I always felt like RR was a bit of letdown overall. Being the last stage of the game, you would expect it to require mastery of Mario's moveset and to show off your skills that you have learned over the course of the entire game. Instead, you spend half the stage on a small little carpet dodging obstacles/fire/enemies. There are some cool parts of the stage, though!
I agree. I love it. As a kid this stage was so liminal, magical and aesthetically cool. The fact there was a big house in the sky and a flying ship was cool. My only complaint is I wish they had a different soundtrack for this stage.
The fact these last two stages not only have the same music, but also the exact same music you've heard several times before in slides is probably my biggest gripe. Especially since I don't think the music fits here.
Yeah they could've done some seriously atmospheric/dreamy music for a level like Rainbow Ride, and something more mechanical/consistent sounding like each elapsing second on a clock for Tick Tock Clock
I just wanted to say that this was a well done series and it’s been a really fun ride. I haven’t subscribed as I don’t care that much about Nintendo stuff, but I watched every episode of this series and I think you deserve a round of applause.
I was about to say "DUDE WHAT ABOUT THE SECRET STARS!!" and you said it at the end. ngl very good retrospective I've been watching since the start I love the editing all very smooth and nicely done can't wait to see more of what you have to offer!!! GOOD JOB!!
Just finished my first full 100% playthrough and rainbow ride was one of my favorites. Like a bowser stage turned into a regular level. It was really satisfying to get used to the carpet rides that were so intimidating back when I was a kid.
Given how TTC and RR use the same theme, I kind of wanna say, they are two faces of the same coin. The coin being, an attempt at a linear challenge stage where you have less freedom of movement and instead have to rely on polishing your skill. But while TTC is based off getting the timing of the moving clock parts memorized, and thus becomes a challenge about patterns and reflexes, RR is a challenge about having random junk being thrown at you, and it's just a matter of reaction time and avoiding enemies or stage hazards. In a sense, one is a speedrun, the other is a Kaizo.
rainbow ride got both of my favorite platforming sections and longest non-platforming sections. if i don't go for full completion i end up really liking it
I love the steady pace you are releasing these videos at. I always like tuning in! I can think of a few games that deserve these sorts of analyses for every level, like Doom.
I'm glad you're enjoying it! I initially was just gonna do a daily December thing but with all the positive feedback i might have to shift how I do these videos. We'll see starting in January. Also, I never even thought of Doom as an option but that would be a lot of fun actually
@@NintenDeen I think Doom has a lot of nuance in how it’s designed. It’s weird, because the level design in classic Doom feels as important if not more than the gunplay, kind of like a platformer. If you did go through with the idea, I would suggest comparing the levels seen in the final game with the beta and alpha levels of Doom. Seeing how Tom Hall’s levels shifted from realistic facilities to Sandy Petersen’s adaptation to more surreal designs was very interesting, and I would watch the heck out of videos that go in-depth on the level design choices and how it effects the gameplay.
I'm digging the positivity. Never really got to this stage as a kid (wasn't very good at committing to games and wasn't very good at controlling characters). It's nice to hear a perspective not trashing the stage.
