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Chosen One of the Day: The Super Mario 64 loading screen
With the news that Super Mario 64 is coming to Nintendo Switch in just a few weeks, I think it’s apropos that today’s Chosen One be that super weird loading screen from the original Nintendo 64 game.
I loved stretching Mario’s hat and pulling him by his ear. I don’t understand it, but I remember I loved doing it? (Does that mean anything? Oh man, I hope not.) There’s a lot to celebrate in Mario 64 — chain chomp, Huh! Ha! WAHOOO!, even that f***ing penguin — but the crowning glory is that loading screen. It was the first thing you saw when you plugged the cartridge in and turned the console on, it was a great time waster before you even get into the game. It’s so weird — in retrospect, that is. At the time, in 1996, it was amazing that we could look and, uh, touch Mario like this??
(I don’t like that sentence, but I am leaving it in because I had to read it and so do you.)
We went from this:
To this 3-D rendered beauty:
This piece has gotten away from me but suffice to say Giant Mario Face is great and I’m glad we get to revisit it so soon.
