NVC’s All-Time Favorite Mario Games

Kat Bailey – Super Mario Bros. 3

Is it possible to say that one of the greatest games ever made is underrated? That’s increasingly how I feel about Super Mario Bros. 3, which is continues to be glossed over when fans get together to discuss the greatest Mario games ever made. So let me take a moment to correct the record on what is unarguably the best NES game ever made.

When Super Mario Bros. 3 was released in Japan in 1988, it was the culmination of everything Shigeru Miyamoto’s team had learned over the span of five years. It radically expanded the Mario formula, introducing concepts like flight and the ability to backtrack through levels, thus bringing true exploration to the series. In the process it added a tremendous number of elements to the Mario canon, from its animal-based power-ups to the Koopa-lings to airships. Virtually every Mario game released since owes some sort of debt to Super Mario Bros. 3.

What’s more, it holds up. It’s a beautiful game by NES standards – a truly shocking evolution of even the original Super Mario Bros. – filled with marvelous design elements that make it seem almost like a puppet show. We take it for granted now, but just how cool is it that you can actually go behind the scenery? In an NES game?

Despite the limited technical resources at Nintendo’s disposal at the time, Super Mario Bros. 3 is one of the richest, most varied, and most ambitious Mario games ever made. This is the Mario game where you can swap between giant and regular-sized versions of enemies. This is the Mario where you navigate a boat floating on a lake of fire. Its sheer creativity is on display everywhere, all the way down to how it squirrels away its secrets on its world maps (another element introduced in Mario 3).

Seriously, if you haven’t played Mario 3 in a while, go back to it. Soak in the details. Consider that this game was made on the Nintendo Entertainment System, and consider its contemporaries. Many wonderful Mario games have been released since, but I’m not sure anything will ever top Super Mario Bros. 3, still the greatest 2D platformer ever made.

Logan Plant – Super Mario Odyssey

I can’t think of a video game that’s made me smile more than Super Mario Odyssey. I started and finished the game in a single weekend back when it launched in 2017, and I’ve spent countless hours tracking down additional moons in the time since. To me, it’s far and away the pinnacle of the plumber’s platforming adventures and one of the best Nintendo games of all time.

So many moments instantly jump to my mind when I think about Odyssey. Whether it’s capturing a T-Rex in the opening hours, the classic Donkey Kong celebration at the New Donk City festival, or fighting a dragon straight out of Game of Thrones, Odyssey is a rollercoaster ride packed with joyous, unexpected moments. Better yet, the entire journey crescendos into a grand finale so special that I still don’t like to spoil what happens nearly six years later. If I could pick one game to completely forget so I could re-experience it for the first time, it would be this one.

The love and attention Odyssey has for Nintendo history is unparalleled by pretty much any Nintendo game not named Super Smash Bros. The 8-bit 2D platforming sections are a beautifully-implemented callback, and Peach’s Castle from Mario 64 making a comeback sends the whole thing into nostalgia overload. Plus, Mario’s extensive wardrobe contains homages to the N64, GameCube, NES, and even the Satellaview!

But it’s not just setpieces and references. Mario has never controlled better in 3D than he does here, with the extra jump introduced by Cappy creating even more parkour possibilities. And Odyssey’s balance between platforming challenges, minigames, and exploration feels like the perfect recipe for 3D Mario gameplay. Capturing everything from a stack of Goombas looking for love to a Lakitu gone fishing results in some of the most clever challenges Nintendo has ever cooked up.

If you’d asked me six years ago, I would have been confident that Super Mario Odyssey 2 would be a thing by now. But as it appears Nintendo is holding off on the next 3D Mario until the Switch’s successor, I’m worried Odyssey may be a one-off concept we don’t see again. Wherever Mario goes next, I’ll be over the moon if it retains the magic Nintendo poured into this globetrotting masterpiece.

Shoutout to my runner-up, Super Mario 3D World, which longtime NVC fans may remember as the origin point of “Get the thing!”

Peer Schneider – Super Mario World

When Super Mario 64 came out, it replaced Super Mario World as my favorite Mario game. When Galaxy and, later, Odyssey came out, the same thing happened. Then weeks, months, and years pass and I revisit the games that so inspired me and showed me how the Mario series could expand and get even better and I inevitably pick up Super Mario World on one of the gazillion platforms it’s on now and concede: this is still the one. I credit SMW with getting me back into gaming after I had dropped off during my college years (I dabbled in some DOS games then, but had basically stopped buying games before the Atari ST and Amiga arrived on the scene).

There are surprises around every corner. Just the simple concept that you’ve got a map that promises discovery and branching paths is such a clever step up from Super Mario Bros. 3 (also an amazing 2D platformer). It’s got the best ghost houses, an absolutely incredible soundtrack, and a post-game “extra world” secret that is only rivaled by Super Mario Odyssey’s wonderful bonus worlds.

I made a quick Top 15 ranking to help contextualize where Mario World sits in relation to some of the other greats, but it’s a little painful to have to pick a single favorite. Super Mario 64 was an Anton-Ego-eating-Ratatouille’s-ratatouille-for-the-first-time moment for me. It’s showing its age, but it’s indelibly linked to a “first time” experience for me that makes it my secret favorite… until I think about Galaxy or Odyssey and how cleverly they expanded – and owned – their expansion into 3D space. Quite literally, in the case of Galaxy.

