Why Super Mario 64 is Terrifying
Вставка
- Опубліковано 11 тра 2024
- In today's video we go over a classic game with an unnerving side effect. Why is Super Mario 64 so unsettling at times? Let me know what you think in the comments below.
CREDITS:
MUSIC:
“Beta Wet Dry World” - Mario 64: 1995
“Banshee Boardwalk” - Mario Kart 64
“Bowser's Cathedral” - Super Mario 64: The Lost Music
“Wet Dry World Beta” - Super Mario 64: The Lost Music
“Castle LoFi Remix” - BKnapp
“Gifts in the sky” - brotad
“Bowser Road” - Chillboy Beats
VIDEO CREDIT:
Gamingspens
Greenio
Luxury Station
Chrono
BlackJoystick
Master Nama
Ending Sequence by Optimus97
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#supermario64 #everycopyofmario64ispersonalized #creepysupermario64 - Ігри
Welcome back to a new video everybody! Do you think Super Mario 64 is unsettling? Let me know in the comments below. Thanks to everyone for the support, it means a lot!
You said 2401, but wrote 2041
Lol thanks. I’m a bit dyslexic
Growing up it has become creepy in different ways, as a kid i sucked at the game but had lots of fun just hanging outside the castle, however when the boo's start appearing when you collect 15 stars, the fears begin, the boo mansion, hazy mazy cave, shifting lava land even, all these worlds locked in the basement were so creepy lol, i used to abou rolly roger bay at all costs, i hated that eel
But now i can relate to other people when it comes to the "emptiness" of this game, things feel desolate, fake and even distorted, it's such a bizarre game but i love it
I never noticed it but all of the levels (even bob omb battlefield) felt kinda lonely when played. Mario probably felt kinda put on his own & was probably worried about the others like Luigi or other characters.
@@PressStartToContinueYT i remember playing super mario 64 on my n64 and i went to hazy maze cave and then my parents are asleep also my brother. Next i notice that my parents turn off the lights in my house while i have my room light on. After that i felt scared and i quickly turn off the game and go to sleep. I remember the other time that i was in hazy maze cave and i was going where dorry is at and some reason in the far distance of the game was pitch black and i saw dorry's face and i got scared from so i quickly turn off the game and play another n64 game.
In this episode, Bowser uses psychological torture to get inside mario's head
Phycology, also known as algology, is a scientific field of study that is about algae.
Now what is phycological torture?
@@dashua1735 fixed
Bowser:” Gwahahahaha!”
@@dashua1735 torture using algae
So is that also the reason mario throws bowser Into bombs
The limitations of the console definitely create an odd sensations when you break it down.
Old consoles definitely make things a lot more creepy which is why when Flowey, turns all hyper realistic when he goes into Omega Flowey, it’s just jarring because it’s limitations you thought where in place, but it’s even worse when things are scary in the limitations of that game. Though i must say that Mario 64 box art is creepy uncanny valley.
64 was such a great artistic limbo for creators. You either sunk with making excuses for "better hardware", or you worked with what you had to your advantage to create awesome pieces of work ( ua-cam.com/video/15E98H-9gu0/v-deo.html )
@BaBa BaBa NES world?
@@joshshrum2764 OMORI does the same afaik. Cutesy little pixel dream RPG… until you enter real life.
It's weirder when you consider other games of the N64 era though. Ocarina of Time and Paper Mario were my childhood N64 games, but they never unnerved me (except for when they wanted to, of course).
Top 10 Things that Scared Me in SM64:
10. It
9. Didn't
8. Really
7. Scare
6. Me
5. I
4. Found
3. It
2. Peaceful
1. THE EELS.
The older, less detailed models are the scariest version for no reason whatsoever
EELS... If you want to hear a song which really shows why EELS are scary, search for a video named Eels that's uploaded by mastershake1000 Well the secondary part of the video ain't that important, but the first song.
Eels Eels Eels Eels Eels Eels Eels up inside you, finding an entrance where they can, eels up inside you, finding an entrance where they can. Boring through your tummy, through your mind, through your anus. EELS! EELS!
That song is stuck in my head every time I hear the word Eel.
@@austria-hungary7680ever play shrek 2 one ps2, the alligators get me every time
@@King710. I know
The fucking piano man
As much as I loved this game as a kid, I could never pinpoint why it made me feel sort of sad. This hits the nail on the head. It was Mario, alone, with creepy villains sparsely spread out in barren levels with subdued music and the sense of Bowser watching every move.
Me many years ago: "The painting of the evil fire isn't scary.... It's just a flame. It's a childish image."
Me now: "OH, dayum! That's Satan and more! Because of the reasons I am including in my pending video 'Mario is of the devil' "
Same. It has this subtle vibe of surreal emptiness that lingers no matter what area of the game you are in. Sunshine and Galaxy doesn't feel anything like 64. Those games feel warmer. There are residents to talk to. 64 just makes me feel paranoid. And what makes it even scarier to me is the game isn't even trying to do it. It just is all these things by nature.
I get the same feeling in Minecraft I think it’s the feeling of loneliness and the large open dreamlike atmosphere adds to it
It's pretty Grim dark when you think about it
It's funny tho think how this game is more of a Creepypasta than most
Mario 64 is actually a lot creepier to me now that I’m older , just imagine exploring the castle without music, just walking around a quiet empty castle with everyone stuck inside the walls begging for help, so creepy and unnerving
SAME
Sounds awesome
Don't forget the ghost sitting in the middle of the hallway making noises
Minecraft gave me the same feeling when I was younger but maybe I'm not so scared now because I am alone most of the week at my apartment so I don't find loneliness scary but sometimes rarely I get paranoid lol
That's what Mario himself hears...
The silence at the start is actually brilliant. It was the first time for many people to experience 3D gaming. The silence made the experience stand out more and made the player focus on the movement.
that's a good point!
This episode is a perfect example of what happens when you overthink things
well that's my job!
Yeah bro as a kid I only remember feelings of joy playing SM64. Maybe some fear from the lava and sand levels, and the Bowser cackle, but surely that's normal regardless.
There's never a real argument made throughout the whole video somehow, just rnd bias and inflated use of the word creepy.
Frl
I literally made my kids shut this off. This is flat earth style thinking. I’m sure it’s just in good fun but unless you are an adult thinking back there’s no reason to sit here and let this guy insist one of the brightest, most loved, colorful, cheerful games on the N64 is “terrifying and can bring on sudden deep feelings of loneliness”. What a heap of bologna.
As a kid, I deadass believed that Bowser just murdered all the toads in the castle and I thought the ghostly apparitions of the toads you approach were the ghosts helping you save the princess from their fate.
Lol me too, it just seemed like the logical explanation to me as a kid
yknow i love that thought, new theory idea /pos
deadass.... cringe.
For real there never really there only like apparitions and hes all over the castle like a ghsot or hologram ? Star wars? Hmmm?
Oh my God lmao that's awesome
“This time, it’s personalized.”