YES I knew I wasn't the only one who liked this stage! A lot of people bash it for being a bunch of random objects floating in the sky without any cohesion, but I think it conveys a strange sense of finality, like it's an amalgamation of everything you've faced throughout the entire game
I should have addressed this. The fact that the final stage takes place in the sky (as well as the final secret star, the red coin star with the wing cap) is fitting because they're the top of the castle. The sky theme makes full sense. The floating objects seems like an odd criticism though because technically the whole game is a bunch of floating objects lol
I pretty much agree with all of your points in this one. There's nothing wrong with a stage being hard, especially a final stage. And being slowed down doesn't make it bad, it's just a game mechanic and a different type of challenge. And I have never seen Mario 64 as a collectathon. The stars are the main objective, not just an item you collect. These people are comparing a star to something like a red coin. It's not like that. You go into the level to look for a specific star and that star is your goal. Of course you'd have to start the level again when you're doing a completely different objective. This is just people with the hindsight of modern gaming comforts looking back at older games and judging them based the "features" that they're "lacking" that the modern games have. That's like saying Pokémon gen 1 and 2 were bad because they didn't have triple battles or mega evolution or something. It's not really a valid criticism, because it makes no sense to bring up in the first place. Imagine if I said I didn't like the original Star Wars trilogy because Kylo Ren wasn't in them 😂
I get where you're coming from. But I actually think Mario 64 is even better because it's both a collectathon AND a platformer. The stars are both what you collect and your objective. Which is why the modern day criticisms irk me a bit. That being said I also understand classic games will never be viewed by the same lens as someone that didn't throw in all the time as a child so I get it. I'm just happy Nintendo treats Mario right and every generation gets their "this was the best game ever" moment. Other popular franchises don't have that luxury lol
Hey, I've ended up looking forward to these uploads every day since I found this at Cool Cool Mountain. This is a really cool look at each individual level design of the game. Glad to see someone get TTC and love Rainbow Ride like I do. And to prove I don't just like it because I agree with you, I like JRB a lot but get your critisizisms. Anyway I'm subbed and look forward to the rest of this and following any others videos you put out. Right on, dude.
The long jump skip at the start isn't that bad. It's easy to line up the camera for the jump and it's my preferred method to skip the slow start once you've got down how the stage works. But I don't know. I still feel like this level lacks a few things to really make it meet its full potential. The Wing Cap is the iconic cover power up of the game and despite this being a sky themed level, I don't remember the wing cap ever being in it. I think it would have been fun to have some actual flying cap sections in here. And a lot of the set pieces are just kinda random blocks. Like, I would have enjoyed it more if the red coins were also their own mansion in the sky to explore and the other random blocks felt like they were telling some kind of story through their design. Like Hazy Maze Cave has a story to it if you pay attention. Parts of the level are metal wire frames that connect to natural terrain in ways that suggest there were natural paths that collapsed and had to be rebuilt. It has unique doors that suggest something lived there before anyone else, and signs placed all around hint at people finding the place and exploring it after whoever lived there before vanished. All these elements make Hazy Maze Cave have more to it than just a bunch of random challenges, but Rainbow Ride lacks any of that clever design. There's just no sense of why the rainbow ride is even here. Somebody built a mansion in the sky, cool, but why did that person, or group of persons, then go and build a rainbow carpet ride to a bunch of random locations, just to lay out blocks with no purpose other than to be an obstacle course? The rest of the game isn't designed so haphazardly like that.
For me the fact that it was in the sky at the top of the castle was enough cohesion. As well as the red coin secret star in the same sectio. Even their entrances were little drops that you fall into as if you're falling out of the highest tower in the castle into the sky. Tbh I never thought much about the story the stages tell, I'm more about the gameplay challenge offered and this one feels like a final test
@@NintenDeen I prefer when the two are married in design. The gameplay fits into the design of the level, which tells the story through environmental details and most of the levels in SM64 do that to some degree. Even if there isn't an actual story, there's a sense of the location existing either naturally, or for a reason. Rainbow Ride just feels like they needed one more level for one reason or another (probably a good reason, but I don't know what it is) and they just ran out of time and rushed it. Imagine, for example if the story was you had a beings that lived in the clouds, but they're gone now and only the ruins remain and the rainbow road they made to travel. Now Bowser's airship is invading it for strategic advantage and you've got to stop it. You could have a boss on the air ship, frame the obstacles as either wreckage of the rainbow road, or things Bowser's minions have set up to keep Mario from approaching, since they've got an airship to use and don't need it, and the buildings are the remnants of of a grand civilization of which we only see what's left after centuries of abandonment. The potential's there, it just doesn't quite reach it.
