Games Like Super Mario 64

Games Similar to Super Mario 64

Super Mario 64 defined a generation by translating platform gaming’s core joy — precise movement, joyful exploration, and the satisfaction of collecting everything — into a fully realized 3D world. If you love hunting for Power Stars across open sandbox levels, discovering secrets tucked into every corner, and controlling a character who just feels good to move, these picks will keep that feeling alive.

Top Games for Fans of Super Mario 64

Banjo-Kazooie

Nintendo 64 | 1998 Rare’s masterpiece is the closest thing to a spiritual successor Mario 64 ever had on the same hardware. You explore large, theme-driven worlds collecting Jiggies and Music Notes with the same sandbox freedom, and Banjo’s moveset — featuring a bear-and-bird duo with complementary abilities — gives exploration a wonderfully layered feel. The humor is sharp, the worlds are inventive, and the collectathon loop is endlessly satisfying.

Banjo-Tooie

Nintendo 64 | 2000 Rare doubled down on everything that made the original great, producing even larger, more interconnected worlds that reward exploration across multiple levels simultaneously. The expanded move set adds genuine depth, and the worlds bleed into one another in clever ways that make backtracking feel like discovery rather than chore. For players who burned out every corner of Mario 64, Tooie offers dozens more hours of that same open-world platforming hunger.

Donkey Kong 64

Nintendo 64 | 1999 Five playable Kongs, each with unique abilities, spread across sprawling worlds stuffed with color-coded collectibles — DK64 pushes the Mario 64 formula to its absolute limit. The scope is enormous, the worlds are imaginative, and Rare’s signature humor and polish are present throughout. Players who love obsessive 100% completion runs will find their ultimate sandbox here.

Spyro the Dragon

PlayStation | 1998 Where Mario 64 emphasized precise platforming challenges, Spyro leans into pure exploratory bliss across gorgeous, open dragon homeworlds. Gliding between platforms and charging through enemies feels effortless and freeing, and each world hides enough gems and critters to satisfy any collectathon urge. The tone is warm and playful in exactly the way Mario 64 fans will recognize.

Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped

PlayStation | 1998 The most polished entry in the Crash trilogy introduces vehicle levels, time trial modes, and a variety of creative world themes that push the series closest to Mario 64’s sense of imaginative variety. While more linear than Mario’s open worlds, the tight character control, expressive animation, and level-to-level creativity scratch the same itch. It’s the point where Crash felt like a genuine peer to Nintendo’s giant.

Yoshi’s Island

Super Nintendo | 1995 Though it predates Mario 64 and plays in 2D, Yoshi’s Island shares its DNA at a design philosophy level — hidden collectibles in every stage, a generous but skill-rewarding difficulty curve, and a sense of childlike wonder baked into every frame. Reaching 100% on every level demands the same sharp-eyed exploration that Mario 64 rewards. The crayon-and-watercolor art style remains one of gaming’s most beautiful.

Conker’s Bad Fur Day

Nintendo 64 | 2001 Rare’s technical swan song on the N64 is a jaw-dropping platformer that uses the same open-world traversal language as Mario 64 while subverting every family-friendly expectation the genre carried. The controls are impeccable, the world design is creative and varied, and the irreverent humor gives it a personality entirely its own. Fans who want Mario 64’s feel wrapped in something for adults will find nothing else quite like it.

Paper Mario

Nintendo 64 | 2001 Paper Mario sits at the crossroads of Mario 64’s world-hopping adventure spirit and classic RPG structure, sending Mario through a sequence of colorful kingdoms each with their own personality and problems. Exploration and puzzle-solving echo the sandbox curiosity of Mario 64’s best moments, while the turn-based combat adds a satisfying strategic layer. It’s the same joyful Nintendo craftsmanship channeled into a longer, story-driven format.

What Makes These Games Similar

The thread connecting all of these recommendations is the collectathon platformer’s core promise: a richly designed world that rewards curiosity. Each game gives you a moveset worth mastering and then builds environments specifically designed to challenge and celebrate that mastery. Whether it’s Jiggies, gems, or Power Stars, the loop of exploring every nook, spotting something just out of reach, and figuring out how to get there is the engine driving every title on this list.

Beyond mechanics, these games share a tonal philosophy — bright, expressive, and generous with personality — that defines late-90s 3D platforming at its peak. They treat the player as an explorer rather than a combatant, prioritizing the feeling of movement and discovery over difficulty or narrative urgency. If Super Mario 64 gave you the sense that a whole world was yours to investigate on your own terms, every game here was built to give you that feeling again.