Every Mario Game Ranked From WORST To BEST

When it comes to video games, Mario is… You know what? This list is long enough. You’ve seen the runtime. If you haven’t, look at that runtime! You already know who Mario is; let’s skip all the preamble and lay down some ground rules so we can plumb the depths of Nintendo’s mascot. And we do mean the depths. See, here at TripleJump, we don’t just “Do the Mario.” We do all the Mario. We’re not only ranking the platformers. We’re not only ranking the major spinoffs. We’re not even only ranking the games made by Nintendo. We are ranking every Mario game from worst to best, because you asked us to do it and we didn’t have the heart to say no. Our good friends – and fun guys – at the Super Mario Wiki provided an excellent list to get us started. Once we removed all of the ports and non-Mario-starring entries, we ended up with 193 games. That was clearly too many – we need to sleep at some point – so we implemented a few rules. For starters, we aren’t counting games that are clearly part of another series, even if they have spun off from proper Mario games. So no Donkey Kong Country, no WarioWare, no Super Smash Bros., and so on. We aren’t counting Satellaview games, Game & Watch games, pinball tables or Mario-branded prize games at Japanese arcades. We aren’t counting games in which Mario is the villain, such as Donkey Kong Jr. or Wario Land. Nor are we counting games in which he is the damsel, such as Mario is Missing!, Super Princess Peach, or Luigi’s Mansion. If you want our one-word review of those three games, though, it’s: awful, good, and great. We aren’t counting games from completely different franchises in which Mario makes a guest appearance, even a headlining one, such as Dance Dance Revolution, Fortune Street, or the Olympics. We are not counting rereleases or compilations. We also aren’t counting Flash games, though there were 26 official ones! Maybe we’ll rank those one day. I’m joking, obviously. Please, don’t ask me to rank those one day. That’s a lot of stuff we aren’t counting, but only because there’s even more stuff we are counting. We’ll be ranking them according to critical reception, fan reception, and common sense, which isn’t always taken into account when it comes to critical reception or fan reception. Let’s rank ‘em. It’s a-me, Ben-io. And I’m Peteruigi from TripleJump, and this is Every Mario Video Game Ranked from Worst to Best. 148) Super Mario World Barcode Battler II Bet you didn’t expect to see Super Mario World at the bottom of this list! That game remains a platforming masterpiece, but its first port – and I am using the word “port” more loosely than anyone has ever used the word in human history – is completely disposable. Literally; I’m sure most people threw it away after playing it. The game was a set of cards with barcodes on them. You’d scan them into the Barcode Battler and…well, that was really it. You could power up “hero cards” with “item cards,” and then have them square off against “enemy cards.” In reality, though, you were just asking the Barcode Battler to tell you which of two numbers was larger. There’s surprisingly little information about this game online, and that’s undoubtedly for the best. If even the internet manages to forget about something, it really must be worthless. 147) Mario Calculator DSi Mario Clock DSi Oh, the pitchforks are coming out now, I can feel it. I know, you wanted me to review Mario Calculator and Mario Clock separately. Properly. Like a legitimate journalist showing due respect to a calculator with Mario on it and a clock…also with Mario on it. But there’s really almost nothing to say. Both were available for purchase as DSiWare. They released together in the west, but Japanese fans of Mario Calculator had to wait more than one month for Mario Clock, and I’m sure it was agonizing. They feature Mario sounds and imagery, but they’re still just – say it with me now –a calculator and a clock. Mario Calculator was slightly better value, we suppose, as the DSi already had a clock. For free. Which you didn’t have to open whenever you wanted to check the time. And speaking of time, that’s the last time we or anybody else will ever speak of Mario Calculator and Mario Clock. 146) Mario Artist: Communication Kit Nintendo 64DD Am I in a position to judge something that’s more add-on than game? No. Am I in a position to judge something that doesn’t function because the servers no longer exist? No. Am I in a position to judge something that is entirely in a language I cannot understand? Again, no. And yet, I’ve got to talk about it somewhere on this list, so it might as well be here. Mario Artist: Communication Kit, like all Mario Artist titles, was exclusive to Japan. It allowed players to share the things they made in other Mario Artist games by connecting to RandNetDD, the Nintendo 64DD’s online subscription service that did exactly as well as you assume it did. If you lived in Japan, owned a Nintendo 64DD, subscribed to RandNetDD, had the other