Title: Super Mario 64

Platform: N64

Year: 1996

Final Vote Percentage: 66.67%

In our inaugural class of the Nintendo World Report Hall of Fame, several no-brainers cropped up. Super Mario 64, the cutting-edge 3D platformer that essentially redefined the entirety of video games, was one of them. Its importance is hard to overstate because it was so integral and key to the advent of polygonal 3D games.

According to Shigeru Miyamoto, the concept of Mario 64 dates back to the development of Star Fox on the Super Nintendo. It never made it into any significant, solidified form, but the concept of creating a 3D Mario game appeared to have been ingrained in the fabled game creator’s mind back then. As Nintendo started to turn towards the development of their Super NES successor, Miyamoto and the top game-making minds at Nintendo started to more seriously dive into this 3D Mario idea.

What made this radical new version of the platformer work is that the team at Nintendo focused mostly on character movement and the camera before making levels. Their logic was that if Mario didn’t feel right, the whole thing might fall apart. The testing for this primarily involved Mario running around an environment chasing a rabbit, something not all that dissimilar from the opening. One of the most crucial elements was the inclusion of a shadow underneath Mario that would help out with judging the depth of the character when moving. This iterative process of refinement guided the team at this early stage as they worked through isometric viewpoints and linear levels until they settled on the explorative open design of the final game.

Super Mario 64 was first presented to the world at the first-ever Space World show in late 1995. It was one of two playable games for the newly named Nintendo 64 at the show. A little more than six months after that unveiling, Super Mario 64 launched in Japan on June 23, 1996 to wild acclaim. That was followed by debuts in America on September 29, 1996 and Europe in March 1997.

The impact of Super Mario 64 was felt almost immediately. In a short time, basically every single person who worked on a game with 3D movement drew inspiration from Nintendo’s debut 64 adventure. Over the years, everyone from the teams at Rare to the Houser brothers at Rockstar Games have attributed some element of their games to Nintendo’s first major foray into 3D. The emphasis on exploration was huge, and truly captured the feeling of the joy of play. Just exploring around Peach’s Castle was gratifying.

Over the years, some games have done it better. While Mario 64’s camera still holds up better than it has any right to, it’s still a 3D camera made in 1996. Some of the controls, namely the flying, are a little finicky. But pound for pound, Super Mario 64 is still a magnificent game that’s only hindrance is that it came out in 1996 and time has passed. Complaining about its faults is similar to ragging on the original Star Wars for looking old. This game is a straight-up masterpiece in almost every sense of the word. Nintendo’s released a number of brilliant games since Mario 64, but few even hold a candle to the genre-creating wonder of Mario’s polygonal quest.

We welcome Super Mario 64 to the Nintendo World Report Hall of Fame with open hearts, longing for that first feeling of throwing Bowser into bombs, racing Koopa the Quick, and figuring out all the tricks of Tiny Huge Island and Wet Dry World. Here’s to you, Mario.