@@NintenDeen As an addendum, Lethal Lava Land is another map that has these same problems that I found myself disliking for the same reason on my replay today. Except the part inside the volcano. Once I got there, I found it more enjoyable. Wasn't bothered by the other levels, though. Tall Tall Mountain gave me no real trouble, Tick Tock Clock was so late in the game that I had enough stars to get to the final fight without needing to do the whole level (still did one star just to play through every level once). Didn't get overly frustrated by any of it, just RR and LLL in particular stood out as less thoughtfully put together than the rest. Found myself liking the vibe of Hazy Maze Cave the most, weirdly enough. It felt eerie in a way that no other level in the game really does. Boo's Haunt felt more actively hostile than other levels, but it I didn't really find anything about it actually creepy. Hazy Maze Cave, however, felt like it could have come out of an actual horror movie, only the horror happened already and you're just finding the place where something really dreadful happened in the past. Also, holy shit, I beat the game in like 3 hours, it is so much shorter than I remember.
The main problem I have with this stage is the obligation to keep up with the magic carpet. Speed is not the problem, but rather how it limits something fundamental in this game. Mario is about jumping, we all know that. But the gravitational parabola takes on new dimensions when you add something inherent to all Marios. The inertia of movement. That resistance of the three-dimensional avatar to change direction or stop because it was following a different movement vector. In my opinion, that is where the depth of the jump lies. It is very different to make a simple jump, to make a running one, to make a backward jump, to make a jump towards the wall, to make two big jumps in a row, etc. And to be able to exploit that to the maximum, you need to control Mario's movement and speed. That is the reason why I like the moments when Mario is free (the part with the red coins or the swings) more. Because I control the rhythm of my jumps. To be fair, there are some obstacles on the magic carpet course that require a good understanding of your speed limit, and the fact that the carpet's speed isn't maintained in Mario when he jumps is a challenge by itself, but it's not enough for me. Maybe that lack of control is also why I hate the ice slide so much, that and the fact that it killed me 100 times. Oh, and screw those crappy pyramids too, they penalize you way too unfairly.
It's not bad game design because it's slow. It's bad game design because it's completely without an artistic direction and is basically just a big pile of unused assets loosely strung together. This is the only map in the game that's so bad that if it was fan made it would be considered a nice first attempt by someone who has a lot to learn about game design.
I don't necessarily agree, but I get your point. I think the 2 sky stages (RR and the Bonus Star) taking place in the top of Peach's Castle shows cohesion. The floating assets and whatnot I can understand the criticism for to some extent, but I'm not sure I agree that it's "bad game design"
Kid me when I first got to this level: YAY FLYING TROUGH THE SKY! Kid me after realizing that you have to standstill on a carpet most of the level and you punished for leaving it: ☹
I think this stage would be more enjoyable, if it had faster magic carpets and/or multiple somewhat close together so that players could get from point A to point B faster while engaging their platforming skills instead of being forced to wait. And newer less confident players could just choose to ride the carpet at a slower pace, if they wanted instead of risking their life jumping from carpet to carpet. Not a terrible course, but the beauty of this game is you don’t have to play all of them to get to the end, if you don’t want to. This game holds up a lot better than some people say and is still worthy of being considered one of the best.
A lot of the sky floor levels' receptions are heavily influenced by the decline of original assets of the game's later stages (possibly caused by the game's troubled development in trying to get the camera to actually work). If they chose almost any other track than the slide themes, both would probably see noticeably less hate lmao
I feel like I pretty much have to after all of the positive feedback I've gotten lol. I'm working on a few episodes for 64 DS and then depending on how that goes I might swing straight into sunshine
I am actually replaying this game with a friend (with coop deluxe) and I have completely beaten it around 6 times (about to 7) and I just love Mario 64 so much. been playing it since I was kid in the early 2000s on my N64 till this day as an adult on my PC that is my work horse for my daily activities.
I hate the 100 coin star in this level. I always fail at wal jumping when the blue coins are active. But when are not active, no problem at all. It's so annoying lol
What bothered me about this stage as a kid wasn't the difficulty really. I found it more "unforgiving" than outright "hard" My issue was the tonal mismatch. It had active, feverish music like slides or the clock, but proceeded so very slowly in comparison. It felt... out of place, on top of the fact that failure here felt so much more punishing compared to how (relatively) little I was doing. I did do the red coin star first tho and that one definitely the best star in the stage to me because it felt more like a test than a Victory lap with extra steps. This tonal issue is less a strike on the game's design and more a matter of the game showing its age(now) and limitations (back when it was new) I will say most people who "hate" this game come back to it with a hindsight heavy focus but rainbow road to me is one point of weakness I picked up even as a 7 year old playing it. I still love the overall game to this day but rainbow road was always my least favorite stage.
