Stretching Mario’s face will never get old

We’re all guilty

Now that it’s downloadable for Wii U, Super Mario 64 has entered my life again.

It wasn’t my favorite Nintendo 64 title — heck, it wasn’t even my favorite 3D platformer on the console — but it was a formative game and, coming up on two decades later, it remains special. Plus, I just love having a stable of familiar old games to play again on the Wii U GamePad.

While digging into the re-release this week, two certainties about Mario 64 became clear:

1) I’m always, always going to disfigure Mario’s face for a bit before actually playing the game.

2) I’ll never beat that smug penguin to the finish line without falling off the slide at least once.

(Oh, also: the penguin’s baby is annoying and ugly and I hate it.)

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