Mario Artist games, and wanted to upload your creations to the only other person on the planet who fit that criteria, the Communication Kit was great, I’m sure. Me, though? I’d say it’s better than a clock, and not quite as good as a coloring book. 145) Super Mario Bros. & Friends: When I Grow Up PC It has a title suited to an edutainment game, but don’t worry; this is even worse! Super Mario Bros. & Friends: When I Grow Up is a coloring book. You flip through a grand total of 30 images, click the empty spaces to add color, and wonder if your parents hate you for buying this instead of any of the actual Mario games. The images are animated, which is a nice touch, at least in the sense that it allows for some kind of functionality you can’t get with a sheet of paper. The images are themed around various professions, such as teacher, journalist, carpenter, firefighter, farmer, and zoo keeper. It might be fun to try to work out which of these hypothetical jobs Mario has actually held since then. It also might be fun to go to Mars. I’m never going to do either of these things, so I can’t really say. 144) Mario’s Early Years! Fun with Numbers PC I might as well point out now that you’re going to hear “PC” a lot towards the bottom of this list. Anyway, Mario’s Early Years! was a brief series of edutainment games hosted by a man who, for all we know, has received no formal education whatsoever. In Fun with Numbers, he and his friends come together to teach you…almost nothing, to be honest. Instead of learning maths or solving basic equations, Fun with Numbers is aimed at very, very young children. Children who aren’t even aware of what numbers are. And because there’s very little one can do with numbers without accidentally teaching kids how to add or subtract, some of the lessons have nothing to do with numbers at all, instead focusing on shapes or nursery rhymes. The game received a SNES port, which probably helped kids count the number of bad games they owned. 143) Mario’s Early Years! Fun with Letters PC The Mario Wiki describes Mario’s Early Years! Fun with Letters as a game about literature. Allow me to educate you, dear viewer, by assuring you that this is not literature. The game, as you can see, is extremely similar to Fun with Numbers, but we’re giving it the edge based on the fact that it does actually teach something. Not only do you learn the letters of the alphabet, but you use them to complete words and sentences. The game also teaches basic spelling and parts of speech…things I am using right now! Fun with Letters doesn’t pad itself out with irrelevant content like Fun with Numbers did; every lesson in this game does involve words. Which doesn’t sound all that noteworthy, but it qualifies as an achievement for Mario’s Early Years! This game was also ported to the SNES, where it lost its storybook mode. That’s a shame; the stories were really good. 142) Mario’s Early Years! Preschool Fun PC I know there will be strong opinions in the comments about which of the Mario’s Early Years! games is the best. I know there will be arguments. I know some of you will come to blows. But my personal favorite has got to be Preschool Fun. This game has a larger scope than the other two, and it’s also the best at actually conveying knowledge to a child who is playing it. It explores concepts such as colors, opposites, and animal sounds, three things you’re certain to be asked about in any job interview. Fans will no doubt be sad to learn that this was the last Mario’s Early Years! game, unless Nintendo happens to announce one at this year’s E3. All three games were eventually released as a collection on CD-ROM, though, and that collection was later bundled with Card shop Plus and Shelley Duvall’s “It’s a Bird’s Life.” We’ll tell you all about that one when we get around to ranking every Shelley Duvall game from worst to best. 141) Super Mario Collection Screen Saver PC You youngsters may not believe this, but back in my day we used to have to install screensavers to prevent our pornography from being burned into our monitors forever. That’s a joke, of course; pornography had not been invented yet. Screen burn-in was a very real problem, however, and Mario and friends were here to keep images from resting too long in place. Well, not here; this was only released in Japan, but you get the point. You could choose from Mario and Luigi walking around, Bowser walking around, or Goombas walking around. The possibilities were endless! You could even watch Mario and friends wigging out like they had the wrong kind of mushrooms, or Mario being a total pipe tease. The collection also came with wallpapers, a clock, and a calculator. Wait, a clock and a calculator in the same package? Nintendo used to be so magnanimous. 