Super Mario 64

Super Mario 64 brings Mario’s Mushroom Kingdom into a fully three-dimensional adventure on Nintendo 64. Released in North America on September 26, 1996, this original cartridge sends Mario to Princess Peach’s Castle after Bowser steals its Power Stars and seals them inside the worlds beyond the castle’s paintings. The familiar rescue mission becomes an open-ended treasure hunt: explore the castle, find the entrances to new courses, and earn enough Stars to push deeper toward Bowser.

Peach’s Castle is more than a backdrop. It is the game’s central hub, full of locked doors, hidden passages, and paintings that serve as gateways to far-flung worlds. Each course is built for repeat visits, with different Star missions that ask Mario to reach a summit, race a rival, uncover a secret, collect red coins, or solve a platforming challenge from another route. Finding all 120 Power Stars reveals just how much the castle and its surrounding grounds are hiding.

Mario’s moveset gives the adventure its remarkable sense of freedom. The Nintendo 64 Control Stick lets him walk, run, turn, and adjust his speed with precise analog movement, while the A Button handles jumps and the B Button covers attacks and interactions. He can punch, kick, dive, crouch, crawl, climb, swim, carry objects, and chain together acrobatic moves including the double jump, triple jump, long jump, backflip, and wall kick. Learning when to slow down, build momentum, or change direction in midair is as important as spotting the next ledge.

The courses make the most of those abilities. Bob-omb Battlefield introduces wide slopes, cannons, and a mountain-top showdown, while later worlds turn water, ice, lava, shifting sand, and enormous vertical spaces into their own kinds of obstacle courses. Mario can grab Bowser by the tail and swing him toward bombs, soar with the Wing Cap, vanish through barriers with the Vanish Cap, and become heavy and invulnerable with the Metal Cap. Every environment encourages experimentation, whether that means following a mission’s obvious path or looking for a shortcut tucked behind the scenery.

Camera control is part of the original Nintendo 64 experience. Lakitu films Mario’s journey from a third-person view, and the C Buttons allow players to reposition or cycle the camera to better line up jumps and inspect nearby terrain. Mario Cam offers a closer first-person look for searching the environment. The camera’s behavior is deliberately tied to the space around Mario, so learning to work with its angles becomes one more skill alongside running, jumping, and judging distance.

Underwater areas add another layer of exploration. Mario can paddle through submerged ruins and pools, but his health meter also serves as his air supply while he is below the surface. Coins and air bubbles help keep him going, and surfacing restores his breath. Elsewhere, spinning Hearts recover health, enemies guard Stars, and the castle’s many secrets reward players who revisit familiar rooms with new movement skills and a sharper eye for unusual walls, doors, and platforms.

This is the original single-player Nintendo 64 version of Super Mario 64, focused on Mario alone and controlled with the N64’s analog stick and C Buttons. It is not Super Mario 64 DS, the Nintendo DS remake that adds playable characters and additional content, nor is it one of the later re-releases. The heart of this 1996 version is its compact but densely connected castle, its 15 main courses, and the joy of discovering how many different ways Mario can move through them.

For players returning to a defining Nintendo 64 classic or discovering it for the first time, Super Mario 64 remains a wonderfully direct adventure. Its goals are easy to understand—find Stars, open doors, stop Bowser, rescue Peach—but every course turns that simple premise into a playground of routes, risks, and small revelations. One moment you are making a careful leap across a narrow platform; the next you are launching from a cannon, racing across a rooftop, or diving through a painting in search of one more Star.