Ok but the username I LOVE IT
Say, this is gonna sound really weird, but hear me out- the castle mirrors the anatomy of princess Peach herself. Also the blue penguins reappear as birds in Odyssey and they're tiny. Mario isn't exactly Mario, he's as Peach banishing Bowser from being an hypnotic influence over her mind, and Peach is certainly in an unconscious yet not dead limbo. But there's no way to explain these things within the game without showing blood, there's a lot of sparkle and glitter that distracts people from thinking. Oh well
Mama mia
Literally every Super Mario 64 Creepypasta:
King
This is very interesting to me, because I’ve been playing this game literally since I could hold a controller. It’s like a big security blanket to me, playing it feels so comfy and warm and safe. The idea that it could be creepy in any way is honestly hard to comprehend. Whenever I boot up this game I feel like I’ve come home, no matter where I am.
Good. The game is great, so do not let these easily-frightened people change your mind.
i think the guy was just being dramatic for the sake of his thesis (which still doesn't make it work) everything he brought up in the video has for one already been touched on in other videos and memed into oblivion, but it's also stuff that's just not that scary. like do people really find anything in mario 64 terrifying? you could argue that some things could be seen as unnerving to like maybe a child and perhaps that does have some validity but this video says literally nothing new.
Exactly, the only thing anyone seems to be right about it is wet dry world, its not really creepy but it is kinda odd. He s gotta be lying saying stuff like the bowser face after you die is scary.
I feel the same way when I play Ninja Gaiden III for NES.
@@BirdLeaf23 I remember playing that level so much, idk why, but it was my favorite
This game terrifies me as a little kid. My Nintendo 64 was in the basement as a kid and every time I died in this game, Bowsers laugh would scare the shit out of me and I would run upstairs. After a few seconds I would walk back down and continue playing lol
😂❤
That reminds me of renting 𝘋𝘪𝘴𝘯𝘦𝘺’𝘴 𝘏𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘛𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵
and peeking over from behind the sofa the watch Night at Bald Mountain over and over again despite having to close my eyes as the ghostly effects rose from their graves and galloped through the air
Reminds me of when I used to run away from the bathroom after flushing the toilet 😂
Lmaooo
Nice try Pajeet, come up with a better story next time
I love the notion that the technological limits of the N64 have led to people feeling like these games are creepy when the game designers more than likely never intended to do so. M64, the Zelda series, even Starfox and Goldeneye.
Sure thing Joe, Majora's Mask was never intended to be creepy.
@@mikau69even OoT felt really eerie at times. Obviously the ReDead and nighttime, but Hyrule Field and really almost every environment always creeped me out even though it felt like home lol
@@tpike1296 I'm not the only one with that, lol... I couldn't play it properly as a kid because of how eerie it felt to me.
@@tpike1296as a kid I refused to play when night cycle hit and would spam the sun song so I could play in the day again since it scared me so bad 😭
To be fair, Pigma Dengar still looks creepy to me, I never liked how he looked as a zombie-like pig.
As a child I believed in the L is Real conspiracy and the idea that Luigi was hiding somewhere in the game made it very spooky
But didn't they discover Luigi's source code recently?
@@steveluvscows2490 Yes, his assets were found in the gigaleak 24 years and 1 month after the game's release and it still doesn't feel real
i wasted hours trying to unlock Luigi
U and everyone else, but I too, fell for it as well
Similarly, I thought Herobrine was hiding somewhere in my Minecraft world as a kid. It was rather unsettling, lmao.
The uncannily realistic textures in some places are what gets me.
@Jack and Bt Sandwich I just mean in general. I can't really name a specific one.
The one that really got me asking questions is wet wet dry world on how the background is a flooded island and I’m wondering how the town got flooded and what town that is and Is it a real tow that actually got sunken in real life
@Jack and Bt Sandwich I think at the least, the first Bowser level's background is an edited image of a forest
@Jack and Bt Sandwich I don't remember where I had seen it at this point because it's been awhile, but I know someone had matched the in game textures with the full size images somehow. I saw most of them on a website that showed the original images that were used, I'm wanting to say the original images were left in the game files but I'm not certain.
Realistic bricks and rocks I remember. Really weird.
You know a game is a classic when even if it's overtly really positive and colourful, there's this very subtle, distant macabre or melancholy quality to it. Makes it way more emotionally complex and life-like without ever needing to obviously make it known. All the legendary old games had it. That element of genuine risk or danger.
It's the uncanny valley effect of that first jump into 3D. It's the "Oh, this is _real_ now"... except the emptiness shows you subconsciously that it isn't.
Even a kid playing Super Mario World doesn't look at it and feel like it's a real place they could actually reach out and touch, or somewhere they could explore if they could just teleport through the screen. But with a control stick, and the ability to move _forward_ towards anything you can see and jump to, that illusion of "reality" is created. The push-pull of "is this real" on your subconscious begins.
Like Ocarina of Time too. Less subtle about it was Majora’s Mask
This guy: “I just feel alone..”
Lakitu: 👋😀📸
This is a w comment
Also, the paintings, they're literally all worlds frozen in time. Everyone and thing in that world is forever stuck in a painting prison.
I always thought judging by the game manual and the Nintendo Power guide that the paintings were portals to other worlds.
Oh shit you’re right
Hello you
@@PressStartToContinueYT oh yeah swear again
its just a painting bro.... youre overthinking
Wet dry world made me feel scared as a kid because of the town. I felt like the town was empty because everyone probably drowned from flooding.
the water levels in general terrified me as a kid because they just felt so ominous and still they feel the same
@@kirigiri_idk Very very true. Like the cave with that sign the captain telling you to stay out. Falling rock pillars. Like pirates are secretly watching you or something. At least the eel made me feel not alone
@@watergirl929 yeah the eel especially scared me as a kid
@@kirigiri_idk I actually always loved the eel for some reason it made me feel so *not alone* in the level 😅 I guess that level felt so lonely because he had like no enemies in it! I loved playing the final level chasing the eel around.
But where are the bodies
when i played it as a child, it didn't freak me out quite as much as it does now, looking back. however, i did always feel kinda odd roaming through all those empty spaces. when i stopped playing, it almost felt as if i had woken up from a strange dream.
the aspect that adds to that feeling the most, for me, are the endless hallways that got you running towards those huge paintings. the further you'd go, the more they'd move away from you (at one point, you'd even fall, as we could see in your video). most of my nightmares are like that, especially when i was younger. really eerie for a game developed for children!
I've played the game countless hours since the 90s and it never really creeped me out. The eel, the piano, and the Bowser laugh were the only things that scared me as a child.
Maybe this was just me, but as a kid, I always noticed the castle didn't have any of the normal things you'd find in a living space. So like, no kitchen, no bedroom for Peach, etc (which Paper Mario did have which I think is interesting). Maybe that could also be a subconscious reason the castle feels unnerving sometimes, since you just can't find any of the rooms you'd associate with a place people actually live in?
This game is great.
Intresting
I'm glad I'm not the only kid who noticed that! I was the sort of kid who liked to imagine how the characters lived in their world when I wasn't there, but Peach's castle always felt so weird to me because (like you said) I couldn't imagine anyone actually living there, or how anything in the castle actually worked. It was designed as bizarrely as the mansion in the first Resident Evil game.