140) I Am a Teacher: Super Mario no Sweater Famicom Disk System Jaguar Sewing Machine Embroidery-Only Software: Mario Family Game Boy Color Two releases with impenetrable names, I Am a Teacher: Super Mario no Sweater for the Famicom Disk System and Jaguar Sewing Machine Embroidery-Only Software: Mario Family for the Game Boy Color are both jumper-design programs. Did the world need two of them? Who’s to say? Me, and the answer is no. However, I Am a Teacher: Super Mario no Sweater only let you design jumpers. Any actual knitting was done by you as you stared at the pattern on your television screen and pondered the other paths your life could have taken. Jaguar Sewing Machine Embroidery-Only Software: Mario Family could actually be connected to the Jaguar JN-100 sewing machine, which would then sew Mario patterns onto garments for you, freeing up both of your hands to hold your face as you weep. We’re lumping them together here because if we talked about jumper-design programs more than once, you would unsubscribe. And you’d be right to do so. 139) Super Mario Bros. Print World PC Good news, princess: We found your prints! Haha…ha. I’ve got to be honest, that terrible joke represents the extent of the thought I’ve put into Super Mario Bros. Print World. Released by Hi Tech Expressions in 1991, the program allowed users to design and print banners, flyers, greeting cards, and other documents that have some Mario-related imagery on them. Well, the Mario-related imagery isn’t mandatory, but we aren’t sure why you’d buy this if you didn’t want to use it. Actually, we’re not sure why you’d buy this, full stop. The package came with 100 pictures of Mario and his chums, which you could use in conjunction with a whopping seven different fonts to create the decorated sheet of paper of your dreams. Then you could send your creation to a dot matrix printer that would keep the entire neighborhood awake until the job was finished. The 90s were truly magical. 138) Mario’s Time Machine PC The infamously…infamous Mario is Missing! doesn’t qualify for our list. Look for it instead on our list of Every Luigi Game Ranked From Worst to Best, which we’ll make shortly before the heat death of the universe. For now, you will have to console yourself with Mario’s Time Machine, a similarly educational and similarly terrible PC game from one year later. Mario travels through history to learn about various time periods, inventions, and historical figures. And there will be a quiz. That’s not a joke, either; see? For a game that aims to teach children, Mario’s Time Machine doesn’t seem to mind teaching them things that aren’t true. The Mario Wiki has an extensive list of historical inaccuracies, rendering the “edu” part of “edutainment” rather suspect. Then again, the “tainment” part doesn’t fare much better, so it balances out. The SNES and NES versions are shorter, which means they are superior. In no timeline, however, is Mario’s Time Machine worth playing. 137) Punch Ball Mario Bros. PC The original Mario Bros. isn’t a great game, but whatever appeal it does have is rooted in its simplicity. Enter Punch Ball Mario Bros. to prove that fact, as every bit of complication it adds makes the game noticeably worse. The history of this game is poorly documented, but it was developed by Hudson Soft in 1984 and may well be the earliest Mario game not developed by Nintendo. It uses Mario Bros. as its foundation and introduces the titular Punch Ball. The brothers can toss it at enemies and then walk over to pick it up again. It’s exactly as riveting to play as it was listening to me describe it. Basically, it’s a game for anyone who thought bopping turtles from below was too much fun. Punch Ball Mario Bros. also features new level layouts, each of which seems carefully designed to make you long for a game that wasn’t all that good to begin with. 136) Mario Teaches Typing PC If you’re anything like me, you’ve often gazed into Mario’s big, beautiful eyes and thought, “This…this is the man I want to teach me typing.” Mario Teaches Typing, then, should be right up my alley! Unfortunately, Mario teaches sod all in this game. It would be more accurate to call it “Mario Watches You While You Type.” The game contains a few different scenarios – I’d call them gameplay sequences if I weren’t at risk of crushing the world beneath the weight of that overstatement – in which you type letters, words, and phrases. If you don’t already know how to do that, Mario has no interest in teaching you, and he will stand idly by as you let Princess Peach sink to her death. It’s a weird game, and a later CD-ROM version made it even weirder, with some horrifying CGI sequences that still – and I simply cannot stress this enough – do not teach you typing. 135) Mario Teaches Typing 2 PC The CD-ROM version of the first Mario Teaches Typing added a story mode in which Mario finds a magical typewriter. Mario Teaches Typing 2 launched with its own story mode…in which Mario finds a magical typewriter. Brilliant. Also, look at him using it. Is this really the guy you want teaching you to type? This is exactly the sort of typist yelling at us in the comments because the game we ranked at #116 should clearly have been ranked at #121. Anyway, Mario Teaches Typing 2 is an expanded version of the first game, reusing just about all of the stages and assets. The difference? It has a color-coded on-screen keyboard to help you learn where the keys are, and it also includes customizable lesson plans. Which means…it actually teaches typing. It took four years and three versions of the game, but we got there, everyone; Mario Teaches Typing finally does the bare minimum we’d expected it to do. It’s still rubbish though, obviously. 