It is a bit too energetic at times. I wanted to change the music for this video but I figured if ppl had to listen to it on repeat while playing, they'll have to listen to it while I speak too 😂
I had every single store I couldn't get the last star Make it to the top I don't remember what the name is but I couldn't do it Plus I didn't own this game I played it over to my cousin's house we always just missing one star and it was on this level
Considering Super Mario World was the main Mario before this; An autoscroller makes tons of sense. They're like water levels, annoying but welcome change of gameplay
But once you know where to go, this is genuienly one of the easiest stages in the game? It's bad design because it's slow, obvious, and frankly not that interesting. Tick tock clock has mechanics that can slow you down, and it's no where near as bad, and is genuienly a pain in the ass even if you understand marios movement. I frankly don't understand what you're talking about from the beginning.
@@NintenDeen If you don't know where to go, even bob-omb battlefeild can be "difficult", which if that's your bar...okay, I guess. Frankly I don't think anyone judges difficulty on first attempts, because that bar is just all over the place with how far back you want to arbitrarily set it. Is it this persons first time with a controler, is that how far back we set it? Then they wouldn't even be at this level yet. The logic just doesn't follow and gets messy if you try to nail down what first attempt really means. You said in the video, that "if they don't know marios movement", then again, they wouldn't be here yet, there are MANY other obsticals where you have to at least have a decent grasp on his movement before you get here, so if they didn't, they wouldn't be at this level. If anything, I'd argue it would make more sense if it was earlier in the game, a good level to learn the fine motions and take your time. By the time you're here, you've straight up had to deal with koopa the quick at least twice, and that required some pretty high levels of understanding marios movement.
That's fair, but I also think the fact that most people struggle with this stage, even returning players, is proof that it's a hard one to learn to be comfortable with Mario's movement.
@@NintenDeen Oh, that's not the movement, that's usually the invisible hit boxes, which this level is plagued with, like, painfully plagued with. Assuming we're talking about the kind of returning players I'm thinking of (speed runners). Otherwise, most people have problems being paitent with the level if anything, myself included. Most of my deaths here aren't due to a lack of understanding the movement, it's the fact the game basically has you in the mindset of "boing boing wahoo", and then just curb stomps the breaks when you're in that mode.
No I'm not talking about speed runners lol. Speed runners can go into any stage and make it look like a playground. I meant your average player, but you're right I think the patience has a lot to do it
I always felt like RR was a bit of letdown overall. Being the last stage of the game, you would expect it to require mastery of Mario's moveset and to show off your skills that you have learned over the course of the entire game. Instead, you spend half the stage on a small little carpet dodging obstacles/fire/enemies.
There are some cool parts of the stage, though!
I agree. I love it. As a kid this stage was so liminal, magical and aesthetically cool. The fact there was a big house in the sky and a flying ship was cool. My only complaint is I wish they had a different soundtrack for this stage.
It's a carryover from the 2D Mario games where you had an Overworld theme, Underground theme, Aquatic theme and Athletic theme.
The fact these last two stages not only have the same music, but also the exact same music you've heard several times before in slides is probably my biggest gripe.
Especially since I don't think the music fits here.
Yeah they could've done some seriously atmospheric/dreamy music for a level like Rainbow Ride, and something more mechanical/consistent sounding like each elapsing second on a clock for Tick Tock Clock
To be fair they probably didnt have the time to make a new song
I don't think this song is suitable for any level. It's mindless thought-destroying cacaphony. Always hated it.
I just wanted to say that this was a well done series and it’s been a really fun ride.
I haven’t subscribed as I don’t care that much about Nintendo stuff, but I watched every episode of this series and I think you deserve a round of applause.
thanks for keeping up!
There are still 2 more episodes coming though haha
You're right about the swimming stage. I love the swimming stages. So it's a blast every time i go through them.
