20 Incredibly Important Video Games That Shaped The Industry

4. Super Mario 64

Why It Is Important: Super Mario 64 showed the world how to design 3D games and perfectly demonstrated how to bring an existing 2D franchise to the third dimension. The mid 1990s saw the gaming industry leave 2D sprites behind in favour of the mighty polygon. Technology was finally powerful enough to fully render 3D worlds. Sadly there were a few teething problems as developers struggled to adapt to the increase complexity of game design. Shigeru Miyamoto and his team at Nintendo showed the world how it it was done with Mario 64 in 1996. Considering it was one of the first 3D platformers, Mario 64 did a shocking number of things right. The designers eased players into the third dimension by letting them run around the castle's garden at the beginning of the game to get used to the controls. It didn't take too long, though as using the brand new analog stick just felt right. Pushing it all the way up made Mario run, pushing it a little and he'd walk. Simple. A problem with early 3D games was that camera's were really hard to get right. Mario 64 elegantly got round this problem by allowing the player to control the camera freely using the C buttons. It wasn't perfect and feels a bit clunky today, but for its time it was highly innovative and laid the foundation for subsequent camera control systems. Instead of having the sole objective of getting to the end of a level like in earlier Mario games, players had to complete missions in order to earn stars and progress. They ranged from collecting red coins scattered across the level to finding a baby Penguin for its mother because she couldn't be bothered to get up and look for it herself. It was a clever way of re-using the same levels, something that most 3D platformers of the mid-to-late 1990s and beyond would end up copying. Mario 64 showed the world not just how to make an amazing 3D platformer, but how to make a 3D game in general. Its first-of-its-kind camera control system, tight, responsive controls and phenomenal level design rewrote the rules on how games were made.