Super Mario 64 Took 622 Days To Develop, Suggests 'Gigaleak' Document - Kotaku

According to a document included in the recent “Gigaleak,” however, this monumental project took less than two years of actual development.

The text file also suggests that work on an additional revision took place over another 15 days, spanning from July 15, 1996 to July 29; one might assume this was preparing Super Mario 64 for its September 29 release in North America.

Super Mario 64 director Shigeru Miyamoto has previously stated in a Nintendo Power interview that conceptual work on a three-dimensional Mario game began during the development of 1993’s Star Fox for the Super Nintendo.

It’s probably a safe bet to say that Super Mario 64 took about three years from start to finish, depending on your definitions for terms like “work” and “development.” That may seem paltry in today’s industry, when blockbusters like The Last of Us Part II can take upward of six years to get out the door, but I can’t help but be impressed that Nintendo created this genre-defining game in even that amount of time.