I was about to say "DUDE WHAT ABOUT THE SECRET STARS!!" and you said it at the end. ngl very good retrospective I've been watching since the start I love the editing all very smooth and nicely done can't wait to see more of what you have to offer!!! GOOD JOB!!
Thanks for the kind words! Keep an eye out because I'm currently trying to get 64 DS going by Christmas or shortly after
Just finished my first full 100% playthrough and rainbow ride was one of my favorites. Like a bowser stage turned into a regular level. It was really satisfying to get used to the carpet rides that were so intimidating back when I was a kid.
Oh nice. Did you do the 3D All stars version?
Given how TTC and RR use the same theme, I kind of wanna say, they are two faces of the same coin. The coin being, an attempt at a linear challenge stage where you have less freedom of movement and instead have to rely on polishing your skill.
But while TTC is based off getting the timing of the moving clock parts memorized, and thus becomes a challenge about patterns and reflexes, RR is a challenge about having random junk being thrown at you, and it's just a matter of reaction time and avoiding enemies or stage hazards. In a sense, one is a speedrun, the other is a Kaizo.
This is a good observation. I address it in the conclusion (this upcoming Tuesday). Basically the existence of sister stages
rainbow ride got both of my favorite platforming sections and longest non-platforming sections. if i don't go for full completion i end up really liking it
I love the steady pace you are releasing these videos at. I always like tuning in! I can think of a few games that deserve these sorts of analyses for every level, like Doom.
I'm glad you're enjoying it! I initially was just gonna do a daily December thing but with all the positive feedback i might have to shift how I do these videos. We'll see starting in January.
Also, I never even thought of Doom as an option but that would be a lot of fun actually
@@NintenDeen I think Doom has a lot of nuance in how it’s designed. It’s weird, because the level design in classic Doom feels as important if not more than the gunplay, kind of like a platformer.
If you did go through with the idea, I would suggest comparing the levels seen in the final game with the beta and alpha levels of Doom. Seeing how Tom Hall’s levels shifted from realistic facilities to Sandy Petersen’s adaptation to more surreal designs was very interesting, and I would watch the heck out of videos that go in-depth on the level design choices and how it effects the gameplay.
I'm digging the positivity. Never really got to this stage as a kid (wasn't very good at committing to games and wasn't very good at controlling characters). It's nice to hear a perspective not trashing the stage.
I'm all about that nostalgia bias 😄
YES I knew I wasn't the only one who liked this stage! A lot of people bash it for being a bunch of random objects floating in the sky without any cohesion, but I think it conveys a strange sense of finality, like it's an amalgamation of everything you've faced throughout the entire game
I should have addressed this. The fact that the final stage takes place in the sky (as well as the final secret star, the red coin star with the wing cap) is fitting because they're the top of the castle. The sky theme makes full sense. The floating objects seems like an odd criticism though because technically the whole game is a bunch of floating objects lol
@@NintenDeen And the final Bowser to top that off.
It's the Champion's Road of SM64
I pretty much agree with all of your points in this one. There's nothing wrong with a stage being hard, especially a final stage. And being slowed down doesn't make it bad, it's just a game mechanic and a different type of challenge. And I have never seen Mario 64 as a collectathon. The stars are the main objective, not just an item you collect. These people are comparing a star to something like a red coin. It's not like that. You go into the level to look for a specific star and that star is your goal. Of course you'd have to start the level again when you're doing a completely different objective.
This is just people with the hindsight of modern gaming comforts looking back at older games and judging them based the "features" that they're "lacking" that the modern games have. That's like saying Pokémon gen 1 and 2 were bad because they didn't have triple battles or mega evolution or something. It's not really a valid criticism, because it makes no sense to bring up in the first place. Imagine if I said I didn't like the original Star Wars trilogy because Kylo Ren wasn't in them 😂
Nah
I get where you're coming from. But I actually think Mario 64 is even better because it's both a collectathon AND a platformer. The stars are both what you collect and your objective. Which is why the modern day criticisms irk me a bit. That being said I also understand classic games will never be viewed by the same lens as someone that didn't throw in all the time as a child so I get it. I'm just happy Nintendo treats Mario right and every generation gets their "this was the best game ever" moment. Other popular franchises don't have that luxury lol
@@kookerbridge-p1o Yah
Hey, I've ended up looking forward to these uploads every day since I found this at Cool Cool Mountain. This is a really cool look at each individual level design of the game.
