they're mostly an online store, they don't have physical goods set up for you to walk in and buy, though this past December and April they opened a month-long pop-up shop. It'd be worth visiting when they decide to do it again, probably for the holiday season! I haven't met Mato or anyone yet, but I've got to make it happen someday 😁
Thank you!! That's cool you're playing Age of Calamity, let me know if you'd recommend it. I enjoyed Hyrule Warriors but have yet to try AoC! I'm currently playing through Twilight Princess, I never finished the game as a kid for some reason so this'll be my first time 😁 I wanted to wait for a Switch port but figured I might as well get it digitally for Wii U for a decent price before the eShop closes down...
@@ThaneGaming If you enjoyed Breath of the Wild then I highly recommend AoC because you see more of the characters and learn about them! It's great fun! I haven't played TP either. Hoping for a Switch port.
@@ThaneGaming it is great to see more of the Champions and other characters and see their stories unfold and see how they interacted. If you love the story, lore, and characters of BotW, then you will enjoy AoC because it fleshes all that out even more.
8:42 Never noticed it til this point but honestly Peach looks kinda creepy in those paintings... like she seen a whole helluva lot of stuff. She probably saw this 11:08.
Same! I started off thinking "that's kinda dumb..." but it grew on me. I can see why the idea is legitimately scary to some and I do think it's interesting & funny!
I was scared of Big Bubba because if you're swimming above water, he just jumps at you and wolves you down! Also I never found Wet Dry world's skybox scary, probably because I hate that level with rage.
I'd say since you already have it on N64, it might be a good idea to pick up the DS remake (I just bought it myself), if only because I think it's going to be a looong time before DS ports are going to be officially available again. There are lots of different screen configurations so it plays pretty well on Wii U! I will say though, if you've never played the DS version, be wary of the controls--it isn't true analog, so even if you use the control stick it's not seamless as there are only 8 directions to move around in. With that said, I did get used to it, so if you can too there's lots of new content to enjoy. The game is remixed in a cool way; I think it's definetely worth checking out!
I have to say I absolutely love your editing and presentation. Well done!! As someone who never grew up with Nintendo, you give me a window to these games!! 💀🔪🖤
oh god i was just about to go to bed and then i noticed the wario apparition on the video's thumbnail im one of those people that are genuinely creeped out by the wario apparition
I'm not ashamed to say that this game (which I love a lot by the way) maked me megalophobic ahaha Just the long towers in the fly cap level and the aquarium star deeply traumatized me xD
Someone NEEDS to make a M64 hack, in which, Marios's death animations are overly gruesome (Like flesh melting when in lava, blood and organs splattered on ground when stomped, burnt flesh when electrocuted etc)
I left RUclips autoplay on while i went to sleep, and had really weird nightmares about Nintendo games that i barely remember. Woke up to find this video playing, with 12 other Dark Aspects videos in my history. 10/10 experience; would have my dreams invaded again
ok
The castle itself always unsettled me. It was the definition on "It's quiet... TOO quiet." I kept expecting SOMETHING scary to happen, like Bowser appearing out of nowhere. To this day, I still have strange dreams of exploring Peach's Castle and having that happen.
BTW, nice Korra reference.
That's a great way to put it...I think the fear of Bowser popping out of nowhere is aided by his laughing every time you try and enter another area of the castle without enough stars. It convinced me he was always watching, and it kinda scared me as a kid. The castle itself is a character in this game, and it's an unsettling one 😅
Glad someone appreciated the Korra reference, Zaheer's my favorite!
The castle is the definition of liminal spaces creepiness 🏰
@@ThaneGaming Yeah, Bowser is a panopticon in that game o.o
And nice Shining reference now :p
Well, I wasn't expecting the Boo in the hallway leading to the backyard to suddenly appear after collecting 15 stars the first time I played the game so it kinda had that effect for me.
And “Keep quiet in the halls!” It makes me feel like there’s some disgusting creature stalking me waiting for me to make enough noise to strike.
When I think of "scary" Nintendo moments as a kid I instantly think of the piano.
