From Spyro to Banjo, Grow Home to Crash Bandicoot, Nintendo's morphing of planes from 2D to 3D came with a laundry-list of headaches conceptually (imagine trying to think on a completely different plane), but also meant their dogged dedication to the company's 'Mark of Quality' produced a landmark experience the industry would continually learn from. Sure, it might have started out featuring Yoshi as a partnership with Argonaut Games, but following some contractual hoo-har'ing, the version of M64 that hit shelves was always going to be a huge success. Pretty much existing as the blueprint for both the open-world concept and how to make characters react and move believably in three-dimensional space (until Link and his Ocarina came along, anyway), if you happen to revisit this now, the sensation of just moving Mario feels like you're advancing game design itself with every footstep. At the time the N64's camera-button'd controller was pretty cumbersome by comparison to the PS1's newly-minted DualShock, but for the sheer fact of seeing a once 2D-only genre make the leap to three dimensions and retain every ounce of its initial appeal, quadrupling the charm and fun factor along the way? That all factored into Mario's first 3D adventure being one of his finest.
