9 Launch Games That Singlehandedly Made Their Consoles Worth Buying

Bottled magic. That's what Super Mario 64 was when it arrived alongside the N64 in the spring of '97. Mario, up to this point, had only ever appeared in his original 2D form, headlining largely linear platformers that played out in the same manner with each subsequent run.

But that wasn't enough for Nintendo. It wanted to push the boundaries of what SNES owners thought possible. It wanted to innovate, and that's exactly what it did, by pulling apart its mascot's flat universe and piecing it back together, brick by brick, pipe by pipe, to form a resplendent, three-dimensional Mushroom Kingdom drenched in colour.

In the late 90s, this was as close to a technological marvel that any games developer had even come close to, not just because of the groundbreaking strides Nintendo had taken in standardising various conventions for non-linear level design, but the revolutionary way in which players interacted with it.

It's mind-boggling to think that, prior to Super Mario 64, a freely manipulable, 360-degree camera independent of a character or fixed viewpoint didn't exist, but then, when it comes to pushing the boundaries, it's more often than not Nintendo behind the advancement, eager to shatter preconceptions in the most spectacular fashion.