I've got a theory:
Back on the NES and SNES, everything was 2D. Everything flat, everything relative to the scene as a whole, everything nice and happy.
Come N64, however, things became 3D oriented. With this new world of depth, things couldn't work exactly as they did where everything is fixed size and distance on a flat plane that is the world. One would need a perspective: a camera, of course. In Super Mario 64, I guess this'd be Lakitu's doing. Everyone, of course, is familiar with the idea that "the camera adds ten pounds," and this is probably a relative amount.
Make sense?
Aid