Anonymous Mon 25 May 2020 05:48:53 No.25061720 Report
Quoted By: >>25063260 >>25063268 >>25070569 >>25081170 >>25084315
It really feels like one of the most mysterious games of all time. I always thought it was just nostalgia goggles but even oldfags and zoomers born well after its release seem to understand its inherent eeriness. It's like looking at a lancet, like looking at some mid-point in evolution. Everything is there, but not -really- there. None of the enemies, items, anything look familiar, and it's not just the polygons. You look at Mario in Super Smash Bros 64, he looks like the same old mario, just at low-res. You look at Mario in this game he looks like.... someone else. Like a doppelganger, like a puppet playing the -role- of Mario.

Stage design is unlike any other game in the franchise. Sure, in Mario Galaxy you travel to other worlds, and sure in Luigi's Mansion the whole thing takes place in one location, but in this game you travel to other worlds INSIDE one location. An empty, lonely ersatz version of Peach's castle in a totally nameless environment that you enter into out of nowhere, with no music, completely silent except for the ambient rustling of leaves and chirping of birds. The combination of the already strange "overworld" and the traveling to other worlds through enchanted paintings makes for an adventure I can only compare to performing rituals in a temple, or going on a psychedelic trip in your bedroom.

It's uncanny, unfinished, hermetic, lonely, magical, eerie, and singular. It's the original backrooms.