The piano and Unagi for me! I think a good majority of Nintendo fans think of something from Mario 64 first, which is very telling...
Giygas was some spooky stuff
Dead Hand from the bottom of the well in Ocarina of Time!
Mimi from Super Paper Mario
This is a bit embarrassing but... The game over screen from Yoshi's Story.
A random sign in Wet-Dry World says the following:
"The mystery is of Wet or Dry and where does the solution lie? The city welcomes visitors with the depth they bring as they enter."
bars
That just tells you that how high up you were when you entered the painting directly correlated to how high the stage’s water level was; i.e. entering at the lowest possible point would set the water level to be just about ground level, and entering at nearly the highest possible would essentially flood the entire stage.
@@jc___underscore___ I think it's a pun on the depths of a person, mind, soul, and the depths of just water, heh.
I feel like what helps make SM64 feel scary is that this is one of the first times many gamers felt immersed into a world beyond their own. It was not at all like the world that these gamers have experienced before, being fairly empty feeling and imposing at times. Furthermore, you did mention how Wet Dry Land has this mysterious aura surrounding it, however, I believe that can apply many, if not all levels in Super Mario 64. The world is immersive after all, seeing such abstract environments in this world can be very uneasy. These paintings also pose several questions about the Mario universe, sure, Mario games often never made sense, but this is the first time we are seeing this in a 3D environment, where everything looks different. It's like there's a story here much deeper than what meets the eye. The game is often very atmospheric, even to this day. That, combined with the world looking unfinished, where there is clearly a void beyond the outer edges of the world and the low poly characters, give a sorta suffocating feeling. I think another thing that's worth mentioning are all of the hidden secrets throughout the whole game, giving the impression that this world is practically endless in terms of potential hiding behind it. Anything can appear, whether it's a giant sea monster under a swamp, a toxic gas maze, a living piano creature, etc.
Bowser in the Lava fight (30 Star) took two hits to defeat and upon getting the first hit he became harder.
Well said 👏🏼
My brothers told me rumors about several of the game's levels and terrifying monsters that could supposedly show up in them. In some cases, they were real (like the piano, unagi, and the shark). But they also warned me about terrifying elemental spiders that would show up if you spent too much time in Wet Dry World's Town, or that the center of the Dire Dire Docks Whirl pool housed a piranha that you could free and that would chase you. I avoided Jolly Roger Bay entirely in my childhood playthrough, only ever visiting it one time after watching one of them do the cavern star, thus I never got to even see the world's main attraction in the floating/sunken ship.
didn't know that yoshis are scared of
aquatic danger noodles
good to know
hi tj henry yoshi
Strange to see the Mini-Chill Bully from Snow Man's Land missing.
Ohhh that’s so mean.
Yeah I was terrified of the water levels, I never went into them unless I had to, like DDD. Ironically, BBH didn't scare me that much
The entrance to Bowser in the Dark World scared the crap out of me when I first played the game as an 8 year old. I remember having dreams about it.
Also the castle is a strange place. It looks more like a museum as none of the rooms have any sort of household objects. No living quarters, no throne room, no kitchen, etc. Just paintings hanging in sterile rooms.
It’s actually the level itself with it’s skybox that gets me.
There's one more 'Dark Aspect' that you skipped: The giant black hole in Dire, Dire Docks. What's the point of even including it in the level anyway? All the hole does is frighten me.
5:15
No you're right. As a kid playing this game I walked into the castle, heard this, and noped my way back into the courtyard. It took weeks for my sister to convince me to go back into the castle 😂 and when we did and the pleasant music started playing from Peach's castle, I was infinitely more at ease....
Until i ran into the first Goomba in bob-omb battlefield. No joke, I wouldn't leave the spawn point because of the Goomba.
Finally someone talks about the personalised Mario 64 thing without sounding super serious. You just said it like it is. A really interesting bunch of people that are surprised to see their childhood game is not how they remembered it. Lovely video :)
Explaining the shepherd scale for the infinistairs was a nice touch
Of all the things you mentioned, Mario's drowning animation is the one that stuck with me the most as a kid. One you kind of touched on was the "sky" box in the first Bowser stage. I remember looking down over the edge of one of the floating platforms and being chilled by the appearance of an infinite vastness below, and nothing but a relatively thin platform (held up by nothing) separating me from an endless darkness.
