10 Best Next-Gen Reveals In Gaming History

Sometimes all that the industry needs to move forward is a change in perspective; the camera's perspective, that is.

The Mario franchise, since its inception, has always been depended upon to provide gaming its foundation, to show the ground floor of what each game should be capable of, getting the absolute most out of it, not by introducing new gimmicks, but by bringining in new aspects of design that will become standard moving forward. Analog movement that allows the player to run in circles, or adjusts the speed of the character to how far the stick is pushed, camera controls that allow the player to gauge depth and peek around corners, all of these are taken for granted now, sure, but before Mario 64, nobody knew just how to make a 3D platformer.

Because of Nintndo's meticulous design for Super Mario 64, the rest of gaming benefited greatly.

While the N64 was late to the party for the sixth console generation, it was beyond a welcome addition. Its influence of incorporating camera control along with analog movement was enough to inspire both Sony and Sega to make special controllers for the explicit purpose of navigating 3D space like the Dualshock, and the Sega Saturn's 3D Controller.

Gaming might have known where it wanted to go with 3D, but Mario 64 blazed the trail.