Super Mario Odyssey launches
tomorrow on the Nintendo Switch, the culmination, for me, of one of gaming’s
all-time most remarkable years, with killer entries in many (if not most!) of
my favorite franchises (Zelda, Persona,
Metroid, Sonic, Fire Emblem, Uncharted, etc.). And yet, despite the
incredible line-up 2017 has offered, I don’t know if I’ve been as purely
excited for any one title as I have been for Mario Odyssey, and the reason is simple: If forced to choose, the Super Mario games comprise my favorite
series of titles in the history of gaming.
I’m sure that true for many of us, of course. There probably
wouldn’t be video games, at least in
the form we enjoy them now, if it weren’t for Shigeru Miyamoto’s plucky Italian
plumber hero, and the catalogue of titles Mario has built since 1985 is almost
certainly the most staggering resume in video game history. Time and again,
Mario has pushed forward and reinvented himself, rarely sticking with one set
of ideas for too long, always innovating into new and exciting territory. If a
game has Super Mario in the title, it
is probably a great one, and if it isn’t, then it will almost certainly be an
interesting experiment or reasonably fun time. We call Mario games ‘platformers,’
because it is the broadly-defined genre into which they most neatly fit, but
over the last 30+ years, Mario has advanced so much that it feels like that one
simple label is woefully non-descriptive of all the wonders these games
contain.
So today, in anticipation of Mario’s next great adventure, I’m
ranking my Top 10 Favorite Super Mario games,
ranked with a mixture of critical appreciation and nostalgia. I’m including
mainline Super Mario games, 2D and
3D, on handheld and on console (Super
Mario Odyssey is, after all, finally obliterating that distinction on the
Switch). I am not including spin-off
titles in the series, even if the original releases of Yoshi’s Island and Wario Land
had Mario in the name. Both of these examples would rank quite highly for
me, but they’d also distract from the purpose of the list, which is to
celebrate Mario’s finest hours as leading man.
So without any further ado, join me after the jump to count down my Top 10 Favorite Super Mario games…
10. New Super Mario Bros. Wii
This is one of the only games on this list I’ve never really
gone back to since beating, but the memories I have from playing it with my
brother at Christmas break in 2009 are so ingrained in my memory I had to
include it in my personal Top 10. The original New Super Mario Bros. – which you’ll hear about later on this list
– brought plenty of cool innovations to the side-scrolling Mario formula, and
from a basic gameplay standpoint, this Wii sequel didn’t feel the need to
reinvent the wheel.
But it did add two crucial elements that make it stand apart
from both its predecessor and duller future entries in the New Super Mario Bros line: 1) It added drop-in drop-out co-op
throughout the game, and made it fiendishly easy to sabotage your supposed
friends, and 2) the levels are, by and large, brutally difficult for a modern Mario side-scroller, especially when
playing in co-op and you and your friend are too busy sabotaging one another to
pay attention. The added challenge was both frustrating and refreshing,
allowing Nintendo to shake things up within a fairly rigid formula, and leading
to some truly inspired, slightly unhinged level design in the game’s second
half. And played with a friend, it was simply unforgettable – chaotic and, more
often than not, counter-productive to the act of actually finishing levels, but undeniably fun. And my brother and I still talk about this game to this day,
because beating it together – especially the insane final world – was a genuine
rush, and felt like a badge of honor back in the day. It’s easy to dismiss the
later New Super Mario Bros games for
dullness and repetition, but I don’t think the series had grown stale by this
point. The Wii game isn’t quite as fresh as its DS predecessor, but it’s an
impressively designed, wildly fun platformer on its own merits, and its couch
co-op innovations have since become a standard in Nintendo’s home console
side-scrollers.
9. Super Mario Bros. 3
I don’t love this game quite as much as many people clearly
do, but I respect and enjoy the hell out of it, and when it came out on the GBA
as Super Mario Advance 4, my
11-year-old self was obsessed with
it, moreso than for any of the GBA’s other 16-bit remakes. Mario 3 has always felt big to
me, even when I go back to it now, its world maps large and packed with stages,
its level design and dense and challenging. Some elements of the gameplay feel
a little creakier to me than other 2D Mario games – the P-gauge and how it’s
used in conjunction with power-ups has always felt a little awkward to me – but
that’s an excessively minor complaint when weighed against all the wonderful
ideas and creative imagery the game has to offer. Super Mario Bros. 3 is a full-course meal of 2D platforming
greatness, almost overwhelmingly so, and remains one of the most significant
achievements of the 8-bit era.
