Though your parents, yanking the power cord from the Nintendo 64 until you’d “finish your damn homework,” couldn’t tell the difference between Super Mario 64 and The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time, everyone with an ounce of goddamn sense in their heads knows there’s no comparison between the two video games. In one, players assume the role of a gibbering cartoon man who jumps and fights monsters on his quest to save a princess; in the other, players control a gibbering cartoon man who solves puzzles and fights monsters on his quest to save a princess. The differences are clear.


Yet somehow, Kaze Emanuar, the creator of many Mario-centric video game modifications, has bridged the chasm between the beloved Nintendo 64 staples in a 100% unofficial remix called, straightforwardly enough, Super Mario 64: Ocarina of Time.

As its (hilariously epic) trailer shows, Emanuar’s work reimagines Ocarina of Time’s structure—an array of interlocking puzzles and enemy encounters overcome by collecting and employing an ever-growing set of items and weapons—as a playground for Mario’s free-form acrobatics. In a profile at Engadget, author Nick Summers details the work that went into Emanuar’s mashup, describing how the mod’s creator not only “rebuilt every house, dungeon, and fairy fountain [from Ocarina of Time] so it would be recognizable to longtime Zelda fans,” but also redesigned these spaces so that hopping, flipping, and lunging through the environment to grab Mario 64's collectible stars would actually be enjoyable.




The entire article is worth a look for anyone interested in Emanuar’s past projects as well as the incredible commitment mod creators like him have to creating playable games that make the nostalgia mashup of Ready Player One look like a kid smacking old action figures together.



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[via Engadget]

