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. Super Mario 64 features 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 emphasizes exploration within vast worlds, which require the player to complete various missions in addition to the occasional linear obstacle courses (as in traditional platform games). It preserves many gameplay elements and characters of earlier Mario games as well as the visual style.
(Source: Wikipedia)
