head to head

Adventure Island II cover artvsSuper Mario 64 cover art

Adventure Island IIvsSuper Mario 64

Adventure Island II leans Execution (Practiced Mastery); Super Mario 64 leans Execution (Practiced Mastery).

EXECUTION6 /10READS0 /10VARIANCE2 /10OPTIMIZATION5 /10
Adventure Island IISuper Mario 64

Axis by axis

Execution6 vs 7

Super Mario 64 leans harder on execution: Perfect analog inputs trivialise precise jumps, dives and wall-kicks

Reads0 vs 0

Even - both lean on reads about the same.

Variance2 vs 1

Adventure Island II leans harder on variance: Egg contents and dinosaur drops add light randomness

Optimization5 vs 5

Even - both lean on optimization about the same.

Two games can score the same on an axis and still test it in very different ways - read each rationale, not just the number.

full breakdown

Adventure Island II

full breakdown

Super Mario 64