By comparison, the second and third stages felt a lot safer since a floor of lave still felt like a "floor" of sorts, and the the third one implied that the stage took place in the "sky" so I felt like there was land down there, eventually.
But that first stage is underground, and I thought I could almost feel the void "inviting" me to jump down, just to see. *shudder*
In regards to Mario's death animations, I think it's important to look at, of all things, Donkey Kong 94 for the Gameboy, it's a prequel to the series as a whole, and hugely influenced the development of Mario's animation and moveset, even going forward into the 3D era. And that game has a massive amount of death animations just like Mario 64.
The part that always bothered me about this game is the paintings of peach throughout the castle. She had this shocked look while staring at you as if trying to tell you that something bad is gonna happen or has already happened and is warning you.
Dang, I never realized how much crap Mario has been through in rescuing the princess. And when it's all finally over she rewards him with cake 🎂
I remember having nightmares about this game as a Kid, because this was my first 3d game I didn't understand how things worked, like, I have nightmares of a weird Game Over screen where Mario is running away from the castle while all the courtyard it's on fire and hearing a distorted Bowser laugh, shit was scary as fuck
Back then, i was more impressed than scared of Marios death-animations because of the change from 2-D to 3-D, mario got more lively and believable. The real scary things, like many of us said, were the empty castle and from the courses especially wet dry world.
I was more impressed as well.
Mario deaths never bother me as a kid.
I seen scary death animations from mature games anyway.
XD
Entering it's painting portal...
Meanwhile Mario jumps for the top, but hits the wall instead.
I was going through my captured footage to find a clip of him actually jumping into the painting, but the failed attempt was the first one to come up and I thought, "perfection"
@@ThaneGaming Honestly, it fits too well.
Also in a Nintendo Power guidebook, it confirms the Monty Moles in Hazy Maze Cave are a family.
What makes this disturbing is that in the manga (KC Mario and a few of the 4koma) Mario goes out of his way to brutally murder this Monty Mole family (in one of the 4koma he even threw a freaking molotov into the maze to kill a Monty Mole and Sniffit. In KC Mario he also injured (and possibly killed one member) of this Monty Mole family with the metal form. Mario downright maliciously grinned when doing this to the Monty Mole family who was not even attacking him).
I wanted to point this out because I see nobody talk about it and it is both interesting and disturbing (and yes, the Nintendo Power guidebook did canonically say that the Monty Moles in Hazy Maze Cave were a family).
This game used to scare me when I was a kid, to the point of Bowser invading my nightmares to kill me. Thanks for covering this 👌
His laughing whenever you die and/or try to enter another area of the castle without enough stars certainly adds to his creepiness! It makes him seem omnipresent, at least in the castle walls...I was scared of this Bowser too as a kid 😅
It’s personal trauma for a lot of people including me.
I also wouldn’t be surprised if some of the creepy stuff people have experienced in Mario 64 where actually 100% real. It was just that instead of the game being cursed or haunted it was just a faulty cartridge or dirty connection that could cause visual and audio bugs and glitches. I mean think about it. If you were a 5-7 year old kid in the 90s and your Mario 64 game suddenly started glitching and making strange sounds you would probably be pretty freaked out by it. And it wouldn’t be that hard to imagine this happening. We already know that Mario 64 can glitch in strange ways when the cartridge isn’t connected properly and some dust or corrosion could easily cause those types of problems. If someone experienced that type of glitch when they were younger but never experienced it again when they got older it’s not too hard to believe when people would say 20-30 years later that there game was cursed or haunted or some kind of secret version that should never have been released. Remember that the internet didn’t exist in the form it does today so it wasn’t really possible to just google the issue online to see what was really happening. Especially if you were a kid at the time you most likely had no or limited computer skills and access witch meant that you were unlikely to search for those types of things in the first place.