It reminded me of a playground or my kindergarten. I never thought of the bathroom or kitchen because those are private spaces where kids shouldn't be playing, so I remember thinking "It makes sense!". This game reminded me of how my imagination soared when I was forced to wait for my mom on a wait room or when I escaped a grown up social situation to play alone or just explore the place I was. I even used to imagine repetitive patterns like avoiding stepping on black tiles, or the classic "the floor is lava". All of this is in this game, and that makes it awesome to me.
peach actually has a room in 64 lol
Question for you: if you've played Mario 64 DS, did you ever feel creeped out, because looking back on it, there were a bunch of creepy things that were even exclusive to this game. A lot of what you said in this video still applies, but version this game also had things like the entirely white room behind the mirror, the lifeless character paintings, and even some of the new levels such as the Goomboss area felt oddly empty lifeless. I think the improved graphics and additional playable characters did a lot to make the game feel less creepy, but there are still a whole bunch of things that add to the weird, dreamlike feeling
yeah, the ds version has its fair share of creepiness too. The graininess of the DS adds to it.
I've only played the DS version, yup- definetly creepy,
Well it's obviously not real, it's a video game.
@@PressStartToContinueYT Mario: If none of that-a was real, how can I be sure anything is-a real? Is not-a possible, neigh, probable, that my entire existence is the product of my or someone else's imagination?
@@parker-boy98 Luigi: Hypocrite that-a you are, big bro, for you trust the imagination of-a yourself or another to tell you it is all one's imagination. Will-a you fight? Or will-a you get a game over like a Goomba?
Funny enough, I think a lot of the things you described as creepy are the things that makes this my favorite Mario game. I love the dreamlike atmosphere, the mystery, I think most of the weird faces are cute and charming (I always felt bad for the Whomp’s because they had bandaids on their backs and felt bad for hurting them). I find liminal spaces weirdly calming, and the strange disconnectedness of this entry made it more interesting for me to explore compared to Galaxy and Oddyssey. I think I especially liked the water staged despite the anxiety I’d get from Mario’s health ticking down because I’ve always liked more slow-paced games.
The only things I really remember being afraid of were: the evil piano, the eel in that one water level, the time limit for being underwater, that electric ball that flies around you as you go up a pole, dying, running out of air underwater, and the platforming areas you’d go through before fighting Bowser. Everything else was a delight even though I was garbage at the game, the feeling of mystery and discovery drawing me in. I was terrified of any ‘real’ horror game/movie, but Mario 64 filled me with nothing but fascination.
(As a Sidenote, even though I’m still pretty pathetic when it comes to ‘real’ horror, I loved basically every RPGmaker horror game I played during its boom and find things other people find creepy like vintage porcelain dolls pretty and cute. So, y’know, maybe its just me lol.)
WEIRDO
@@PressStartToContinueYT LMAO YEAH THATS FAIR
Never felt any of this. I think the creepy pasta is a huge stretch and you gotta do some huge mental gymnastics to find the game creepy. I always found the game fun and comforting.
I hear ya. Although falling off a platform into the void or endless sky always creeped me out. Although that creeped me out in any game that had that lol
@@user-yr4yh2sx7g funny enough I never felt like that. Always had fun and thought it was cool to get outside the map for games. Only game the creeped me out was gmod playing big maps in solo, stuff like that. Probably because those maps aren’t meant to be for lots of players so playing solo feeling unsettling and lonely.
You probably skipped the Piano in Boo Hoos Mansion
yeah same, peeps are just jumpy
Yeah lol I don’t get this at all
I was never really afraid of this game, but the "empty" feeling of the castle hub made me feel unnerved. The only thing I really hated was the Boss Bass/Bubba in Tiny-Huge Island. I've always hated underwater enemies in games, especially when they ate me. The skull and crossbones in the secret slide in Tall, Tall Mountain bugged me, too.
I used to be afraid of the giant eel in Jolly Roger bay. It's size, the way it moved in the water and the wide jaw full of jagged teeth. I couldn't bring myself to take on the objective of getting it to come out of its nesting hole so Mario can retrieve the star from the tail. Later on I realized that the creature follows a set course and doesn't just swim freely about the water, which gave some reassurance that it isn't programmed to target you. Still a creepy encounter for anyone playing the game for the first time.
@@scorpionwins6378 The eel did used to startle me when it lunged out. The Mad Piano made me jump, too.
What are you talking about? The game is great.
@@scottchaison1001 I didn't say it wasn't.
I took 10 minutes wandering around the castle at the start and gave up on the game when I was unable to beat the first bomb boss. I hate the controls.
children: "This game is so much fun"
Adults: "This game is a psychological torture"
@Logia SD Exactly. Define "adult".
Kidult: I always kinda thought it was both fun and psychologically bizarre
@Logia SD And by that age, your benchmark for what is considered "psychological torture" should be a lot higher than Mario 64!
this guy it's trying too hard, yes, because yes while outside peach's castle it was lonely and with no music, it was like the first HD audio game we heard. hearing the birds so realistic, not a midi sound, was amazing enough then..
@@calebdonaldson8770 Don't say stupid things. Respect Mario 64.
I never felt like mario 64 was scary, i always focused on the gorgeus music in each level, amazing levels, and fun characters. I always tought of it as an fun platformer.
Dire Dire docks is such a beautiful soundtrack .
I still get chills thinking about “It is decreed that one shall pound the pillars”
Honestly every time I played SM64 I always got that disconnected feeling. I remember having fever dreams when I was younger about levels that never existed but seemed so real
i had a reoccuring dream for probably 10 years straight that i would get every few months. it was the level outside after you drain the water. i would just slide endlessly down that gray slope with little platforms and there was always a weird black and white static look and sound like a tv that lost its signal. oddly this dream was connected to a taste. the taste when you are really congested or you choke on some water when swimming. any of these things could trigger the dream and to this day 20+ years later that taste still reminds me of it. i could never grab stsy on a ledge. id always hold on for a second then a faceless person would walk over and peel my fingers off the ledge. id wake up after about 50 platform attempts plunging into the blackness below
@@NorThenX047 Crazy how the brain works huh?
Seriously I would have non stop dreams of this game
Go play B3313
I've had a period when I'd get some relatively uncomfortable dreams around it as well, with alternative versions of levels or even brand new ones. The most mysterious is that although I liked watching content related to this game, this isn't one from my childhood. I got to play the DS version, yet never had a dream of it. Only the original 64 version
I never thought the "it's just not the same" feeling applied only to Mario 64. I got that feeling playing any copy of a game that wasn't mine. Because you know it's not yours, it doesn't feel the same. You played the game your way, you got to know it your way, so when you play a different copy, that personal connection isn't there.
The copy isn't personalized, but the experience is. But even so, this "creepypasta" is one of my favorites.
Agreed!
I never got that feeling with games unless they had custom settings. Mario 64 is different in that regard
I agree with this. I think as more and more games started getting saveable progress, playing someone else's copy, and therefore their save, would definitely be a different experience.
Like a copy of SMB1 doesn't matter, you pick up any copy of that game and just play it from the beginning like always. But a game like Mario 64, you play someone's copy and god only knows what they're up to, what stars they got that maybe you didn't and vice-versa.
I don’t remember being scared of it when I was a kid but I do remember not wanting to play it by myself. I think it’s the emptiness of the castle yet things are everywhere
I actually had legit nightmares about some of the maps from super mario 64 or dreams where bowser was literally chasing you around the castle.
me 2 and i never played through the hole game because it never felt right xD maybe i was too easily scared but im glad i was not the only one
For the same reasons you mention how it can be creepy, I found it wondrous, mysterious, and peaceful. But certainly ethereal. A dreamlike place. Its bathic atmosphere implies something meaningful, but any such meaning is ambiguous and unknown. Ethereal, but not scary to me. It was a quiet place filled with deep places and mysterious things, away from the clutter of life.
