[10][11] He can walk, run, jump, crouch, crawl, climb, swim, kick, grab objects, and punch using the game controller's analog stick and buttons.

Three switches of the same colors can be found in secret areas that turn their corresponding blocks solid and allow Mario to obtain three types of special cap power-ups.

[15][18] Another implicit powerup is the shell remains after stomping a Koopa Troopa, which Mario can use to run over enemies, and surf on water, lava, and quicksand.

[20] The player's main objective is to look for paintings that, when jumped into, bring them into courses containing Power Stars, which upon their collection unlock more of the castle hub world.

[22] The courses are filled with enemies as well as friendly creatures that provide assistance or ask favors, such as Bob-omb Buddies, who will allow Mario to access cannons on request.

Peach is released from the stained-glass window above the castle's entrance, and she rewards Mario by kissing him on the nose and baking the cake that she had promised him.

[34] At the January 1993 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), where Star Fox made its debut, Nintendo's booth demonstrated a talking 3D polygon animation of Mario's head;[35] it returned in the start screen, programmed by Giles Goddard.

[36] The 3D illustrations were created by Shigefumi Hino, Hisashi Nogami, Hideki Fujii, Tomoaki Kuroume, and Yusuke Nakano, and the game was animated by co-director Yoshiaki Koizumi and Satoru Takiwaza.

[49] According to Inagaki, the average Nintendo 64 game had about 500 sound effects, and made comparisons to Ocarina of Time, with 1,200, and The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, with 2,000.

The US$20 million[i] marketing campaign included videotapes sent to more than five hundred thousand Nintendo Power subscribers and advertisements shown on MTV, Fox, and Nickelodeon.

[61] At the 1999 Milia festival in Cannes, Super Mario 64 won a Gold ECCSELL prize for earning revenues above €21 million[iii] in the European Union in 1998.

[66] It features improved graphics, slightly altered courses, new areas, powerups, and enemies, more Power Stars to collect, touchscreen mini-games, and a multiplayer mode.

[5][6] In late 2006, it was released on the Wii Virtual Console service[76] which added enhanced resolution and compatibility with the GameCube and Super Famicom Classic controllers.

[78] This version was based on the Rumble Pak iteration,[79] and updated the game's presentation to display at 720p resolution in both the Switch's docked and handheld configurations, in addition to using upscaled user interface assets and textures.

Brown & Sons, recalls Super Mario 64 being the most anticipated game of E3 1996, remembering a field of teenagers "jostling for a test run".

[87][96][104] Maximum found its strongest points were the sense of freedom and its replayability, comparing it to Super Mario World and citing its similar gimmick of allowing access to new areas upon finding switches.

[102] One of GameFan's four reviewers, E. Storm, cited the water levels as "overjoy[ing]" and showed how Super Mario 64 delved into an "entirely new realm of gaming".

[105] Computer and Video Games editor Paul Davies praised the 3D environment, and said that it enhanced the interaction, and described the control scheme as intuitive and versatile.

[97] Hyper reviewer Nino Alegeropoulos called it the best-looking console game to date and opined that its high resolution and frame rate for the time made it look "infinitely better than a cartoon".

[108] Paul Davies acknowledged that he was critical of the camera, saying that in some occasions it was difficult to position ideally, but ultimately dismissed it as "one hiccup" of a "revolutionary" game.

[119] Eventually, the Nintendo 64 lost much of its market share to Sony's PlayStation, partly due to its cartridge and controller design decisions, which were reportedly implemented by Miyamoto for Super Mario 64.

[121] As the genre evolved, many of the series's conventions were rethought drastically, placing emphasis on exploration over traditional platform jumping, or "hop and bop" action.

[126][127] Dan Houser, a prominent figure in the development of the Grand Theft Auto series, stated, "Anyone who makes 3D games who says they've not borrowed something from Mario or Zelda [of the Nintendo 64] is lying".

[128] Square Enix has stated that a coincidental meeting with Disney employees resulted in the creation of the Kingdom Hearts series, inspired by Super Mario 64's use of 3D environments and exploration.

[123] To increase freedom of exploration and fluid control in a 3D world, Super Mario 64 designers created a dynamic virtual video camera that turns and accelerates according to the character's actions.

[131] PC Magazine's K. Thor Jensen considers Super Mario 64 to be the first truly realized 3D platformer with the integration of camera control into its core gameplay, which he called the medium's true evolutionary leap.

Super Mario 64's controls, in contrast, are fully analog and interpret a 360-degree range of motion into navigation through a 3D space relative to the camera.

[152] In July 2020, 24 years and 1 month after the initial release of Super Mario 64, unused assets for Luigi from the scrapped multiplayer mode were discovered in the game's development files, in an event known as the Nintendo Gigaleak.

[157] Speedrun techniques include the Lakitu skip, a glitch that disables a dialog box explaining camera movement; the Bob-omb clip, which uses a glitch in a Bob-omb's explosion animation to clip through walls; and the backwards long jump glitch, which involves the player performing a repetitive move, the "backwards long jump" (BLJ), allowing Mario to reach very high speed values and has numerous applications in speedrunning;[158] the latter was patched in the Rumble Pak re-release in 1997 as well as the Super Mario 3D All-Stars re-release (with the 3D All-Stars version being based on the Rumble Pak version's codebase).

The study concluded that doing the previously mentioned activity caused the gray matter (a major part of the central nervous system) to increase in the right hippocampal formation and the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex—brain areas thought to contribute to spatial navigation, working memory, and motor planning.