Got all 120 Stars. Took me 7 or 8 tries to beat Bowser since I could never really time the release all that well.
I'd tried to play this game twice before: Once when it was new and once when I finally broke down and bought an N64 about 3 years ago. The camera is the reason why I can't stand this game. I was constantly fighting with the camera to put it in a decent position to see what Mario would be seeing. I don't know how many times I would be going along and then the entire screen would be filled by the floor above me or the other side of a wall and Mario wouldn't even be visible -- I lost several lives and took quite a bit of damage because of this.
I also despise the tiny joystick. But after playing several games on PS and GCN using analog controls, I had gotten used to it, so that wasn't much of an issue this time. I still will use the D-Pad on any game that gives me the option, as long as it is as functional as analog (which can be accomplished most of the time by holding down another button at the same time).
To me, this is the poster child for artificially adding content. 15 main courses where you have to replay each up to six times to get anything new. With the exception of a few where something only appears if you choose a specific Star to go for, everything is the same in each stage every time you go in. It would have been so nice to be able to get more than one Star per trip (other than the 100 coin Star).
The Save system is not very good. What's the point of Lives in this game? The Save file doesn't save how many lives you have when you save. This would have taken, what, an extra 7 or 8 bytes of data. Instead, all it saves is which Stars you've acquired, doors you've unlocked, and cap switches you've pushed. It doesn't save your location. It doesn't even have a Name Entry to save. So why the heck can't it save how many lives you had???? Game Over ends up turning into merely a slight annoyance since it just wastes about a minute or two of your time getting back to the Course you were on -- well, except for that first time you saved with 50 lives only to see all but 4 disappear when you reloaded, which probably made you pretty mad if you didn't know that would happen. There were a few times it would have been nice to be able to save at any time instead of only when you get a Star.
The music was good. Although "explosive" (as the back of the box calls it) is about the last adjective I would use to describe it.
The graphics are decent, although there are some serious issues with walls disappearing when you rotate the camera as well as the ability to pass through enemies. I had one major glitch inside the volcano where a bully pushed me into a corner of the wall causing Mario and the bully to occupy the same space -- I couldn't do anything, so had to exit the course and re-enter.
Oh, and that's SERIOUSLY all you get for getting all 120 Stars? You get to see Yoshi and receive 100 pointless Lives. Whoopie!!!