That's a great comment! I totally agree with you about the dreamlike appealing that this game has and I see 2 reasons for it:
1- The Liminal Space aesthetic that this game has
2- The weirdness and lack of logic and consistance thar everything seems to have. There's no clear objective, no real allies or friends, even the themes are strange, you enter through paintings to fantastical and mysterious worlds that sometimes makes you wonder about it (Wet Dry World and its abandoned underwater city) but you never get an answear.
Yes, exactly! Very well put
What a beautiful comment.
If it’s quiet and away from the clutter of life, it’s fine but it’s also empty, and as you said, mysterious.
I’m quiet but I’d always like to have people around me because being alone is just surreal. It gives off the illusion of nothingness.
SM64's abstract nature is one of my favorite things about it.
I had no idea that anyone ever thought of Super Mario 64 as creepy and/or scary in any remote way. I certainly never have.
It makes no sense. Its not creepy, terrifying or dreadful at all. People are weird. But then again they gotta make vids for youtube so they just go on about utter nonsense. Then in the comments if course you’ll find the experts that have a masters degree in whatever the video is about.
@@garrysmith5562 You 🧠n't?
What's bad in it?
@@garrysmith5562 Yeah this video looked promising ended up being somehow worse than qanon. conspiracy theories 0 content.
you never played wet dry world? or approached that piano? lol
I definitely always felt a strange feeling when seeing this game for the first time. Like you're living out a dream that you can't wake up from and someone's watching..
This game never felt creepy ! It was great. Looking back, it might seem barren out of it's frame of reference but this was the peak of immersion at the time
you really weren't offput by the peach portrait shifting into a bowser portrait before dropping you into a bowser level? the boo that suddenly appears in the basement after collecting like 20 stars? the eel at the bottom of the sea that does the most damage at that point in the game? the fucking butterfiles that can spontaneously transform into giant explosive iron balls that follow you around and explode? the giant indestructible cheep cheep that can fucking swallow you whole? the infinite staircase? bowser's taunt about your "friends being stuck inside the walls" of the castle? like they had to know, all that stuff was on purpose.
@@genericgorilla If any of that bothered you or this game in general you have issues you need to work on.
@@genericgorilla That's literally only scary if you're like 6 years old. Halloween decorations are scarier than all of those.
@@genericgorilla
- No, I was impressed that the technology to see a painting shift from one image to another was possible. The sheer fact we were in a 3D space was just so awesome.
- The boo appearing meant that there was something to explore and do. Boos are also the cutest ghosts ever. It's like finding Casper creepy.
- The eel being creepy is incredibly subjective. It's no scarier than a "Boo!" Halloween sticker and even then it only feels creepy because of HD screens and resolutions stretching out a low-res texture.
- Everything else you said indicates a real lack of strength, on a medically ill level. Because if a cheep-cheep causes you panic, you're probably scared of your own shadow. And it's not as if Cheep-Cheeps didn't try to swallow Mario since SMB3. Were you mortally scared of that classic as well?
@@genericgorilla the evil piano!
I find it dreamlike instead of creepy.
It reminds of a Cartoon from the 60s
Same, except for that eel
The more I think about it, and as a novice lucid dreamer, the more ‘dreamlike’ is a perfect description for it
yes
It is literally that
The most unsettling thing for me now is the room with the painting for Tiny-Huge Island. Something about how detailed the goombas are and the size of the painting gives me the heebie-jeebies.
Walking to the big painting can be very unsettling.
SAME
Lol when I see that painting I think of small goomba and his dad lol.
Dad: Did you hear Koopa the Quick had his toe fall off?
Son: what noo
Dad: He called a toe truck to fix it.
Son: awwww daaaad! you're the funniest! :D
@@zitherq5761 That is adorable.
YES it’s that room and the entirety of wet dry world that make me feel some type of way…
this game creeps me out the same way that Minecraft did when I played that game without music.. a game you’ve always played with comforting music is suddenly quiet so you feel alone and sometimes have that liminal space feeling
This game felt more wholesome to me than a lot of 64 games, though he is alone in a large castle, a lot of the music was really uplifting and calming the only part that was kinda scary to me as a kid was Boo’s mansion
Honestly I take that back 😭 I can’t forget about the eel from jolly rogers bay and the going on the slide, but other than that mario made me happy 😃
@@Thereheeis The eel, Boo's mansion and the endless starecase always creeped me out as a kid no matter how wholesome the rest of the game was.
The scariest thing for was just when you first walk into Peach’s castle and the suspenseful music and Bowser starts laughing. Other than that nothing scared me.
What are you talking about?
You psychopath!
@@scottchaison1001 when you start up a new save and go into the castle for the first time...
Couldn't agree more. When I was a kid I was always terrified when I started a new game to enter the castle for this reason alone.
Same! I would turn the sound off when that part came up 😂
What you said about being inside the castle being familiar yet unnerving reminds me of a reoccurring dream/nightmare I have. I’m at home alone most of the time, it usually starts out familiar until I open a door or turn a corner that leads to a hall, stairways, or rooms I have never seen before or if I have, they are pulled from other places I have been before. Nothing bad typically happens, but it’s still very unusual being somewhere familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.
omg, I've had a similar dream too. like I know where I am and I don't at the same time
I've had dreams like that all my life. But the most reoccuring ones I get are being in a dark basement, playing an unfamiliar version of doom 2 where everything is unnaturally more terrifying. The line between game and reality gets blurred, and I'm either living in it, or I get this feeling that a Revenant is about to come out of the monitor. And every time I think "shit, it's actually real this time". Sounds are legit terrifying and I can replay them for a long time in my head after I've woken up.
I am 36 now, and played the shit out of that game back when it was new. Clearly enough to incur lasting damage.
Fr it’s so weird
All my dreams have something wrong with the floor plan of my house. I rarely notice until after I wake up.
Terminally online people when a game has empty rooms 😰
Shut up
You know what i totally understand why you mentioned empty feeling when playing this game. This game was a blast when i was a kid, played it everyday and i remember i dreamed about sm64 and i was actually stuck in that "empty" world. Really disturbing
Oh my lord, 11 year old me, was not a fan of the Mad Piano. I didn't get 120 Stars in the game until years later because I didn't want to deal with it, and even then Big Boo's Haunt was the last place I tackled with strategy guide in tow. Nintendo must have realized what they did with the piano as it hasn't returned outside of a Mario Party 2 cameo as far as I'm aware.
A more recent thing I found out about that's creepy to me, is how before beating Bob-Omb Battlefield for the first time, there is a gutter at the bottom of the mountain where 2 big cannonballs are rolling around, but after you beat King Bob-Omb, when you go back to Bob-Omb Battlefield for the rest of the stars, that same gutter now has 3 big cannonballs rolling around. Am I to infer that Mario killed King Bom-Omb, and now his lifeless corpse is rolling around at the bottom of the mountain? WTF Nintendo.
Big Boo’s Haunt, in general is way to disturbing for a kids game.
Yeah that was pretty messed up
@@joshshrum2764 Pft, wussy.
No. That 3rd Ball Thing was simply to increase the difficulty from the first star to the second Star a bit.
For some reason, I wasn't scared of the piano, I honestly thought it was kinda cool.
