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Once upon a time, Gabe Newell was just a former Microsoft employee who had founded a small game studio and was helping build a new sci-fi FPS. That game, Half-Life, would soon become an industry-shaking success story and launch the true legacy of Steam god GabeN, but it didn't pop up out of nowhere. No, Half-Life had a notable list of influences that Newell revealed back in 1998, including the one and only Super Mario 64.
"The three games that had the biggest impact on Half-Life were Ultima Underworld, Mario 64, and Resident Evil 2," Newell said in an interview for the December 1998 issue of Next Generation magazine. "Ultima Underworld was so much more of an immersive experience than the other first-person shooters. Resident Evil 2 really inspired us to take the creepiness and horror in Half-Life seriously, without giving in to the temptation to be campy about it."
Ultima Underworld is perhaps the least well-remembered of those games, if only because its own franchise hasn't continued into the modern day. But its open-ended approach to player agency would serve as the blueprint for the immersive sim genre, building the formula for everything from Deus Ex to BioShock. And, of course, Resident Evil 2's influence on horror gaming is impossible to overstate.
As for Super Mario 64? Well, on top of being one of the best N64 games ever made, Newell said that's "just a great inspiration on so many levels from things like having spaces that can be traversed multiple times and still be fun to a much less punitive method of handling player failure."
I'm very curious what Newell meant about that "less punitive" penalty for failure, but alas, he didn't go into any more detail. Super Mario 64 still has lives, as in older Mario games, but the fact that you can constantly save your progress means you're never in danger of losing much when those lives run out. Maybe you could draw a parallel between that system and the generous quick saves Half-Life allows you to make use of.
While Half-Life is primarily remembered for its excellent single-player campaign, it also has a deathmatch mode – and it seems Newell was not very good at it. Asked by Next Generation if he was the best Half-Life player at Valve, Newell responded: "Not even close."
"Several of the people at Valve have won international competitions," Newell added. "I used to think I was pretty hot stuff when I was just playing against other people at Microsoft, but nowadays I just get crushed. We may have to do a strategy game just so I can regain my self esteem. Either that or add a deathmatch mode to Mario 64."
I'm pretty sure there's some sort of romhack out there that could cater to that demand these days, but either way, it's amusing to see Newell apparently so much more confident in his skills with Nintendo's platformer than the FPS game he helped to make. But GabeN's love of Super Mario 64 has been consistent throughout his career.
Years later, in a 2011 interview with CVG, Newell would say that Super Mario 64 is "still my favourite game of all time. I still have vivid memories of all the different levels. The control is still pretty much unrivalled. It convinced me that games were art." Maybe we should've been thanking Shigeru Miyamoto for indirectly creating Steam this whole time.