Glad to see someone get TTC and love Rainbow Ride like I do. And to prove I don't just like it because I agree with you, I like JRB a lot but get your critisizisms.
Anyway I'm subbed and look forward to the rest of this and following any others videos you put out. Right on, dude.
Glad you've enjoyed them :) . I've had a blast going through them so it's nice to see others appreciate not only the game, but the vids
"There's a warp in the house that takes you back to where the red coins are."
Me: FUCKING WHAT?!
Balcony of the big house to the area atop the coins 🤣
The long jump skip at the start isn't that bad. It's easy to line up the camera for the jump and it's my preferred method to skip the slow start once you've got down how the stage works.
But I don't know. I still feel like this level lacks a few things to really make it meet its full potential. The Wing Cap is the iconic cover power up of the game and despite this being a sky themed level, I don't remember the wing cap ever being in it. I think it would have been fun to have some actual flying cap sections in here. And a lot of the set pieces are just kinda random blocks. Like, I would have enjoyed it more if the red coins were also their own mansion in the sky to explore and the other random blocks felt like they were telling some kind of story through their design.
Like Hazy Maze Cave has a story to it if you pay attention. Parts of the level are metal wire frames that connect to natural terrain in ways that suggest there were natural paths that collapsed and had to be rebuilt. It has unique doors that suggest something lived there before anyone else, and signs placed all around hint at people finding the place and exploring it after whoever lived there before vanished. All these elements make Hazy Maze Cave have more to it than just a bunch of random challenges, but Rainbow Ride lacks any of that clever design. There's just no sense of why the rainbow ride is even here. Somebody built a mansion in the sky, cool, but why did that person, or group of persons, then go and build a rainbow carpet ride to a bunch of random locations, just to lay out blocks with no purpose other than to be an obstacle course? The rest of the game isn't designed so haphazardly like that.
For me the fact that it was in the sky at the top of the castle was enough cohesion. As well as the red coin secret star in the same sectio. Even their entrances were little drops that you fall into as if you're falling out of the highest tower in the castle into the sky. Tbh I never thought much about the story the stages tell, I'm more about the gameplay challenge offered and this one feels like a final test
@@NintenDeen I prefer when the two are married in design. The gameplay fits into the design of the level, which tells the story through environmental details and most of the levels in SM64 do that to some degree. Even if there isn't an actual story, there's a sense of the location existing either naturally, or for a reason.
Rainbow Ride just feels like they needed one more level for one reason or another (probably a good reason, but I don't know what it is) and they just ran out of time and rushed it.
Imagine, for example if the story was you had a beings that lived in the clouds, but they're gone now and only the ruins remain and the rainbow road they made to travel. Now Bowser's airship is invading it for strategic advantage and you've got to stop it. You could have a boss on the air ship, frame the obstacles as either wreckage of the rainbow road, or things Bowser's minions have set up to keep Mario from approaching, since they've got an airship to use and don't need it, and the buildings are the remnants of of a grand civilization of which we only see what's left after centuries of abandonment. The potential's there, it just doesn't quite reach it.
@@NintenDeen As an addendum, Lethal Lava Land is another map that has these same problems that I found myself disliking for the same reason on my replay today. Except the part inside the volcano. Once I got there, I found it more enjoyable.
Wasn't bothered by the other levels, though. Tall Tall Mountain gave me no real trouble, Tick Tock Clock was so late in the game that I had enough stars to get to the final fight without needing to do the whole level (still did one star just to play through every level once). Didn't get overly frustrated by any of it, just RR and LLL in particular stood out as less thoughtfully put together than the rest.
Found myself liking the vibe of Hazy Maze Cave the most, weirdly enough. It felt eerie in a way that no other level in the game really does. Boo's Haunt felt more actively hostile than other levels, but it I didn't really find anything about it actually creepy. Hazy Maze Cave, however, felt like it could have come out of an actual horror movie, only the horror happened already and you're just finding the place where something really dreadful happened in the past.