Even the castle theme "inside the castle walls" gives me an empty, sad feeling of isolation. I always thought I was just overthinking it as a kid but 64 really is an almost empty-feeling game. Good video.
While walking around the castle searching for levels or hidden stars I never really thought about how creepy the castle theme is. I think the first time I noticed that was when I had to go to the toilet in the middle of the night. Hearing the faint sound of the castle theme coming from my room while walking back to it without any lights on made me feel very uncomfortable. When I finally came back to my room the feeling didn't go away. Instead I became very conscious about the castle theme and how empty the castle is. Entering any level made me feel a little better with the exception of Wet-Dry World.
weirdly when i play on console, it's slightly louder and lower pitch, not joking btw
Yeah the game suffers a bit of the “uncanny valley” syndrome in some ways, Banjo-Kazooie and Rareware games in general always had a much more organic, lively feel to them that made them feel less lonely
yep, for sure, it sounds like noise is echoing thru the halls, emphasizing the emptiness, and the ambiguity of what's around the corner.
The only thing that ever gave me slight chills was the looping steps song everything else seems normal to me…
(Also how do y’all get to feel these emotions?)
The game was insanely popular among all us kids in elementary and middle school, and literally none of us were scared or unsettled. This weird narrative is built upon on very recent memes that have gotten carried away. At best you could argue some of the visuals look a little garish in HD, but certainly not back then when played on a CRT. The game was very warm, bright, colorful and overall pleasant. Even Big Boo's Haunt is mostly silly spooky (in a little kid's halloween party sort of way) than actually terrifying.
For many, it's not about the color tone or music, it's about the feelings wandering the castle alone can evoke in areas that have liminal qualities. It doesn't give this effect to everyone, but to many it does. Minecraft has this same phenomenon for many. Horror can have less to do with the visual aesthetics and more to do with the lack of information left to the imagination and dreamlike spaces that can evoke that feeling of dread in a lot of people. Not everyone, but a good subset.
@@JoryStultz1234 I still don't buy that, because those liminal qualities if present would've affected somebody, anybody, back then. But they didn't.
You're not going to find anyone tell you they were creeped out by that. Maybe the piano in _Big Boos Haunt_ or the painting for _Lethal Lava Land,_ and that's only if you're a little kid.
This liminal dread is a very recent phenomena caused by people who explicitly delve into creepypasta/SPC type content.
Same with old multiplayer maps in Valve games; new players exploring these maps offline for the 1st time report that "liminal space" feeling, yet in the 00s I knew kids who's whole idea of fun was downloading multiplayer maps off sites like FPSBanana and just exploring them; seeing the work the mapper put into designing his custom map.
You're only going to find this liminal space fear if you go out and look for it. It's not there naturally.
@@xlixity You are speaking for yourself only. I have always found the game to feel off in a dreamy way and that makes some people feel strange. You don't have to buy anything for someone to have a different opinion than you, just humility.
This game actively gave me nightmares as a child, I don't think this is all bullshit.
@@xlixity "those liminal qualities if present would've affected somebody, anybody, back then. But they didn't."
Bruh, you're not the main character. People have been talking about this for decades, increasingly so as they grew up and found the words to describe it. I felt lots of joy exploring this game as a kid, but also had many moments of unexplained paranoia and dread in the empty spaces that I didn't feel again til I played games like Slender years later.
Regardless of whether you and your friends were the ultimate gigachads you describe, SM64 had a haunting effect on me and many others sometimes in between our much more frequent moments of enjoyment. It's not like we got so scared we stopped playing; obviously we didn't, cause we all remember the whole game. The human mind and the wide matrix in which it processes and interprets what it experiences is more complex than you give it credit for.
Imagine finding a fucking Mario game creepy
Mario 64 gives me the same vibes as when I search for "liminal spaces" on the internet. Something seems kinda off yet fascinating. Moreover, no matter how much I love Odyssey or Galaxy, Mario 64 will always have a special place in my memories, a truly nostalgic and charming game.
Indeed, much of the interior is just liminal spaces!
True Tho. There's just a mysterious aura to the game
That's the way I felt about it, the noises and stuff where just off and the feeling of being alone but I always wanted to explore more
No sunshine :/ the disrespect
@@Firelordcujo07 Elitist detected 😂
I recently replayed Mario 64 for the first time in many many years. I honestly just don’t find it creepy. At no point in my entire play through did I feel even remotely creeped out. I find the over world very comforting. The silence and the birds chirping outside, followed by the music inside, it’s very calming and serene. Nothing creepy in the slightest to me.
Cry about it kid
@@CosmicHarmony58 Sounds like you're crying. Did you get spooked by the game little buddy. Poor muffin. You'll be alight.
@@CosmicHarmony58 said the baby
Honestly, same! It never felt empty to me either. Granted, most of my time playing it was in a loud daycare, but even when I played alone, the birds singing and waterfall flowing were a pleasant soundscape, then the warm inviting music of the castle always felt so. Wet-dry world in my mind was mostly invaded by the elevator hurry thing and the stupid catapult mice and the chuck ya.
@@CosmicHarmony58 snowflake, getting creeped out by a game lmao
I grew up with SM64 and played it many times over the years and never once felt creeped out while playing it. I’m sure there’s things I found creepy that others wouldn’t. What I think is most interesting is how everyone experiences things a little differently.
Same!
The only thing I found scary/creepy about this game was the koopa that wants to race you. Don't know why tbh.
- It's creepy if you think about it.
- Nope. It's not.
-...or am I reading too far into things?
- Yep. You're reading too far into things.
It's just a colorful game from 1996 bro.
I bet you are fun at parties.
@@jeffm2586 oh yeah, absolutely xD
Bro is in denial
Nah dude, out of all the games I played this is the only one I couldn't finish bc of how uncomfortable it made
@@ebygz4755 Were you a child when you played it?
The game is a deep fever dream. I think Mario has eaten so many Mushrooms that he no longer exists in reality so instead he exists in a trippy, liminal and warped reality where everything is smiling even the stuff that wants to hurt you.
Thats scarey asf when u think about it
Glad that you mentioned the endless falling being weird. Ever had an adrenaline rush from falling in a videogame? Also the graphics are a huge point to me. GTA San Andreas was also fairly spooky to me, due to the render distance, fog and unclear textures.
Playing resident evil 7 on the ps vr. There is a stage near the end and you are on a ship it think. and you jump down an elevator shaft. i could feel my stomach do the woooaaaaah thing on that. Crazy how your brain makes stuff seem more real. Skyrim vr, if i play standing up and the character is running and stops. My body actually does tip forward a bit. Doesnt do it if im sitting down.
@@StevedaveTodd Ah yes, artificial movement in VR can be wild. I think that's in part what I like about Boneworks. It's a great VR shooter, too. It lets you freely run, climb, jump, grab enemies even. It has a pretty high terminal velocity, jumping from high places and sticking the landing feels wild!
I used to search for Bigfoot after watching UA-camrs uploading as if the game has bigfoot.
I guess what it really comes down to is that I'm not looking for an epic experience with Mario games. Replace it with Link and exploring is fun again.
Mind you I enjoy and and have beaten Mario 1-3, world, and I'm like Mario maker. 3D Mario just doesn't work for me.
