As with all previous Mario games, the Princess has been stolen and Mario must save her. This time around you're in a fully 3D world with everything that made the previous games great, and the ability to explore!
As with the previous games, there are alot of missions to complete, and I mean ALOT. All the missions have varied locations and many different objectives. As with previous Mario games, you still get to choose your missions, though in a different way.
You start out in Mushroom Castle which you can run around and explore, eventually you'll run across numerous pictures with various different scenes within. By jumping into one of these pictures, you go straight to that mission.
As I said, there is plenty of missions in Mario 64, though only a few of them will be available to you upon starting the game. You must collect stars to increase your star powers, which will allow you to unlock doors to later stages.
The game is wonderful graphically, exactly what you would expect in a Mario game. Every level has its own unique look, though there is always the 'happy' style your acustomed to in the Mario series. The camera angles are actually quite nice, and should present little trouble.
Super Mario 64 does everything right; gameplay, graphics, sound, you name it. If you enjoyed the previous Mario games, you will definintly enjoy this one.