134) Mario’s Game Gallery PC Released in 1995 and then again in 1998 as Mario’s FUNdamentals – in which the title emphasized “fun” because the game sure as hell didn’t – Mario’s Game Gallery is a…gallery. Of games. Featuring Mario. You probably didn’t need me to explain that to you. The collection includes draughts (or checkers if you wanna get American about this), backgammon, Go Fish, dominoes, and a version of Yahtzee that differs in one key way: They didn’t want to pay for the name Yahtzee. Everything plays well enough, but surely these games are more fun to play with friends than with a guy wearing the same clothes he just wore in the sewers. Also, Mario refers to Toads as “Little Toadies,” and I will quit the internet if he ever does that again. The game was developed by Interplay, which only two years later would introduce the world to Fallout. Is it too much of a stretch to suggest that Mario’s Game Gallery helped inspire the world’s most beloved post-nuclear role-playing franchise? Yes. 133) Mario Bros. Special PC With Punch Ball Mario Bros., Hudson Soft made a version of Mario Bros. that was significantly worse than the original. Here, though, they made a version that was…less-significantly worse. Progress. Mario Bros. Special does sort of retain the simple appeal of the arcade game, but its attempts to spice up the experience are more frustrating than fun. Conveyor belts, trampolines, shifting platforms, and other hazards don’t so much vary the gameplay as make it more agonizing. These concepts work well in side-scrollers, but in single-screen platformers in which you must carefully out-maneuver enemies, they don’t fit nearly as well. It’s nice that the game retained simultaneous two-player mode, but it was hardly worth one player’s time to begin with. And, hey, it was the closest thing PC players could get to a direct port of the arcade game. That is, as long as you ignore all of the direct ports of the arcade game that PC players also got… 132) Super Mario Bros. Special PC Don’t let the name trick you into thinking this was an enhanced PC port of Super Mario Bros. It’s actually a sequel, and it’s enhanced in exactly the same way that being punched in the neck might “enhance” your evening. Developed by Hudson Soft, Super Mario Bros. Special adds elements of the original Mario Bros. arcade game. One might think that such a mash-up would lead to an interesting experience. And then one might actually play the game. Super Mario Bros. Special unintentionally revealed just how much better the Famicom was than consumer PCs of the era. This game’s colors are nowhere as rich, it’s plagued by flicker and collision detection issues, it lacks a two-player mode, and the screen doesn’t scroll…quite a detriment in a side scroller. It does contain new levels and the first powerup in the series that allowed Mario to fly, but it’s a pale imitation of the game that made Nintendo a household name. 131) Mario Kart Tour Mobile Somewhere on this list, Mario Kart: Super Circuit is wiping its brow with relief that it is no longer the worst Mario Kart game. Yes, Nintendo gave that honor – possibly permanently – to 2019’s Mario Kart Tour. This is the mobile game that answered the question, “How do you play Mario Kart without buttons?” The answer was, “Very poorly; thanks for asking.” It looks nice, and the ever-expanding pool of drivers and tracks is welcome. But the game has been criticized for lacking proper multiplayer, having limited gameplay, and only being playable in portrait mode. Updates corrected these things to varying degrees, but introduced the positively extortionate$60 per year Gold Pass. You can buy an actual Mario Kart game – y’know, with fun and everything – for that price, and you wouldn’t have to pay for it again the following year. Thankfully Nintendo’s other dalliances in the mobile market were much better. Well, maybe not all of them. 130) Mario no Photopi Nintendo 64 If you’ve ever wondered why Nintendo never made a sequel to Mario Paint, that’s because you didn’t know Nintendo made a sequel to Mario Paint, and you should consider yourself lucky. Mario no Photopi was released only in Japan and my goodness, those poor people. Mario no Photopi was overcomplicated and confusing. Also, whereas Mario Paint let you draw with a mouse, Mario no Photopi used the Nintendo 64 controller. Drawing with that thing was slightly more difficult than to trying to sign your name with a 12-foot-long pencil attached to your eyebrow. The main draw of Mario no Photopi was the ability to import photographs from memory