I had the same feeling, but I also loved it the way it is. It felt more like a dream to me. The music in Mario 64 was also very dream-like and when you walked through the castle the sound effects were always exaggerated with this strong reverb. It probably added to this feeling.
This game was made to be fun, peaceful, creepy, haunting, full, empty, loud, and quiet all at the same time. While you are in one realm of the game whether it be a simple room of the castle or a painting, the rest of the map is completely blank. Nothing happens in another room that you can't hear or see, but the weirdness of the whole place and how different everything seems to feel in various parts of the game makes you just want to play more until you get the poor princess out of this God forsaken place. I had multiple dreams of being in a place like this, where it all felt fake and the walls were wet, felt like I needed to find something or help someone but was way too creeped out to do it cause I always felt something was watching me. Whoever created this game simply knew what they were doing, idk if they were human or not, but they created this masterpiece for people who have crazy imaginations
The Bowser painting for me. Even at my age now I still think its pretty creepy. I wish the personalization tapes were still popular
That’s a good point
The bowser paintings legitimately scarred me as a kid, it always seemed like it was starting directly into my eyes
As a kid, the simple bowser laugh when entering the castle was enough to scare the hell out of me
Thank god im not the only one who thought this when they were younger
@@ello-olle that sound before he laughed was an instant no for me back then
The lack of characters is also because of limitations. The same happens with the paintings: They were forced to exagerate poses and expressions or camera angles for those pictures because they needed the resultant low resolution image to be clearly readable (theatre actors do the same so you can see them from far away)
Think it like this: Mario64 was the first game of its kind, so no one was sure about anything and they tried to do their best. All that creepyness and weird sensations you get are because we live in a natural 3d space. Being this a recreation, it feels familiar to your mind, but little details like the lack of characters and sound, weird colours or confusing low resolution backgrounds, itch in the dephs of your brain: Your logica tells you everything is ok, but natural survival instinct claims there’s something enterely wrong there, and that traduces into one simple thought mechanic: possible danger = fear.
There’s nothing wrong with poor Mario’s basic 3D world. Its just your mind being tricky and intelligent.
great comments, thanks for watching!
Good commment
You nailed it, I was gonna comment about that uncanny valley feeling.
The game feels very surreal so that gives it a slight creepy factor
If you think SM64 is creepy, you’re like Spongebob and Patrick on that image where they ride the children’s rollercoaster and get scared af
When I was a kid, the DS version of SM64 terrified me because of the hidden level inside that haunted mansion where you'd fight King Boo to unlock Luigi. You spend most of the level listening to King Boo's laugh to know which door (of a possible 4) to go through, because going through the wrong door takes you back to the start of the level. That laugh, paired with the merry-go-round music at the very start of the level, always terrified me. I never beat the level until I got a new copy of the game a few years ago
OMG i love the DS version.. and yea that level spooked me too xD
I liked that level when I was younger. Actually, I liked all the character unlock levels.
Same here
Lol dumb
Glover always gave me the impression that everyone seemed to get from SM64. Especially the hub area in the beginning of the game.
Still an N64 game weirdly enough. I guess the outdated tech really does contribute a lot to the uncanny feeling.
Glover's levels were nightmare fuel for me as a kid, the claustrophobic tutorial cave, the devastated hub world, the never ending pits in the sky level...
Then there's Rocket: Robot on Wheels, oh boy, that game is something else, the first world (a circus world) has these creepy clowns that mimic your moves and your abilities, i just can't explain why they're so terrifying to me, you feel like they're gonna kill you in an instant lol
The N64 was an awesome console, but a creepy one at that
@@Josuh Took the words right out of my mouth, honestly. Somehow I forgot about the circus level, so thanks for me reminding me of that. Lol
I love that game! The first castle scene is fun and exciting! 😉⚡️
Oh god, yeah. Glover was some super creepy shit, with its depressing, isolated world and dreamlike levels which were literally all floating above an abyss or endless sky. The overworld slowly being restored didn’t alleviate those vibes either, as it was still devoid of NPCs or evidence of outside civilization. It just felt haunted, even if I knew that wasn’t the intent. Eventually, playing Glover gave me nightmares, and I had to stop playing lmaooo
What a time to be a kid.
Glover was *weird.* To this day I have no idea why the initial hub area was full of Silent Hill fog and deformed geometry. As a child, I was convinced that something bad was going to happen if I stayed in the overworld for too long, so I was always too afraid to explore it.
Oh god I’m so glad I didn’t have any of these thoughts as a kid. Never looked at it creepy for being lonely or anything. I just enjoyed the music, the game itself and looked at the game realistically being “just a game”. I only feared drowning because I didn’t wanna do it again and the quick sand because quick sand irl is scary in general.
The water levels were safer to me for the ability to regenerate health. Those sudden death out-of-bounds drops are worse.
It's just the limitations of early 3D that feels off/creepy and Mario 64 is a popular example. Saved you 15 mins
I was 13 when I first played it and it blew my mind at the time. I think another reason for the emptiness in the game was to not overwhelm kids in a 3D environment. In retrospect it looks somewhere between a dev sandbox and a finished game. If you look back at the first Super Mario Bros, it had that same lonely feeling in certain stages. Super Mario Bros 3 is really where they were able to make it feel like a living and breathing environment.
Dev sandbox id disagree it’s very well polished no glitches or bugs while you are playing,
it wasn’t comprised by limitations rather simply made because limitations finally allowed it to be, ive payed $100 for lesser gaming experiences
@@streetcarstv5088 Bruh the game is full of glitches wtf are you talking about?
I found the locked doors in the castle to be scary when I was a kid, because they would make the scary bowser noise. I would try to stay as far away from them as possible until I got the key.
I thought I was the only one 😂
That noise still sends shivers down my spine when I hear it today.
literally me 😭
Lol
I always thought that bowser laughing was himself mocking/taunting you for not being able to get in
This is actually crazy that Miyamoto's games are tied to his experiences as a child. Did he have a strange dream? Or was it something dark??
except it isn't
The thing that always made me feel uncomfortable while playing Super Mario 64 was the suffocating, almost claustrophobic atmosphere. While you have a lot of platforms and areas to explore, the stages feel like they are very limited, like they're inside a small box and you're trying your best to escape it. I wouldn't say I'm claustrophobic, but I hate the feeling when I have to be in a tight space. This game made me feel this way. It was one of my favourite games as a kid, but it made feel physically and mentally ill when I played it for long periods of time. It still does to this day and I'm 27. It's a really weird and uncomfortable feeling that it's really hard to describe.
I think this game might be why I have casadastraphobia (fear of falling upwards into the sky, its a real phobia, look it up) due to the sky boxes being infinite sky textures without any other detail, whenever Mario fell off any floating surface and there was nothing to land on gave me so much discomfort, it felt like he was going to fall forever.
Even as a child I vividly remember that lying on the grass to see clouds made me feel like I was going to be pulled by the sky off the ground. To this day, this discomfort has not ceased.
@@snowflakeowl1762 That's pretty creepy, and i actually thought about this when i was a kid, like, just randomly being thrown into the sky without something to land at a high speed, it's very frighting actually. But at least there's no way that could happen to you in real life, interesting nonetheless.
@@snowflakeowl1762 I have dreams in which it is impossible to stay on the ground and it is a desperate fight to find things to stay anchored to the earth. Seemingly relates to this game as well
@@5T3LTH you should go rock climbing
I found so many glitches on tony hawks underground to get out of the map because so many games make me feel as if it's trying to keep me inside the map. But i wasn't scared. I just did my best to escape.