Also, holy shit, I beat the game in like 3 hours, it is so much shorter than I remember.
6:23 Low Poly Mario
The main problem I have with this stage is the obligation to keep up with the magic carpet. Speed is not the problem, but rather how it limits something fundamental in this game.
Mario is about jumping, we all know that. But the gravitational parabola takes on new dimensions when you add something inherent to all Marios. The inertia of movement. That resistance of the three-dimensional avatar to change direction or stop because it was following a different movement vector. In my opinion, that is where the depth of the jump lies. It is very different to make a simple jump, to make a running one, to make a backward jump, to make a jump towards the wall, to make two big jumps in a row, etc. And to be able to exploit that to the maximum, you need to control Mario's movement and speed. That is the reason why I like the moments when Mario is free (the part with the red coins or the swings) more. Because I control the rhythm of my jumps. To be fair, there are some obstacles on the magic carpet course that require a good understanding of your speed limit, and the fact that the carpet's speed isn't maintained in Mario when he jumps is a challenge by itself, but it's not enough for me. Maybe that lack of control is also why I hate the ice slide so much, that and the fact that it killed me 100 times. Oh, and screw those crappy pyramids too, they penalize you way too unfairly.
the music needs a more grand or radiant theme, as the final course in the sky.
I'm not entirely bothered by the music, but I can agree something more grand would've hit differently
@@NintenDeen something more soothing like Mario Galaxy ost perhaps.
legendary game
It's not bad game design because it's slow. It's bad game design because it's completely without an artistic direction and is basically just a big pile of unused assets loosely strung together. This is the only map in the game that's so bad that if it was fan made it would be considered a nice first attempt by someone who has a lot to learn about game design.
Rainbow Ride is Temu Cloud Coukoo Land
I don't necessarily agree, but I get your point. I think the 2 sky stages (RR and the Bonus Star) taking place in the top of Peach's Castle shows cohesion. The floating assets and whatnot I can understand the criticism for to some extent, but I'm not sure I agree that it's "bad game design"
Bad level design, not enough rainbows 😂
#IGN
Kid me when I first got to this level: YAY FLYING TROUGH THE SKY!
Kid me after realizing that you have to standstill on a carpet most of the level and you punished for leaving it: ☹
I think this stage would be more enjoyable, if it had faster magic carpets and/or multiple somewhat close together so that players could get from point A to point B faster while engaging their platforming skills instead of being forced to wait. And newer less confident players could just choose to ride the carpet at a slower pace, if they wanted instead of risking their life jumping from carpet to carpet. Not a terrible course, but the beauty of this game is you don’t have to play all of them to get to the end, if you don’t want to. This game holds up a lot better than some people say and is still worthy of being considered one of the best.
I agree with you and another commenter, the only thing I would have changed about this stage is the soundtrack (mario 63's remix was perfect)
A lot of the sky floor levels' receptions are heavily influenced by the decline of original assets of the game's later stages (possibly caused by the game's troubled development in trying to get the camera to actually work). If they chose almost any other track than the slide themes, both would probably see noticeably less hate lmao
I love Rainbow Ride and always have.
I actually enjoy it, but I would prefer if it had more routes so you can skip the magic carpet since it is pretty slow
You can skip it on stars 3 stars plus the 100 coin star, so that's better than nothing? Lol
After this level and Tick Tock Clock I didn't want to hear the Slider theme anymore 🫠
That is a COMPLETELY fair sentiment 🤣
Do you plan to do this style of retrospective on Mario sunshin, and the mario galaxy games two? That would be kind of neet.
I feel like I pretty much have to after all of the positive feedback I've gotten lol. I'm working on a few episodes for 64 DS and then depending on how that goes I might swing straight into sunshine
Awww we did it
Tomorrow is the secret star day 🤫
hope you do lets talk about bowser stages
Tomorrow is secret stars and Bowser stages
There is a warp in the house?!