It's just that Mario 64 feels more of a dream than an actual thing that happened in the Mario lore. The levels are so dream core and out of place that It doesn't even make sense sometimes.
For me It's just that when I was a kid playing 64 DS was kind off weird, because there is this endless pits and voids in some levels that you think "where does this go" or "Why there are 4 towers in the Sky" or "why there is a giant aquarium which It looks like in the middle of the Sky" or "why there is a house in the sky with no one inside" "why there are no actual rooms like the throne, bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen, sites, atleast there is the playroom from where Peach was a kid and the backyard which It isn't connected to the exterior at all". Idk, the Castle was so misterious that I was trying to find something that It wasn't there.
Hazy Maze Cave was weird to me as a kid, like It was mostly Dark and I didn't even know where I was going, that giant thing on the lake just made me nope, I'm not going there, and just leave the course.
The underwater sections and shifting sand land are the scariest stuff! The wide open space and the large and sudden appearances of the creatures makes them still chilling!
Look forward to seeing this channel cover Sunshine next!
I love what you've had to say in this video & the N64 Zelda analyses about the draw distance/sudden pop in of uncanny creatures in these early 3D games being a fear factor for you, it's a great point to make! I bet the Eely-Mouth from Sunshine and its dark water den brings up fond memories 😅 While on the topic, how do you feel about the use of distance fog? I always thought it provided an unintentionally unsettling atmosphere unique to these games that had to save on rendering far-off objects & characters...
@@ThaneGaming Distance fog is scary too! I remember there was this one game I played, Rayman 3. It had a few levels with distance fog, and that creeped me out! I only saw the silhouettes of the enemies and they were so faded I couldn't see them! That's probably why the haunted wasteland from Ocarina of Time scares me!
I randomly stumbled upon your channel looking for stuff to listen to while I'm at work and I have to say I have learned a lot about both Zelda and Mario through your channel I never heard of or learned anywhere else, thank you man
Great video! Btw something that creeps me out aside from the game is the thank you screen at the end of the game. There’s a face or something behind the star, it’s so unsettling. The room the cake and yea are in is also really dim and isolated from the rest of the castle.
I've always loved the unsettling factor this game had on 4 year old me. Compared to the more lively games I played at the time (Mario Party, Banjo-Kazooie, OOT) SM64 had this loneliness to it but in a way that felt like someone was here before. Mario Party was something I played with my brother and sisters and it was always playing cheery music and Bowser was just screwing with you, in Banjo you played as a duo character while often bantering with Bottles and other random animals, whenever you saw a town or building in Zelda people were living there. By comparison in Mario 64 music was often cheery yes but also was often sinister and Bowser genuinely wanted to kill you and wanted Peach for more then "lol I'm an incel" that newer games make him out to be, you are completely alone on the journey, there were buildings and signs that suggested stuff goes on around here but you rarely saw anyone. Bob-omb Battlefield had the most NPCs in it but they were at war with each other
I think of the 3D Mario games, the most "unsettling" one is Galaxy, with it's sad and melancolic music and galaxies, making you think how lonely and small Mario is, and by extension you...alongside his eletric caused deaths
Agreed! Mario Galaxy just gives off this overall melancholic vibe throughout the whole game, and it’s ending rivals Super Paper Mario’s in terms of emotional weight. You should absolutely do an episode on the Galaxy games sometime, Thane!
I was 4 when I first played SM64, and I don’t recall anything scaring me (maybe except the piano), if anything; I always loved this game to the point of discovering emulation as a kid from being upset that 64 was too outdated to play. I still play it from the 3D All-Stars collection and this game being terrifying is pretty new to me.
When I was a lot younger I wasn't able to proceed in Mario 64 because I was terrified of Mister Eye and those Sniffits in Hazy Maze Cave
I first played this game on the DS. I had borrowed the cartridge from my friend and decided to load up his save file. Not knowing where I was going, I stumbled into Bowser in the Dark World unintentionally. The surreal, cavelike skybox and the fact that the stage was literally named after the Dark World made me assume that I had somehow stumbled into hell itself. I was more than a little spooked.