Never felt that Mario 64 was a horror game. I liked how quiet it was outside. Very peaceful.
I agree, Mario 64 was a fun platform game. Ocarina of Time on the other hand...
Yeah this video just seems like a retroactive justification of creepypasta vibes, Mario 64 was just a fun game
Yeah it’s one of those things where in retrospect I can understand how someone COULD feel that way but neither I nor none of my siblings were scared of it as kids
Fr
I really did try to suspend disbelieve for this one but this guy kept saying stuff like "Dont you find it creepy how outside was quiet?"
Like dude, not really lmaooo
Yup. Not at all scary. This is just dumb.
In my case, the creepy feeling while playing SM 64 came years later. And for marios death-animations, i was rather fascinated how believable mario got back then.
The game where i was creeped out right at the beginning, was Banjo Kazooie. I had nightmares of this game, but i think it was because of the new sensations i had to get used to. But its not a surprise that we felt like this. The change from 2D to 3D games was such a big impact, where we as kids weren't prepared for. xD
This game gave me nothing but feelings of peace and wonder as a child where all that emptiness was filled with your imagination. And even now as an adult its just a nostalgia joyride taking me back to simpler times
Agreed
Never felt like was scary, not even in the level of the haunted house,just fun playing, only on zelda had some scary stuff but nothing too serious
I've played 64 and 64 ds, and I feel like the ds version is the more unsettling of the two. Maybe it was the fact that it was a game that I could, and did, play through the night in bed. The Bowser silhouette when you die seems more sinister, and for a while I was convinced that the face would look creepier the more lives you lost. Big Boo's Haunt is downright creepy, especially the level where you unlock Luigi. I didnt want to go through the door where King Boos laugh was the loudest. Why would I go closer toward something that scared the pants off me? The fact that Bowser was able to capture Mario, Luigi, and Wario on top of Peach. Where does the fourth door in the rec room go? Why does the game pointedly tell me that I cant hear anything behind it, instead of being noninteractable or heck, not even being there in the first place? All in all, 64 has its unsettling moments, but 64 ds outright terrified me at times.
yeah I've never thought about the DS version being creepier, but you've made some good points. That and the grainier appearance of the DS adds into that too!
@@PressStartToContinueYT By the way, I really liked the sub topic of the enemy textures. I really like to compare Whomps Fortress and Throwback Galaxy in Super Mario Galaxy 2, which is just a recreation of WF. While I never necessarily got any negative vibes while playing the stage in 64, I get a much happier feeling when I play it in Galaxy 2, and I think its partly because of the enemy's design, which are more in line with the modern designs we see today. If I remember correctly, theres also more pink Bobombs to talk to, which may also make it feel less isolated.
@@joshbryan2261 bruh galaxy 2 scary as fuck
Still trying to figure out the white door
I agree! But also, the white door is a secret star where if you catch all the white rabbits that randomly spawn around, you get 8 keys and can go in and get a star. Although, even creepier, if you re enter the room after collecting the star, you just hear boos laughing and your character exits with a scared “mama mia” or something along those lines…
I’ve just felt people love scaring themselves and try too hard to make this game creepy. It’s one of the greatest games of all time and in all of my years I never felt it was scary.
well I guess you're lucky then!
Super Mario Galaxy was my favorite
Same
same here
Absolutely agree. People are dramatic.
I think the whole Mario64 being creepy conversation is a Reed Richards level of reaching
darn tootin
It isn't creepy. It's just a very early era 3D console game. The limitations at the time to make a 3D world realized (especially on the N64 which was very underpowered compared to the PS1, so the limitations were even more apparent) caused these games to become extremely janky and barren feeling, which creates an uncanny vibe to it.
I've heard people say the same thing for games like Goldeneye 64 and Zelda's Orcarina of Time. 3d era games that came later on in the N64s life cycle didn't feature this much jank and awkwardness because the whole idea of 3D game worlds on the N64 were becoming more streamlined and efficiently made. So games like Donkey Kong 64, paper mario 64, banjo kazooie/tooie don't feel the same way in terms of uncanniness
@@Gameprojordan Maps aren't even populated on current-gen tech today, so I don't get why 5th gen games apparently suffer from liminal space dread yet games since the jump to HD have had less and less NPCs in them in order to save resources for the map and lighting don't have that same effect on you guys.
Hell, games like Returnal and Demon Souls have less NPCs around than Mario 64.
@@Gameprojordan "Uncanny vibe to it", more like a creepy vibe to it.
The carnival music got me terrified
Apparently the canonical reason Peach’s castle is so empty is because she has two. One where all of her furniture is, and another for all of her artwork.
Well that’d make a lot of sense
SM64DS: Am i a Joke to you?
@@garsrandom4358 y
@@WeirdEdz Because the ds version features her bedroom, her game room, with lots of furniture, etc..etc..But she could totally have bedrooms in both castle so it doesn't make it totally unimaginable
mario 64 always felt like it was missing something to me as a kid, even when playing the DS port with all the bonus characters and multiplayer modes. going back to the n64 version only amplifies that feeling
Super Metroid was my childhood creepy game. It really makes you feel like a helpless human in a hopeless and completely isolated milieu. In later games, other characters were added (imo) to the game’s detriment, at least in so far as maintaining its original creep factor. If an hour and a half long 16-bit sprite based video game from the 90s can give you nightmares, you know something was done right by that dev team
Ngl mortal kombat waz mine... Only wen reptile would jump scare on screen in between matches & I'd quickly shut my super NES off & put in street fighter turbo, I thought my game waz possessed until I read about it in a gaming magazine after I had traded it 4 donkey Kong country which I didn't regret but wen I got older I borrowed it byke from who I traded it 2 & kicked azz w/ every character from begin 2 end w/ da reptile jump scares makin me mad 4 holding up my progress especially after a loss so I'd take it out on da next opponent. 😂😭
Super Metroid definitely freaked me out back then and still makes me uncomfortable to this day. Really great game! It was as atmospherically creepy as a 16-bit game could be. Unsettling music, sound design, and monsters. Earthbound is up there too. I’ve also seen a bit of Clock Tower and Dark Seed being really freaky too, but maybe those games are considered 32-bit?
I usually don't believe or dive deep into myths/creepypastas/legends but one myths of the Wet Dry World having a negative emotional aura hit me hard when I first played super Mario 64. I don't know what it was about WDW but whenever I played SM64 I always wanted to avoid the level. The eerily empty and claustrophobic level made me feel weird. At first I thought It was only me that felt this but later I stumbled upon this video and many others and saw about this topic which surprised me, knowing more people had experienced the same thing I did.
Never thought of it from this perspective, but you put into words something I had vague feelings about from the game but could never really point out...
Starting from when I young, and even to this day, I sometimes have dreams of completely made up environments and levels inside SM64. One was a huge, descending spiral staircase with no end. One was this overgrown swamp area in the Tick Tock Clock place for some reason. One was this foggy, medieval abandoned village with water fountains everywhere. Some were just, completely surreal and fragmented setpieces with no rhyme or purpose. They have always unsettled me, but like you said, they also always gave me this kind of, nostalgic and wistful feeling whenever I think back to them.
