...Is the lunge jump supposed to be absolutely useless when you're falling fast enough? I mean, I get not having the lunge give you any height after a certain point... but it does nothing. Not even a slight speed boost.
Having Metal Mario boost jump height and speed like every other super form feels... odd to me. I imagined Metal Mario might have a shockwave when he ground pounds, much like how Knuckles does when landing after canceling a glide, but it's just a stat boost. I do like how you have Wing cap in special stages but you become Metal Mario when actually transforming, that's a really nice touch.
Speaking of speed, JEEZ LOUISE is N64 Mario FAST! His acceleration and top speed match SRB2 instead of Mario 64, and every move is designed to make him go even faster than THAT. Jump, ground-pound into boosted roll, jump, HOO-HOO (lunge), and all of a sudden speed! Combined with jumps scaling with speed and you can leap almost everywhere! That, and being able to boost the power of springs by ground-pounding let me beat most stages setting the gravity to 0.75 with pandora's box! (default is 0.5)
That said, I did find a few quirks with the controls. Holding down spin, pressing jump, and instantly ground-pounding feels super odd to me, the ground pound itself sometimes has Mario instantly stand, making me unable to use that ground-pound jump, it's possible to hit the floor instantly after starting a ground pound if you time it right, meaning you zip right into a super fast roll right away, and boy do I HATE swimming!
In Mario 64, you have a super-slow doggy-paddle towards wherever Mario is facing, but here, swimming acts more like a slow height-locker, keeping you in the air where you are at and giving you poor control over going upwards AND downwards. Worse, you can still stand underwater! In 64, you could only do so with a Metal Cap. Here? Swimming is never worth giving up any of Mario's base kit, which mostly works BETTER underwater, like the ground-pound-jump giving way more height, or the roll still giving you all the speed it normally does in spite of other abilities like the thok being slowed! I like not being able to swim on accident anymore, and I like being able to cancel it now, giving an easy way to fall without slowing down, but swimming is still so underwhelming. It was easier to drown as 1.0 Mario 64 than it was as Sonic, and... that's just silly.
That, and swimming isn't worth losing even just basic running, because swimming is so painfully slow that just walking underwater is faster, nevermind any ability that brings you faster than that. Only being able to swim upwards for one boost is just the icing on the cake.
There's a lot of moves in Mario 64 that just aren't here, like the slide kick, wall jump, side jump and triple jump, and while I feel some are fine being ignored, like the slide kick (you already added a roll that's just faster than spindashing) and tree-climbing (would be amusing, but super impractical), I feel like Mario not having a triple-jump or a wall-kick is very... odd. Heck, you could go the 64 DS route and add a standard wall-cling + walljump combo. Maybe you make it so you can't wallkick off a dive, but you add a long-jump that can go into a wall-kick? There's a lot you could add that would make N64 Mario a lot more fun to mess around with.
Right now, Mario doesn't really have a moveset even close to the expansive, super-fun game he bases himself off of. That said, he's still very fun to play with, being unusually fast and being able to soar through the air with ease. Would be super cool if this got more updates in the future!