Super Mario 64 is a 1996 platform game for the Nintendo 64 and the first Super Mario game to feature 3D gameplay. It was developed by Nintendo EAD and published by Nintendo. As Mario, the player collects power stars while exploring 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. It preserves many gameplay elements and characters of earlier Mario games as well as the visual style.