8. Super Mario Land
This GameBoy classic may as well be called Super Mario Through the Looking Glass, because
every aspect of its graphics, music, and general presentation feels like a
parallel world version of the Mario we know and love – always recognizable, but
slightly (or majorly) askew. It’s not that we hadn’t seen deserts or pyramids
before – we had, in Super Mario Bros. 3, for
instance – but that the line-art style didn’t look anything like the ones we
had accustomed to. Mario Land has
Koopas, but their shells turn into bombs when stomped. There is a Princess, but
her name is Daisy and she turns into a flying insect when you think you’ve
rescued her. Then there are those two strange Gradius-style levels, where Mario is piloting a ship and shooting
lasers as enemies, or the surprising (but wonderful) soundtrack that mixes
musical standards in with original, chipper compositions. All this weirdness is
enough to make Super Mario Land an
extremely memorable game – but it’s the quality of the level-design and
platforming, diminished in scope but not in creativity or challenge, that makes
Mario Land one of the series’ best.
And at only 12 levels, it’s one of the easier Mario games to just pick up, play,
and beat in a single sitting (the original GameBoy version didn’t have any save
options). As you’ll see continually on this list, there’s something about the
simple, intuitive genius of good 2D Mario level design I love, and in mixing
that with a good dose of aesthetic surrealism, Super Mario Land remains, to my mind, one of Mario’s finest hours.
7. Super Mario 3D Land
The first game to truly put the 3D feature of the Nintendo
3DS through its paces, and arguably the only in the handheld’s ongoing lifespan
to make truly invaluable use of the third dimension. Super Mario 3D Land is frequently overlooked by Mario fans these
days, and I think that’s a huge shame. To me, this is a major inflection point
in the series, as significant as the shift to 16-bit with Mario World, to 3D platforming with Mario 64, or to the stars themselves in Mario Galaxy. 3D Land pared down the format of a 3D Mario game a
lot, using a straightforward level/world system even simpler than that employed
in Galaxy 2, and used the creative
energy saved there to craft linear levels that completely broke the boundaries
between what we thought of as a ‘2D’ or ‘3D’ Mario game. This wasn’t either of
those – this was something different, a game where visual depth actually meant
something, where the distance reflected in the screen was built into every
facet of every level. Its platforming thrills felt thoroughly fresh, exciting,
and challenging, that third dimension injecting another shot of creativity into
a series that has never much lacked for it.
When this came out, in the fall of 2011, I played it
obsessively – even more so than I had either of the Galaxy games when they first came out, not just beating the game
but going back through and getting every gold coin in every world. To this day,
I’ve never cleared a Mario game so
thoroughly, and while this one is admittedly a smaller task than, say, Super Mario Galaxy 2 and its 240 stars,
it speaks volumes about how compelling and unique Super Mario 3D Land is. It’s a game that seems to blend the history
of Mario platforming, at all points in history, into one unified design, and
then continues to iterate on all those ideas to the end. An underappreciated
masterpiece.
6. New Super Mario Bros.
I will never refuse an opportunity to sing the praises of
the original New Super Mario Bros., even
if time and a series of increasingly stale sequels have made fandom forget what
a joyous revelation the original was back in 2005. Mario hadn’t enjoyed a
traditional 2D platformer in many years by the time this came out, and absence seemingly
made the heart grow fonder for the developers as much as any potential player,
because New Super Mario Bros. is one
of Mario’s most creative and invigorating adventures. The memorably bouncy
music, the colorful 3D graphics, the many distinct world themes, and especially
the imaginative level design with many branching paths combine to make a game
that is, to my mind, just about perfect. And if the game’s sequels have
increasingly failed to invent beyond the boundaries laid out here, New Super Mario Bros. itself brought a
lot of new ideas to the series, from new power ups that made Mario either
extra-large or extra-small, to an addictive series of gold coin collectibles
that improved upon the dragon coin system from Super Mario World. New Super Mario Bros. may have been a throwback,
but it wasn’t regressive. Pick it up today, 13 years later, and I have no doubt
it will put a smile on your face (and don’t forget to check out the included minigames,
which are surprisingly fun – Luigi as a poker dealer is a delight).
5. Super Mario World
Beautiful, surprising, challenging, and endlessly replayable
– there are few days that cannot be made better by turning on Super Mario World and playing any given
level. It doesn’t look or sound quite like any other Mario game, 2D or 3D, with
a distinct and colorful aesthetic that remains one of the most visually
astonishing 2D games ever crafted. And it even plays differently in a lot of
ways, with moves (the spin jump) and power-ups (the cape, perhaps Mario’s
greatest power-up ever) that have never been repeated. Mario World is a singular achievement, a culmination of everything
Mario had been up to that point, a high watermark for the series to strive
towards ever since. When I picked up the SNES Classic Edition a few weeks ago,
the first game I turned on was Super
Mario World – and instead of simply testing it and moving on, I found
myself playing through the first two worlds again, unable to put it down.
4. Super Mario Galaxy
Simply put, one of the most boundlessly creative, visually
astonishing, aurally pleasing, intellectually stimulating, wonder-inducing
video games ever created, in any genre, for any platform. Super Mario Galaxy is an audacious masterwork, one that radiates
joy and inspires with its artistry, and the only reason it isn’t higher on this
list is because it has a sequel, and that sequel is all these many wonderful
things and more.