I think it's on the ledge outside of the door technically? It's the way to get out if you're stranded. Takes you to the red coin area
I am actually replaying this game with a friend (with coop deluxe) and I have completely beaten it around 6 times (about to 7) and I just love Mario 64 so much. been playing it since I was kid in the early 2000s on my N64 till this day as an adult on my PC that is my work horse for my daily activities.
I hate the 100 coin star in this level. I always fail at wal jumping when the blue coins are active. But when are not active, no problem at all. It's so annoying lol
🤣 psychological challenges
What bothered me about this stage as a kid wasn't the difficulty really. I found it more "unforgiving" than outright "hard" My issue was the tonal mismatch. It had active, feverish music like slides or the clock, but proceeded so very slowly in comparison. It felt... out of place, on top of the fact that failure here felt so much more punishing compared to how (relatively) little I was doing. I did do the red coin star first tho and that one definitely the best star in the stage to me because it felt more like a test than a Victory lap with extra steps. This tonal issue is less a strike on the game's design and more a matter of the game showing its age(now) and limitations (back when it was new)
I will say most people who "hate" this game come back to it with a hindsight heavy focus but rainbow road to me is one point of weakness I picked up even as a 7 year old playing it. I still love the overall game to this day but rainbow road was always my least favorite stage.
I know it’s the stage music, but it’s so distracting 😩
It is a bit too energetic at times. I wanted to change the music for this video but I figured if ppl had to listen to it on repeat while playing, they'll have to listen to it while I speak too 😂
@ good point lol
Been loving your videos!
Glad you're enjoying!
I had every single store I couldn't get the last star Make it to the top I don't remember what the name is but I couldn't do it Plus I didn't own this game I played it over to my cousin's house we always just missing one star and it was on this level
The Alzheimer's level.
🎉
I've never been a fan of auto strollers, and that applies to carpets. I just find it too slow and boring
Considering Super Mario World was the main Mario before this; An autoscroller makes tons of sense. They're like water levels, annoying but welcome change of gameplay
@@n.rogers2273 "annoying but welcome"
I believe they call that a contradiction in terms.
@@CoralCopperHead you don't enjoy a challenge?
But once you know where to go, this is genuienly one of the easiest stages in the game? It's bad design because it's slow, obvious, and frankly not that interesting. Tick tock clock has mechanics that can slow you down, and it's no where near as bad, and is genuienly a pain in the ass even if you understand marios movement. I frankly don't understand what you're talking about from the beginning.
Once you know where to go most of the stages become easier lol. I agree, this one can easily be cheesed. But so can a bunch of other stages
@@NintenDeen If you don't know where to go, even bob-omb battlefeild can be "difficult", which if that's your bar...okay, I guess. Frankly I don't think anyone judges difficulty on first attempts, because that bar is just all over the place with how far back you want to arbitrarily set it. Is it this persons first time with a controler, is that how far back we set it? Then they wouldn't even be at this level yet. The logic just doesn't follow and gets messy if you try to nail down what first attempt really means.
You said in the video, that "if they don't know marios movement", then again, they wouldn't be here yet, there are MANY other obsticals where you have to at least have a decent grasp on his movement before you get here, so if they didn't, they wouldn't be at this level. If anything, I'd argue it would make more sense if it was earlier in the game, a good level to learn the fine motions and take your time. By the time you're here, you've straight up had to deal with koopa the quick at least twice, and that required some pretty high levels of understanding marios movement.
That's fair, but I also think the fact that most people struggle with this stage, even returning players, is proof that it's a hard one to learn to be comfortable with Mario's movement.
@@NintenDeen Oh, that's not the movement, that's usually the invisible hit boxes, which this level is plagued with, like, painfully plagued with. Assuming we're talking about the kind of returning players I'm thinking of (speed runners). Otherwise, most people have problems being paitent with the level if anything, myself included. Most of my deaths here aren't due to a lack of understanding the movement, it's the fact the game basically has you in the mindset of "boing boing wahoo", and then just curb stomps the breaks when you're in that mode.
No I'm not talking about speed runners lol. Speed runners can go into any stage and make it look like a playground. I meant your average player, but you're right I think the patience has a lot to do it