I guess I wasn't the only dumb kid who got creeps from this game.
Peach's castle would be so much more ominous if they made a scary tune instead of a elegant one
as an 11 year old first playing this in 1997, the first time I went into the back hallway and completely unexpectedly saw the huge boo waiting at the end of it, I was scared shitless. also, there were some pretty creepy internet rumors about having to do something in the mirror room in order to see luigi. lots of crazy unsubstantiated rumors on the 1997 internet.
9:50 NICE KORRA REFERENCE!!!
imo, it's largely the visual and audio design of the game that makes it scary. At the time, Nintendo designers were pioneering a new way to represent a fictional world in 3D space, so some decisions, such as making realistic death animations, could be seen as attention to detail and world-building. As if to make Mario feel like he really exists in this more "realistic" graphical setting than any of his games previously leading up to this point. The low-quality textures are taken straight from graphics packs and are actually just edited, color-shifted, stretched and cropped images of simple real-life objects like peanut butter or the side of a rock. This creates an incredibly bizarre atmosphere that seems made up of imagery that is largely left up to the player's imagination to fill in the details that aren't really there (which is why people usually feel as though the game looked much better as a kid than it does to us now today) However, with this room for imagination, can instead be a sense of uneasiness or mystery, as us kids had to use our imaginations, something that adults today don't really have the same ability to do. So, what we instead see is what the game really is, a primitive time-capsule of a different time period in video game development.
While a lot of the creepypasta and similar things are obviously fake, there's something to be said about people getting unsettled or get nightmares from early 3d games, simply because the world seems uncanny and mysterious. I remember getting nightmares or being unable to sleep if I played too much of certain levels in sm64 (surprisingly not Wet-Dry, I love that stage actually lol). SM64 was a lot like other games at the time, that with the limited amount of internet access and people not ripping apart the game right away, it had a mysterious feel to it, like something was hidden if you looked hard enough.
Totally! Early 3D games and their hardware limitations especially made for some uncanny environments, two-fold when paired together with the imaginative mind of a kid who spent a lot of their free time wandering these worlds! For me, the use of fog in many of these games (SM64's Tick Tock Clock for example) to save on rendering distant objects makes for a slightly unsettling atmosphere unique to early 3D too...
You still have to admit wet dry world feels empty due to being rushed compared to other levels.
Actually, Super Mario 3D Land was the first mainline 3D Mario game to feature a death animation resembling the 2D games, unless you were just counting the “open-world” games. Also, I think it’s pretty interesting how it took them until Odyssey to localize the eel’s name from “Unagi” to “Maw-Ray” (a pun on “moray”, I’m guessing), and how they also brought back the creepy, cloudy pupils they removed in Mario 64 DS.
What contributed the most to the Secret Aquarium’s creep factor for me was the really blown-up wall, floor, and ceiling textures. Really added to the feeling of being in a huge, enclosed room you can’t stay in very long before drowning more than, say, the Eely-Mouth boss room from Sunshine.
One thing that sorta bugs me (by which I mean “annoys me” and not “creeps me out) about the Endless Stairs, is that in the Mario 3D All-Stars release, either because of the increased resolution or because they accidentally made the room a little less foggy, you can kind of see the point where the game warps you back down the stairs to create the illusion the endlessness if you look closely at the top of the screen.
Mario 64
Much like Metal Gear Solid Resident Evil those 90s games really had a look and feel really unrivaled in gaming since..
the way there worlds are nonsensically laid out ,
The Uncanny 3D interpretations of (faces) from metal gear ,zelda, and .any others....
What a great time to be alive ....
It was truly a Unforgettable experience exploring a 3D World for the first time
I love these comments about the disctint uncanny feeling early 3D games offer (even if in some cases it was unintentional due to their hardware limitations). There's nothing quite like it! Great point about the nonsensical nature of some of these level layouts, the surrealness makes for an unmatched air of mystery...
I like the creativity the creepypasta spawned; ROM hacks, fanmade “beta” music, and videos!
