Title: Super Mario 64

Format: N64

Released: 1^st March, 1997

At the impressionable age of 12, Super Mario 64 blew my mind like a brain prostitute. Brought up on a diet of 2D Amiga platformers and the occasional PC adventure game round my mate Jay’s house, I had never seen anything that looked so exciting, and offered up such a tantalising world to explore. I had just moved to senior school, and the N64 was the console of choice among my peers. The PlayStation was more bad-ass and grown-up, but the multiplayer possibilities on offer from Nintendo made the N64 a firm favourite for sleepovers, which, being the social hubs of the time, pretty much sealed the deal. And then there was Goldeneye: a game so popular that my friend Aaron’s brother charged people at school £1 for completing a level on 00 Agent, not to mention extra to unlock the more difficult cheats (though I do remember he pityingly charged 1p for Dam, because it was “so easy”. I’ve since played it. It isn’t.) Read the rest of this entry »