Super Mario 64 is a 1996 platform video game for the Nintendo 64, and the first in the Super Mario series to feature three-dimensional (3D) gameplay.
As Mario, the player explores Princess Peach's castle and must rescue her from Bowser. As an early 3D platformer, Super Mario 64 is based on open-world playability, degrees of freedom through all three axes in space, and relatively large areas which are composed primarily of true 3D polygons as opposed to only two-dimensional (2D) sprites.
It places an emphasis on exploration within vast worlds that require the player to complete various missions, in addition to the occasional linear obstacle courses as in traditional platform games. While doing so, it still preserves many gameplay elements and characters of earlier Mario games, and the same visual style.
