Top 5 'Super Mario' Games of All Time
In 1985, Nintendo published a little game called "Super Mario Bros." for the Famicom in Japan, and the rest was history. Mario went on to become one of the most recognizable characters on the planet, and among the dozens of games he showed up in, these are probably the five most important.
It might surprise some Mario fans to learn that the character made his debut not in a "Mario" game, but in the arcade classic "Donkey Kong" which came out in 1981, according to the Business Insider.
Four years later, the mustachioed plumber made his solo debut for the Famicom, which was the start of decades of "Mario" games that everyone knew and loved. Out of an estimated 170 "Mario" games that have been put out since then, there are a few that simply stand out as undisputed "Mario" classics.
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#5. "Super Mario 64"
In 1996, "Super Mario 64" was released as a launch game for Nintendo 64, and it re-introduced Mario to an entire generation of gamers during the early days of 3D.
A "Mario" game in 3D shook the gaming world to its core back then, and even decades later, the simple polygons retain the charm of the characters. As the first "Mario" game of its kind, it was one of the first major games to fully use the analog stick in 3D platforming, and it almost single-handedly set the standard for all the 3D games from that point on.
Since then, the "Super Mario 64" has been ported over to the Wii U and Nintendo DS, but for the purists out there, the original version is available for the Wii via Nintendo's Virtual Console.
#4. "Super Mario Odyssey"
It's an open world "Mario" game that could be considered the spiritual successor of "Super Mario 64," and it came out for the Nintendo Switch in October 2017.
It's charming, fun, and incredibly huge. Nintendo put in everything they've learned through decades of making "Mario" games and put it all in one Nintendo Switch title that's unlike any other before it.
"Super Mario Odyssey" is not just inventive, it's also tightly designed and polished as a video game. So much that it has since become a favorite of speedrunners racing to either finish the whole game in under an hour, or collect everything in the game the fastest.
#3. "Super Mario Bros. 3"
This is the game that was a pillar of the Nintendo Entertainment System when it launched in Japan in October of 1988. Two years later, "Super Mario Bros. 3" came out in North America and elsewhere in 1990, and it did not disappoint in the least.
This was the title that really established how "Mario" games would play like from that point on. Where "Super Mario Bros. 2" experimented with strange designs and character selection systems, "Super Mario Bros. 3" streamlined everything to its pure platformer form.
This is the game that introduced the Raccoon Tail, the Kuribo's Shoe, and the overworld map, and set the visual standard for all the next "Mario" titles after it. It's also one of the "Mario" titles included in Nintendo's NES classic, too.
#2. "Super Mario Bros."
There are classic video games, and then there's the original "Super Mario Bros."
This title embodies everything a classic video game should be, and it still is one of the top achievements by creator Shigeru Miyamoto. It's built on the simple idea of teaching players how to navigate a simple section, then build on that for the next.
It's a game design philosophy that would go on to lay the foundation of later games, everything from platformers to MMORPGs, and was the title that revved up what was a fading industry back then, with the decline of the arcade games.
#1. "Super Mario World"
"Super Mario World" is the complete "Mario" game, one of the first SNES games to bring to players a massive open world game with plenty of secrets and room to explore.
Where earlier "Mario" titles were a series of stages, "Super Mario World" has a scope which can only be described as epic. It introduced all the ideas later "Mario" games would come to re-interpret, from the addition of Yoshi, the Ghost Houses, multiple exits, the Star Road, and a ton more.
