One fan's project has made one of the greatest games of all-time even better.
There's an old myth that states it takes 10,000 hours for someone to truly master something. In the case of Super Mario 64 hacker Kaze Emanuar, however, it appears that number is actually closer to 4,000 hours.
That's the amount of time it took this dedicated Super Mario 64 fan to create an add-on to the classic N64 titles called Last Impact. This expansion's progress has been slowly documented by Emanuar over the course of the last year via YouTube uploads, but if you're looking for a video that will give you an idea of how impressive this creation is, this latest preview is a pretty good place to start:
Last Impact features 130 new collectible stars, 12 additional power-ups, and a plethora of new areas and bosses. While certain ideas are borrowed from other Mario games, much of the new content here is entirely unique.
Actually, unique is the perfect word to describe what Kaze Emanuar has created. While there is quite a bit of content in this mod that simply expands upon what made Super Mario 64 and the Mario franchise so great, the majority of the new content is devoted to really exploring what is possible within the general confinement's of the game's original engine. Even seemingly out of place ideas such as a giant casino world or stealth segments have been expertly implemented into the game in a way that feels true to the spirit of Super Mario 64.
If you'd like to try out this incredible mod for yourself, you may download it here. Just know that it will require a Super Mario 64 ROM file to play.
As an additional word of warning, please consider that Nintendo has been especially adamant lately about taking down fan projects related to Mario, Zelda, and Pokemon, so you might want to move fast on this one if it catches your eye.