Super Mario 64
It's from 1996, before you were born.
- Developer
- Nintendo EAD
- Genre
- 3D platformer
- Debut platform
- Nintendo 64 (1996)
- Director
- Shigeru Miyamoto
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About
As of 2026, it's 30 years old.
Super Mario 64 had the impossible job in 1996 of figuring out what a platformer even IS in 3D — and it basically wrote the rulebook everyone else still uses. Suddenly Mario could run in any direction, and the freedom was so intoxicating that people spent hours just making him jump for fun.
It introduced the analog stick as the natural way to move, a free-roaming camera (controlled by a cameraman named Lakitu, because of course), and a sense of pure 3D joy nobody had felt before.
Groundbreaking, joyful, and still studied by designers today, Super Mario 64 is the game that taught the entire industry how to move in three dimensions.
