Super Mario 64 is the first game in the Super Mario series to feature three-dimensional gameplay and launched along side the Nintendo 64 as the showcase game for the system. The move to three-dimensional gameplay allowed the developers to introduce many new features to the game include a new move set for Mario. The game introduces the triple-jump, long jump, diving and summersaults all of which have been incorporated as part of the standard move set in the series moving forward.

Although Super Mario 64 was not the first 3D platforming game it did set the standard of man of the controls and design elements of the genre. Defining how three-dimensional games could be implemented, Super Mario 64 became one of the most influential games from the fifth generation of game consoles.

Shigeru Miyamoto conceived of the idea of creating a 3D Super Mario game during the development of Star Fox for the Super Nintendo. Star Fox was making use of a new chipset called the Super FX that was incorporated into the game’s cartridge to provide additional processing to allow for the development of 3D graphics on the Super Nintendo. Miyamoto considered developing a 3D Super Mario game for the Super Nintendo using the Super FX chip but ultimately the decision was made to develop the game for the upcoming Nintendo 64. This decision was made based on the fact that the Nintendo 64 controller was more capable to accomplish what Miyamoto had envisioned for the game and not do to graphical limitations of the Super Nintendo or Super FX chip.

The development of Super Mario 64 was handled by the Nintendo EAD team. The games development lasted 3 years, the first year was spent on the design concept and the following two years were focused on the development of the game. At the beginning of development, the team was unsure on how to handle the camera view and layout resulting in months being spent on building the camera system and determining how the game would play. Originally the game was going to be created with a fixed path layout similar to Super Mario RPG before the team landed on a open free roaming 3D design.

Super Mario 64 was the first game to introduce a camera system that can be controlled independently of the character. Prior to this free-range camera system 3D games were implemented using a fixed position camera system. This new camera system would become the standard for 3D games in the future. Nintendo innovated the movement of 3D characters with the introduction of the analog stick which allowed for more precise and wide-ranging character movements than the traditional D-pad.