3. Super Mario Galaxy 2
Super Mario Galaxy 2 was
one of the most pleasant video game surprises of my life. In my memory, at
least, it arrived with a minimum of hype, an unexpected sequel to one of the
generation’s most revered titles, and was propelled by an evangelically enthusiastic
critical word-of-mouth. It was one of the few full-priced games I was able to
buy with my own money back in High School (rather than waiting for a birthday
or Christmas), and when I got it home, I quickly fell in love. The original Mario Galaxy had been great; the new Mario Galaxy quickly became one of my
very favorite games of all time.
So what’s the difference? Mechanically, Mario Galaxy 2 changes very little; it features most of the same
power-ups, and the few it adds don’t fundamentally alter the game. Its levels
are all new, but not a radical rethinking of the its predecessor’s level
design. Where the game soars is in how beautifully it refines and focuses the
full potential of the Mario Galaxy series,
trading the slightly cumbersome navigable hub world for a linear world map, and
putting all the creative focus into the levels themselves. The levels are both
more plentiful and generally smaller than in the first game, but that allows
the developers to make focused, intricately designed challenges that are, more
often than not, simply breathtaking in their beauty and ingenuity.
Above all else, Super
Mario Galaxy 2 is an ode to creativity itself, a game so bursting with
great ideas and stunning execution that it feels surprising to see it all
crammed onto one game disc. For now, it is the pinnacle of what 3D platforming
can be. In 2010, I remember feeling like the game had been delivered to us from
the future; replaying it this year and getting all 120 (initial) stars, I felt
exactly the same way. Like all the best Mario
games, Galaxy 2 stands apart from
its moment in time. It is transcendent.
2. Super Mario Bros.
It’s possible that I have beat the original Super Mario Bros. more times than any
other video game, certainly on more platforms than any other game, and I wasn’t
even alive when it came out. The first video game system I ever owned was the
GameBoy Color, and I remember playing the system’s port of the original Mario, Super Mario Bros. Deluxe, to death when
I was a child. It didn’t feel like an old, rediscovered classic to me, but a
vital and distinct part of my early gaming library. Years and many replays of
many different versions later, I recently committed to play the Super Mario All-Stars version of the
game through to the end, which I had not completed before, and I was surprised
again to see just how taken I was with the adventure, even with so many ‘modern’
offerings on newer consoles beckoning me to return to the present.
To me, Super Mario
Bros. isn’t just a game that stands the test of time, but annihilates the
very concept. No matter how many years pass, no matter how many innovations
Mario himself makes in future titles, I have always found the original NES classic fun to go back to. It may be
Mario’s most graphically simple home adventure, and it may be lighter on
features and power-ups than subsequent 2D side-scrollers, but the basic
gameplay is so immensely satisfying, the level design so creative and
challenging, that revisiting Mario’s inaugural adventure never fails to put a
smile on my face. Super Mario Bros. didn’t
just lay the foundation for a single series, but for an entire genre, and its
simple, universal pleasures helped bring gaming to the masses a few short years
after it seemed the nascent industry may have suffered a fatal blow. And like
any truly revolutionary masterpiece, in any artistic field, you can still sense
and enjoy the things that made it so novel and influential in the first place,
all these years later.
1. Super Mario 64
Here’s the thing: If I am being completely, purely, 100%
honest with myself, I think I would probably
make the argument that Nintendo has created more impressive Mario games
than this one in the years since the N64’s debut. Super Mario 64 isn’t perfect, and 20 years on, while much of what
makes it great shines through just as strongly as ever, so do some pieces of
frustrating platforming, opaque level design, or wonky controls. I think I
could argue that both Mario Galaxy games
soar even higher in terms of imagination, and do so with sharper controls and a
clearer, more invigorating sense of progression.
But when it comes to answering that simple, impossible
question – which Mario game is your
favorite? – I don’t think I really have a choice in the matter, logic be
damned. Super Mario 64 wasn’t just
one of those games that made me fall in love with video games, but taught me
how and why games can be great. Starting up Mario
64 as a kid, it felt like anything was possible – a big, mysterious castle,
full of places to visit and secrets to find. A series of vast, open levels, all
little worlds unto themselves. To play Super
Mario 64, at any age, is to tap into that sheer, basic wonder that the best
video games offer us – another world, real unto itself, dense with possibility.
Super Mario 64 was revolutionary, but
also foundational, not just to the games that came after, but to my own video
game sensibilities. I don’t feel like I even have a choice in this – Super Mario 64 is my favorite Mario game
because I’ve played it over and over again, because it was a fixture of my
childhood and remains one of my favorite games to spend time in as an adult,
because my love of games would be very different without it. Is it the very
best Mario game in the series? That’s a harder question to answer. Probably
not, given all the greatness that has come since – but as this is a personal
ranking, it would be dishonest to choose anything else. Super Mario 64 simply looms that large.
Follow author Jonathan Lack on Twitter @JonathanLack.
Very intersting. Thank you
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