Mario 64 Ramble

I'll be the first to admit that I'm one of the biggest haters on the planet when it comes to a lot of beloved N64 games, primarily SM64 and OOT. I dunno maybe it's because I grew up on the DS and 3DS versions of the games specifically, but I just really never got that hype. That being said I recently realized that I've never finished either game in my life (along with *quite a few others* that I probably should) and decided they would go on my great big list of retro games to complete.
It should be mentioned of course that I'm doing this shit on an emulator a) because getting the actual hardware is expensive and I LOVE PIRACY and b) there's this funny little website called RetroAchievements that I can connect to my emulator that gives me all sorts of fuckass challenges for games that are sometimes really fun and sometimes genuinely evil. 
 Anyway the game I started with was Super Mario 64 since that's the one I have the most experience with and the one I tolerate more. Listen I get it this game was monumental at the time of release being the first 3D platformer EVER and all that and I know they still had a couple years left before they really worked out all the kinks but good GOD I can't stand the camera in this game what were they THINKING. Second of all the movement is. Well you know. Again I try not to be too critical of that sort of thing when it comes to games from this era because I know they were still figuring out how to make games in a 3D space but it irks me IT IRKS ME. Like I dunno how speedrunners do it they take this rusty ass jalopy and make it run like. I dunno whatever you call this. Like I find this so impressive because I can't even predict what flavor of jump Mario is gonna do half the time.
This of course is what I thought before starting the game as a wise and mature transgender woman. I've evolved from my primitive monkey brain of the past I own a commander deck now things are different. I started the game and immediately I gotta say I do kinda miss the idea of Peach having a deeper voice I kinda fuck with that return tenor Peach to me immediately. I also noticed for the first time in my life just how many little noises Mario makes they had Charles Martinet in the booth making some ungodly sounds in there. I guess they had him doing that for like 30 years now that I think about it. Anyway
Bob-Omb Battlefield. I have absolutely nothing to say about it that some guy in khaki shorts hasn't said on Youtube two billion times now like yeah it's the perfectly first level I'll admit it hottest take this side of the fucking sun ya got me. What I do have to say is that this is the first taste I've gotten of the kind of tomfoolery RetroAchievements expects me to get up to in these levels, most of which involving me collecting 8 red coins without taking damage or collecting a star while spitting in the face of everything it stands for. In Bob-Omb Battlefield this mostly involved me shooting myself out of a cannon over and over again to complete Mario Wings to the Sky without the Wing Cap.
My favorite example of this sort of achievement I've found so far are the star specific achievements in Whomp's Fortress where they basically just make me do speedrun tricks. Specifically collecting the Shoot Into the Wild Blue star without cannons and Fall Onto the Caged Island without the owl. You may have gathered this from all my shitting and crying and pissing but I Am Not Good At This Game, and I think that comes from the fundamental lack of understanding I have in regards to taking advantage of this games controls and momentum. These two challenges gave me an entirely new appreciation for them however, as I learned something very important: Wall Jumps are broken as hell oh my god look at this shit. The fact that this is not only something that's possible, but something I learned to do somewhat consistently after about 10-15 minutes of practice filled me with a level of pride and joy I was not expecting if I'm being so honest.
After cruising through Bob-Omb Battlefield and Whomp's Fortress, I decided to go ahead and unlock the wing cap which. I can't lie I still hate the way that thing controls fuck the wing cap. I also went and grabbed the secret slide stars as well. This is where I learned about a dark truth. Retro Achievements expects me to grab every single coin in slide levels. This. This is a minor inconvenience at best I'll be honest but the amount of times I missed a single coin and had to restart was mildly frustrating. Anyway with that done I decided to round up my cute little session with Bowser in the Dark World.
What is the Dark World? Like I can "oh this probably exists in Mario somewhere" away pretty much every other locale in this game (except like. Wet Dry World maybe) but I cannot fathom where the Dark World might be I think he made that up to farm aura. It's a fine level, not my favorite Bowser level in this game but it does highlight the last achievement type I've discovered so far. In each world, there is an achievement for finding every hidden 1-up mushroom. This is interesting in the fact that there are more of these things hidden around then I realized like what do you mean there are five of these in the dark world I know of like three max.
Bowser was Bowser. This first fight is kinda hard to fuck up even for a homunculus like me.
Anyway that's about all I did during this play session I just wanted an excuse to talk about it in a place my friends could see it without throwing a wall of text in a Discord server bye bye.