You didn't say the buzzwords for Wet Dry World, "Negative Emotional Aura."
Nevermind. I just had to watch for like 10 more seconds lol
They say video games cause violence. In a sense, they’re right, but not in the traditional shoot ‘em up way they believe. My psychopathic tendencies stemmed entirely from Super Mario 64’s ability to drop the baby penguin off the edge. True story.
As a kid i always was shocked when mario got sucked into the Quicksand and the loud noise made it even worse.
Oh yes I love super mario 64, it was not only a great game imo but legendary. It was a classic that defined the N64 for sure.
Has anyone done a deep dive into Bowser's stages? Maybe it's through the power of the stars, but it's weird that these places are somehow in the castle
Super Mario 64 is my favourite game of all time, despite the multiple recurring nightmares I used to have about it as a child. One of the most prominent ones was where Mario would run into a room in the castle that looked like a normal castle room but completely empty and there was just this continuous scream the whole time he was in there. Creeped me the f out.
What about L is real? Is Death Note canon to Super Mario?
I don't really think that eyes that turn to x-es can be considered true to live.
3:49 - If Unagi was that long, I don't think I ever would have completed the game.
The Mini-Chill Bully in Snow Man's Land that was removed because it kept causing the Game to crash, the Star located in the Box next to the Turtle Shell for the Stage used to be a Box containing Coins for Mario to get. The Stage seems smaller due to a lack of a Second Platform to fight the 3 Mini-Chill Bullies for their star in a mirrored Lava Bully's "Bully the Bullies" mission only for Snowman's Land. The Castle at had the hidden One up from breaking the wall had cracks to indicate it was there. Every copy of Super Mario 64 is Personalized.
I only felt more of an impact whenever Link died in OoT. Mario's is more cartoonish, while Link's feels more real.
Ngl, i always feared Scuttlebugs more than the piano
Is it stupid? Yep, it is.
Unagi will haunt me until the day I die, that monster is the sole source of my thalassophobia.
Unagi, Mario Sunshine's Eely-Mouth, and the Deep Pythons of Majora's Mask certainly contributed to my fear of what lurks beneath the ocean depths in our world too...why are Nintendo eels in particular so scary 😅
For me the lethal lava land having a big firey face Instead of some kind of view of the level made me think of the devil
Of course now I know It was a podoboo
I'm glad I'm not the only one who felt the disturbing aura of Wet-Dry-World.
I feel like with Super Mario 64 it kinda gave us dream scenarios that would never happened in the actual game but since when we were kids we would believe em. For example, when I looked at the Super Mario 64 cartridge, I used to think there's a way to battle Bowser outside of Peach's Castle to stop him for good and you would need that cannon to stop him (this was before I knew what it's real purpose was there for). All I'm saying is that Super Mario 64 is like a mystery in its own. It gave gamers different experiences on it and we tell these stories to our peers and we're still talking about the game.. I think it's amazing how Nintendo created something that we can relate to. 😀
Was so happy to see you in the Mother Direct!! Where is the earthbound mural you were pictured in front of?? I need to visit!!
That mural was on the side of Fangamer's new office location in Tucson, Arizona! I'm very lucky to live about 10 minutes away 😅 it's crazy to think I'm so close to Mato, Poe, Chewy, and so many other prominent EB community members! Since they're mostly an online store, they don't have physical goods set up for you to walk in and buy, though this past December and April they opened a month-long pop-up shop. It'd be worth visiting when they decide to do it again, probably for the holiday season! I haven't met Mato or anyone yet, but I've got to make it happen someday 😁
Another great video! I look forward to revisiting this game when I play Super Mario 3D All-Stars after I finish Age of Calamity.
Thank you!! That's cool you're playing Age of Calamity, let me know if you'd recommend it. I enjoyed Hyrule Warriors but have yet to try AoC! I'm currently playing through Twilight Princess, I never finished the game as a kid for some reason so this'll be my first time 😁 I wanted to wait for a Switch port but figured I might as well get it digitally for Wii U for a decent price before the eShop closes down...
