The one thing that stood out of Mario64 was the controls and how a 3D platformer should be. If you look at what had been tried before, controls were not very good. Remember Jumping Jack Flash for PSX? I think it was advertised as the first 3D platformer... but you had to keep moving your camera manually to figure out where you would land...

Then you had 2 1/2 D games a la Pandemonium which were not really 3D platformers, but rather 2D gameplay with 3D graphics. That's not bad (many better games have been made with the same concept, e.g. Viewtiful Joe, New Mario Bros, Smash Brosh Brawl Subspace levels, etc) but it didn't force you to "think" 3D.

Mario64 did not have the best graphics (some due to the limitations of the N64 hardware or its textures) but it did get the right feeling. I clearly felt 3D platform games improved after it because they were copying the gameplay elements of it.

Many people compared Mario Galaxy to SMB3... and yes it's fair to say it's a worthy successor. It's still missing the sense of grandeur when you first played SMB3 (where each world felt very different as you discovered them) but that could just be that I'm jaded after 25+ years of videogaming. THey could have brought back the Koopalings and not make everything down to Bowser and the son. (I always wondered where the son came from btw. His own claims of maternity are slightly disturbing - makes you wonder how long Mario took to save the princess back in SMB3...)




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