I think the reason why a lot of people really loved SM64 is because it represented something very different than other 3D Marios. In all the Mario games before SM64, levels were timed. Whether the time is generous or not, it still puts the idea in the mind of the player of this sense of urgency and impermanency of levels. In SMB1-3, you can't return to levels you've beaten. They're gone. In Super Mario World, the levels never seemed to give you much reason to go back to them, aside from the occasional powerup, perhaps.

Super Mario 64 was different. You felt free to explore Bob-omb Battlefield, and when you left the stage, it didn't feel like it stopped existing. It was still there, right behind the painting. In fact, repeating the same levels for 6 or 7 different stars so many times encouraged you to feel that way. All of the stages felt permanent. Sunshine did a similar thing. The stages were always there to wander through if you felt like it.

As a kid, I wasn't a very goal-oriented player. I've talked about this before. My goal when I played video games wasn't to beat it. It was a place I went to play around. I played A Link to the Past for months. 95% of that time was spent outside of dungeons. Hyrule was a living world. There were people to talk to, secrets to find, and what felt like a neverending list of things to do. All the Zelda games are like this, for the most part.

It was the same for me with SM64. I would wander around Bob-omb Battlefield for hours. I would just wander around aimlessly enjoying jumping around and chasing after enemies and then I'd go to another level and do the same thing. I eventually beat all of these games, but that was just one thing on a giant list of ways to experience the game. And all of them felt like a good use of my time.

I feel like Nintendo lost this with Galaxy and 3D World and the rest. Stages feel temporary again, once again with a timer reminding you to move along (except in Galaxy 1?). Did you find a cool part of the stage you want to explore? Too bad, there are places to go. Even the camera reminds you of this. It's always facing in the direction it wants you to go. Want to see what's over this direction? Sorry, nothing to see here, you're supposed to be going that way. Basically a giant arrow telling you "this direction = the end". And in the cases where neither of those are the issue, the stages are usually either so sparse or so brief that they don't give you any reason to hang around longer than you need to.

All I'm saying is that what made SM64 special is slightly more than just nostalgia. It wasn't a perfect game, and it didn't age well. I could write an equally long pastebin about it's faults. But the game did a few things right.

The reason I was thinking about this is because Breath of the Wild has returned to this with Zelda. With ALTTP and OoT and Majora's Mask, I felt this way. I felt like returning to old areas, old towns, old dungeons, just because they were part of a living world. Wind Waker, despite being one of my favorite Zeldas, strayed from this, and by Twilight Princess, I was going through the motions. I quit Skyward Sword before I even beat the first boss because I just didn't care about the game.

But Breath of the Wild is lit.