There aren’t a lot of handheld Mario games on my list since I didn’t get into Game Boy until the GBC days – and GBA was mostly re-releases. But I did like how 3DS used stereoscopic 3D to more effectively let us judge distance in a platformer. That’s really the thing about Mario games, right? Each one is not just a showcase for the hardware it’s on, it uses a distinct hardware feature to surprise and delight us with a new angle, a new interaction, or a new concept that wasn’t possible in the prior generation. Whether it’s drawing levels via a touch screen surface, using an analog trigger to control water spray, or having a second player essentially play a light gun game while Player 1 explore the world, Mario games just rock.

Before I tell you to go and play Super Mario World (with a friend, consecutively) via Nintendo Switch Online, I want to quickly mention that it gives me a pang of guilt to not have a multiplayer Mario game in my Top 5, because as a father of three kids playing four-player co-op Mario added yet another dimension – and firmly cemented Mario has one of my top 2 game series of all time (every time a new Zelda comes out, it gets bumped to #2). If you have kids and you slept on Super Mario 3D World’s rerelease on Switch, it’s the most respectful implementation of four-player platforming mayhem and removes some of the frustration from the otherwise excellent other family favorites like New Super Bros. U Deluxe or Rayman Legends. Plus, it’s got an experimental open-world Mario game “maxi mini game” built-in.

Now go play Super Mario World and don’t stop until you’ve unlocked its final secret.

Rebekah Valentine – Super Mario Sunshine

Look, I’m not saying Super Mario Sunshine is the best Mario game, by any stretch. I know people don’t care for FLUDD, the tropical theme, the weird camera, and some of the janky platforming. And I truly do think Odyssey is objectively the better game. But I love Sunshine with all my heart and will always step up to bat for it.

Super Mario Sunshine felt so joyful to me when it first came out. The sun-drenched setting, the wide open levels with all their hidden nooks and crannies, the funny Piantas, the bright colors, and the bouncy, tropical soundtrack. I loved a lot of the game’s subtleties, such as the pleasant clatter of Mario’s feet on the stone pavement of Delfino Plaza, and the particular color of the ocean in Noki Bay once it was cleaned up.

I loved kicking durians around Delfino plaza, I loved getting Mario a pair of sunglasses that dimmed the screen just a bit, I loved the news alerts that stayed updated based on what I had just done around Isle Delfino, and I loved the absurd conceit of Mario going to actual jail for polluting an entire island before he even arrived there. Super Mario Sunshine just had so much personality!

The levels themselves took some wild swings, too, that I remember fondly to this day. Remember the terrifying eel rising up from the waterfall chasm? Or the manta rays attacking the hotel? Or the giant sand bird? And I loved poking around each major level using the water jetpack to supplement Mario’s basic jumps and reach places I never would have been able to otherwise, but I also loved when FLUDD was ripped off my back and I was unceremoniously dumped into a giant pachinko machine. God, this game was silly.

I think you can make the argument for many, many other Mario games having better platforming, more varied worlds, fewer bugs, or just being holistically better than Mario Sunshine as games. But I don’t know that many other Mario games that took quite the same level of weird risk with their setting, themes, and levels and had it pay off in quite the same way. I don’t think Mario Sunshine would get made if it were pitched today – but I’ll keep hoping for a Sunshine 2 all the same.

Seth Macy – Super Mario Bros.

I had to think about this one pretty long and hard, because I really love almost all the Mario games. But in my heart of hearts, I realized it’s the original Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Entertainment System that I love the most.

Super Mario Bros. was the first Nintendo game I ever played. I’m old enough to have been a small child in the aftermath of the great video game collapse of the early 1980s. I had always been drawn to video games, and we had a ColecoVision and later an Atari 2600 in our home. Part of the reason we had those consoles was because by the time my brother and I were old enough to show interest in them, everything video-game related was relegated to bargain bins.

I remember going to Sears with my parents and diving into a huge bin of $1 Atari games. Gaming was over. My best friend had a similar set up, where his dad would buy consoles on clearance or at yard sales, and we’d play them. Intellivision, Atari 5200, older consoles that failed and were no longer being supported. Even though I was young, I still felt bummed out because I really liked video games but for all intents and purposes, that industry was gone.

Then my friend invited me over to see a new gaming system his dad had rented from the video store. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The system was the NES, and the game was Super Mario Bros. There was a purpose to this adventure, something that didn’t exist on those old crappy arcade ports on previous consoles. There were secrets to be found. It sounds silly now, but finding out some of the pipes could be used to travel underground? That was earth-shattering. It looked like nothing we’d ever seen, either. We didn’t even have a word to describe “graphics” back then, it just looked so much better than the smeary, blocky style of earlier systems.

Look, I get it: every Mario game after the original expanded and improved on it. But I find myself going back to the original more than any of the others. There’s no “world map” like what was introduced in Super Mario 3 and later expanded upon in Super Mario World. The power-ups are about as basic as they come. The mushroom is, essentially, just an extra chance against enemies, and the fireflower gives you a little extra “oomph” when it comes to defeating enemies you aren’t able to otherwise. Secrets are limited to hidden blocks and warp zones, with a few vines scattered about.

Thinking about how great Super Mario Bros. is, it’s almost impossible for me to find fault with it. The controls remain some of the most crisp in all of gaming. The difficulty scales perfectly as you progress through its worlds. You can fly through each level with reckless abandon or take your time (within the limits of the timer, of course). You can use the warp zones to skip levels and bring the length of the game down dramatically, or you can play it straight through and see everything it has to offer. These are all things we take for granted now, and it’s kind of astonishing how perfect and beautiful the original Super Mario Bros. is considering it was released in 1985, which is why it remains my all-time favorite.

We want to know your favorite Mario game, and why, so hit up the poll and then defend your favorite game’s honor in the comments.