@@ThaneGaming If you enjoyed Breath of the Wild then I highly recommend AoC because you see more of the characters and learn about them! It's great fun!
I haven't played TP either. Hoping for a Switch port.
I've played through Breath of the Wild twice now, I'm a big fan! I'll add this to my list then, and try to play it before BotW 2 comes out.
@@ThaneGaming it is great to see more of the Champions and other characters and see their stories unfold and see how they interacted. If you love the story, lore, and characters of BotW, then you will enjoy AoC because it fleshes all that out even more.
Hello :)
8:42 Never noticed it til this point but honestly Peach looks kinda creepy in those paintings... like she seen a whole helluva lot of stuff. She probably saw this 11:08.
Can't believe you didn't mention Dorrie
Your voice is like a young Patrick Warburton’s. Always love to revisit N64 classics :)
7:09 how do metal coins provide Mario with oxygen anyways? I get it as a game mechanic, but how would it work lore-wise?
I think the Wario Apperation one is quite interesting had somewhat hilarious with all of the memes made about it.
Same! I started off thinking "that's kinda dumb..." but it grew on me. I can see why the idea is legitimately scary to some and I do think it's interesting & funny!
Okay analysis video! Thanks for uploading!
Mario really said : X_X
yeah N64 was childhood like dead kids in zelda oot scared me as a child.
I was scared of Big Bubba because if you're swimming above water, he just jumps at you and wolves you down! Also I never found Wet Dry world's skybox scary, probably because I hate that level with rage.
I’ve been thinking of getting SM64 on the Wii U Eshop. I already have it on the N64, but do y’all think I should get it or the DS remake?
I'd say since you already have it on N64, it might be a good idea to pick up the DS remake (I just bought it myself), if only because I think it's going to be a looong time before DS ports are going to be officially available again. There are lots of different screen configurations so it plays pretty well on Wii U! I will say though, if you've never played the DS version, be wary of the controls--it isn't true analog, so even if you use the control stick it's not seamless as there are only 8 directions to move around in. With that said, I did get used to it, so if you can too there's lots of new content to enjoy. The game is remixed in a cool way; I think it's definetely worth checking out!
@@ThaneGaming Thanks!
I always found it funny the way mario drowns
YAS. This is the video I needed.
To be honest, it's the combination of the isolated environments and irregular models of the game that make me uneasy with this game
I have to say I absolutely love your editing and presentation. Well done!! As someone who never grew up with Nintendo, you give me a window to these games!! 💀🔪🖤
1:29 Wasn't that Super Mario 3D Land?
oh god i was just about to go to bed and then i noticed the wario apparition on the video's thumbnail
im one of those people that are genuinely creeped out by the wario apparition
I've heard that Mr eye has a wife called Mrs eye and together they make a great pair 😉
I cant look at Pokey for too long to this day it makes me feel uncomfortable
I hope you do more Mario soon
I'm not ashamed to say that this game (which I love a lot by the way) maked me megalophobic ahaha Just the long towers in the fly cap level and the aquarium star deeply traumatized me xD
11:21 "Wake up"
I would like to state for the record that big bertha/large fish in mario 3 *can* just eat you whole and you die right then and there, eaten whole
Someone NEEDS to make a M64 hack, in which, Marios's death animations are overly gruesome (Like flesh melting when in lava, blood and organs splattered on ground when stomped, burnt flesh when electrocuted etc)
that's actually a town in spain.
hey your voice sounds kinda different man not complaining though like the video
I got a new microphone, and changed my recording setup quite a bit, so that's probably why it sounds different! Thank you 😁
@@ThaneGaming welcome
Let’s be real here. Almost all n64 games had a creepy vibe to them.
As an arcacniphobe, that scuttlebug jumpscare was terrifying. Thanks a lot for that.
April 3, 2018
mario 64 is scary i remember shitting my pants when he jumped out of the pipe man first jumpscare in gaming
you want fun?
Boy
Mario 64 isn't scary.
E
B3313
Liminal spaces
I remember as a kid i spent alot of time running up the stairs not understanding what i had to do..