The typical control scheme today is that one stick controls the camera and the other moves the character (in any direction). The scheme the OP is describing is

The typical control scheme today is that one stick controls the camera and the other moves the character (in any direction). The scheme the OP is describing is one set of controls for rotating the character and another set for moving forward and backwards. The problem with the description above is that the games described didn't use "sticks" for this -- the N64 was the first console released with a (single) thumbstick (in Mario 64, you use the four yellow "C" face buttons to reposition the camera). The PlayStation Dual Analog controller, with its dual thumbsticks, didn't come out until a year after Mario 64. The forward-back-rotate scheme was more common as a way to implement 3D movement with a directional pad or the arrow/WASD keys on a keyboard. (What obsoleted it on the PC wasn't dual stick controls but the invention of mouselook.) It's also worth noting that a lot of highly regarded early 3D games had fixed cameras not because of the lack of a workable control scheme but because it allowed the use of prerendered background graphics and/or reduced the complexity of the scene that needed to be rendered (Final Fantasy VII, Resident Evil, etc.).