That's why fanmade levels from SM64 ROMhacks have always been so surreal to me to the point where I get genuinely uneasy trying to watch any playthroughs of them, and why the custom levels displayed in Greenio's Personalised Copy ARG affected me so badly because they looked and felt *real*, like, another universe where the 64DD was a success and SM64 got its expansion to include more stuff.
Made me think back to my dreams. Of visions of things that could have occured in another reality, separate from ours. Psychological anomalies that feel so real, and yet aren't.
Man, liminal spaces fucked me up bad.
See, this is the detail that gets me the most: So many people have had dreams about this game. I used to have full-blown nightmares about this game, with monsters that weren't in the game, levels that were surrealistic and impossible to actually complete, and music that the game doesn't have.
So many of us have had dreams about this game, and yet, I haven't heard too many people talking about having dreams about other games. Not that they aren't, of course, but that's just what I have noticed.
What is it about this game specifically that causes us to dream about it more than other games?
Not reading all dat
*Scene of SpongeBob and Patrick on the mini roller coaster*
This reminded me of how when I was little, I had a CRT TV in my room with the N64 hooked up to it, and I remember sometimes at night as I laid in bed I would stare at the screen in fear because for some reason I had this looming feeling that the screen would turn on by itself, I thought either a game would start up, or just something random would come on. I had this feeling that if I looked away it would turn on, maybe with the image of Mario drowning or something. I haven't thought about this in years and forgot about it but somehow this video made me remember it. Really unsettling even now when I think about it. I had a lot of these weird fears as a kid
You're Not Alone in That. I Had A Fear Of My TV Randomly Jumpscaring Me When I Was About 5. idk why.
Omg I had this fear too !!!!! Even in the 90s when a TV channel had technical difficulties and they would put a screen up I always thought I was gonna get jumpscared 😅
Dam. This did bring back some weird memories. I used to stare into the static when tv would go off for the night. There was something awful happening and I couldn't process it. I also remember the tv turning on randomly on in the middle of the night, but I almost always blacked out and couldn't remember it the next day. I have maybe two or three memories I've unrepressed do to ...questionable substances. Thinking about those memories puts me in a feedback loop. I get a glimpse of what they said, then my mind empties, and I have the feeling I can recall so I think again, reexperience, and end up in the same place. It's mentally and physically taxing so I give up trying to remember, and am just left with questions
CRTs are just so creepy in general. The constant visual 'hum' and appearance of activity even when they are off is super unsettling. As a kid I had one in my room, and the light from the street lamp outside would bounce off the curved glass and it was so weird to watch. It never really felt fully turned off, and I always felt like it would turn on or something would reach out of it as a kid.
Some of these tvs really turned on at random with seemingly no input ime.
Does anyone else remember seeing the promotional renderings found in the instruction book or in strategy guides? The one of metal Mario (you know, THE metal Mario render) still gets me today - it’s clearly meant to be Hazy Maze Cave, yet that exact area isn’t anywhere in the stage. It’s almost like an official reimagining, or cut content.
It’s all so funny, because Miyamoto stated in an interview he didn’t want SM64 to feel dangerous per se, but merely “mysterious”. That’s why so many characters aren’t hostile, and why there’s not many obstacle course moments throughout the game.
If only the original creators could see what they’ve done to our childhoods, ha.
Oh yes, that renderrrrrr!
Never thought it was scary, for us that was pretty much grown or grown when it came out was shocked by its technical achievements. It seemed kinda sandboxy and upbeat. You must have been real young when it came out.
I was really young when Super Mario 64 was released, yet I never found this game creepy. Quite the opposite; it enamored me with the Mario universe even more.
I think we all know why there was a limited amount of enemies in each level - the hardware. Big boos mansion was one of the creepiest Mario moments for me, and I can see some of the thoughts - such as the underwater death animation or the backyard area with all the boos - but majority of the other levels were not creepy to me.
This game feels like a dream. Like when Link woke the wind fish and realized that the love and friendship he created with all the characters, was all destroyed. His friends all stopped existing if he chose to wake up.
The scariest élément is that it seems that nintendo realized hpw creepy their game was and over compensated with the cute elements and bright colored text and it just makes the etherial nightmare feeling increase.
Zelda Ocarina of time (used same engine and released around same time) is also often quite lonely, but the story, characters and even enemies give it life.
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I think OOT has a similar feeling at times though. Most especially when you become adult link and walk out to castle town for the first time. I think for me, it's the wide open spaces with absolutely nothing going on that gets to me. Well, that and the Redeads.
5:54
By definition, Peaches castle is actually the *most* liminal space in the game.
Liminal space definition: In architecture, liminal spaces are defined as "the physical spaces between one destination and the next." Common examples of such spaces include hallways, airports, and streets.
The castle is the space between every level, and by definition is a liminal space.
yea that part annoyed me, he has no idea what a liminal space actually is
And it could be that liminal spaces like these mentioned, scare people so much because they don't generally exist in nature, being that nature is fractal and spaces in nature seamlessly compliment one another.
@@bathroomshy
A lot about the way he explains things annoys me. The script he's reading from feels very half-baked the whole way through.
sm64 "horror" gotta be my least favorite genre of video
g-gulp i pissed myself watching this
A great man once said: "So long gay Bowser." Really makes you think.
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This game IMMEDIATELY scared the living shit out of me as a kid. From hearing that creepy music to bowser’s laugh when u walk up to a door u cant open yet, to a boo randomly appearing in the back castle hall. Not to mention how eerie peach and bowser’s portraits around the castle looked. Nightmares for DAYYYYYS LOL
Damn someone understands me
The Music when he laughs is a HUGE no no in my book.
Nah the frikin water maps gave me the creeps as a kid I literally couldn't play them alone. Cause you'd have to dive deep in that water . Fuckin aye
@@dinaramadani1671something About being alone in this watermaps lmao I bet this game fucked me up more than I can comprehend lol
The bowser laugh at the unopened door is the reason I couldn’t progress in the game as a kid
this is a joke right
“Super Mario 64 was not intended to be a horror game”
Thanks for pointing that out, I wouldn’t have known otherwise
5:04 Well, the princess' castle is a good example of unsettling and empty space, but with the song, it just isn't scary.
I find a lot of these theories/creepypastas fascinating, and they're very fun to read and watch but SM64 itself has never really creeped me out at all. it's probably because I grew up with the DS port where the castle definitely felt more alive and "lived in," with the rabbits everywhere and the rec room and such, which made it seem much less like a liminal space. that probably extended over when I played the original, as if my experiences in the DS version were telling me "there's nothing scary about this castle my guy, just focus on not dying for the 100th time in RR"
nowadays I'm an avid watcher of SM64 speedruns, and seeing people tear apart stages like SSL and WDW on a regular basis takes away any creepiness factor that I would've gotten from them. don't get me started on the TASes. the geometry of the desolate castle exterior is just another tool for the almighty reality warper mario to be used to phase through reality and travel dozens of parallel universes away in his quest to open the moat door underwater and gank bowser in the fire sea where he would least expect it
I agree with everything you said, I had the exact same experience
It isn't scary, people are just being dorks and jumping on this dumb bandwagon for whatever reason.
"This game has a sense of lonliness"
Toad, the pink bo bombs, koopa troop "are we a joke to you"
This game came out when I was 6, and the only thing that I remember creeping me out was the endless staircase. Loved that game growing up and still do.