Digital playgrounds
I was thinking about mario 64 again, as one does. warning for extremely obvious take but it's so nostalgic to me. It was the first video game I ever played, or remember playing, and I remember being very young and being excited to go to my grandparents' house just so I could play Mario. I was probably six or so. We (that is, me and my cousins) would have grandpa get us to yoshi, getting us the 99 lives, and for hours we (mostly I) would just run around in the game with no intrest in finding any of the stars, just running around in different levels. Most clearly, I remember playing in the castle itself, triple jumping in the courtyard, shooting myself at nothing in particular out of the cannon, and chasing the rabbit in the basement halls. To call video games digital playgrounds is probably not an original statement, but this is truly how I thought of it as a child.
Years after grandpa died, I asked my grandma if I could have the N64 and she gladly let me have it. Booting up Mario 64 again, I could see evidence of my grandpa having used the game in much the same way. In his file, Mario was missing his hat. There's a couple places he can lose his hat, and surely grandpa would have known hou to get it back. But he never did, after some point. It gave me the impression that he'd just picked a level at random and run around for awhile with no goal in mind. (well, as I'm writing this I realize it's probably equally likely I lost his hat when I was younger). In all the levels, he'd collected as many coins as possible in all the levels, way past the 100 you need to get any reward. I'm sure he knew this but kept running around anyways, looking for any excuse to stay in the mushroom kingdom. He never got to play another mario game after that. The n64 was, to my knowledge, the only nintendo console he ever owned. If 64 was my only game, I think I'd also spend as much time as possible running around in circles.
Something Mario 64's creators understood really well was how to make movement in and of itself a joy. I don't think it's necessary to list all of mario's jumps, but the sheer variety is probably what creates most of the game's fun. Nothing feels better than a perfectly excecuted triple jump.
I'm not sure where I was going with this. I'll return to it later.