Comment by midnightclubbed
11 hours ago
The level design helped a lot with the camera. Subsequent games (doing 3d) tried to make more realistically sized spaces where there wasn’t a 6ft area clear behind the character at all times and tied themselves in knots trying to make it work (rather than re-designing levels).
Mario64’s camera was a wonderful piece of design.
Yeah and the Lakitu framing did a lot of hidden work. The camera isnt an abstract system to them, its a guy on a cloud. So when you hit the C buttons youre not rotating a camera rig, youre asking Lakitu to move. That one fiction makes the controls legible without a tutorial. Id love to see more games steal that trick instead of dumping camera docs in a settings menu.
That was such a charming part of Super Mario 64.
Especially when you go into rooms with giant mirrors and you can see yourself. As in you can see the camera. Which is the little guy on the cloud. Such a charming wonderfully creative concept.