SM64.com – Everything you didn’t know about Super Mario 64

This is a website that I’ve known about for quite some time, but never really got around to writing about. Sm64.com is a website entirely dedicated to everything you would need to know about Super Mario 64 as a game.

Coin collecting, racing, speed running…
This website is all about Super Mario 64, and particularly focuses on various challenges found in the game.

SM64com

Now, to give a bit of background (and a bit of a confession)… I never completed Super Mario 64 till 2014. Back in the 90’s, I never had the game growing up and didn’t play it at friend’s houses. I played the DS version of Mario 64 back when that was new and 100%ed it just fine, especially with the OP Luigi backflip.

The whole thing was recorded, and I even made a few GIFs out of it. This one in particular seems to be a favourite on Tumblr:

Any way, the point I’m trying to lead towards is that I used the site as a guide for certain stars, particularly the 100-coin challenge. The one that bummed me out the most was the Dire Dire Docks level which has 106 coins in total, including the 8 red coins (which count as 16). It really has some of the best (or at least most likeable) text guides that there care online.

The website also deals with documenting speed runs for both the entire game and individual stars. When I think of speedrunning, I usually associate it with Youtube and video sharing which became popular in the late 2000’s. However this site has been keeping track since 2002! Archive.org even has a playlist of some really low-res videos of timed star speedruns like the Koopa race of Peach’s slide. Have a look for yourself, it’s a relic of the old internet.

There are a few other things under miscellaneous, such as tables counting and comparing coins and powerups for each level, glitches such as the impossible coin…It’s really worth having a look at the website for yourself.

Sm64.com hasn’t been updated in some time. The last news update was in 2016, the previous in 2014 and then 2008. I suppose it remains to be a legacy, a snapshot of what Super Mario 64 was for all those years.