cards, which could be plugged right into the cartridge. You could then manipulate and print those images at dedicated photo booths, just to make the process as cumbersome as possible. Also, Mario no Photopi had a tile puzzle. Mario Paint had Gnat Attack. I rest my case. 129) Photos with Mario 3DS As a free download, it’s difficult to be too harsh on Photos with Mario. It certainly isn’t good, or worth the 11 seconds of your life you might spend playing with it, but it’s easy enough to ignore. The 3DS app takes advantage of the handheld’s AR capabilities, but not in any especially interesting ways. You can use cards to spawn different Mario characters and objects, and while those cards did cost money, you could also print them out yourself and experience disappointment far less expensively. Viewing the cards through the 3DS allowed you to see the characters interact. Once you’ve done that, you’ve experienced all that Photos with Mario has to offer. Of course, you could pose with Mario – or, more likely, stick your thumb into the shot – which might expand the game’s appeal by another full second. You know, I think I was wrong earlier; it’s not difficult to be too harsh on Photos with Mario at all! 128) Mario Clash Virtual Boy What is a Nintendo console without Mario? Sometime between Nintendo developing the Virtual Boy and it becoming clear that the Virtual Boy would flop – so, somewhere within that two-week window – there were plans for VB Mario Land. It got far enough along that attendees of the 1995 Winter Consumer Electronics Show were treated to some footage. It was never finished, of course. Instead, Nintendo took one of VB Mario Land’s planned minigames and fleshed that out into Mario Clash. And by “fleshed that out into Mario Clash” I mean “released whatever they could scrape together as Mario Clash.” It’s not terrible, but it is almost daringly slight. It’s a repetitive score-attack game that does get more difficult but never gets more interesting. It’s not the Virtual Boy Mario game anybody wanted, but since nobody wanted the Virtual Boy to begin with, very few people hold that fact against it. 127) Famicom Grand Prix: F-1 Race Famicom Disk System If you’re waiting to see where this game’s predecessor ranks – the one simply titled F-1 Race – I’m going to have to disappoint you. Despite this game and its sequel featuring Mario, the previous game just features…cars. I mean, there are probably drivers in them, but the first game in this series didn’t gain a true Mario connection until it was ported to the Game Boy, where some Mushroom Kingdom denizens would pop up to congratulate you. This game, Famicom Grand Prix: F-1 Race, does feature Mario. See? There he is on the box! Get a good, long look at him there, because it’s not nearly as easy to find him in the game. Actually, wait, is that him there? Looking like he just ate something he shouldn’t have in Willy Wonka’s factory? The game is a decent top-down racer, and it’s got a nice soundtrack, but that’s by no means a rarity on this list. 126) Alleyway Game Boy Do you like Breakout? No? Oh, sorry…I was expecting you to answer yes. This is embarrassing. How about Arkanoid, do you like that one? No again? Hm. Right, well, can’t say I’d recommend Alleyway, then. It’s a stretch to call Alleyway “a Mario game,” I know. Hell, it’s a stretch to call it a game. But since we’re shown that Mario pilots the little paddle around, I guess we technically do play as him, and we’re stuck including it. We understand Nintendo’s desire to plop its mascot into a launch title for their new handheld, but it would have been nice if they’d done anything to actually tie it into the Mario universe. Mario himself is already known for breaking blocks. Couldn’t they have done more than stick some sprites into the bonus rounds? As it stands, though, Alleyway does an excellent job of keeping dust from getting into your Game Boy’s cartridge slot. 125) Mario Pinball Land Game Boy Advance Mario Land is fun. Pinball is fun! And yet here we have Mario Pinball Land right down near the bottom of our list. Surely this must be some sort of mistake! No, unfortunately; endlessly slapping Mario against walls until the game decides to let you progress is not really all that much fun. It’s far from the only time Nintendo married a popular franchise to a handheld pinball game. Kirby, Pokémon, and even Metroid Prime all got the treatment. In those cases, however, there were actually…y’know, balls. Here, poor Mario needs to have his spine shattered and his body compacted into a sphere for the game to even exist. The mechanics of pinball serve as more of a hindrance than a fun or interesting way to accomplish anything. Reviewers at the time were not impressed, though they did single out the game’s graphics for praise. Looking at it now, I have to assume they were just being polite. 124) Mario’s Tennis Virtual Boy Well, we never thought we’d have to write an entirely new entry about Mario’s Tennis after covering it in our Virtual Boy video, but here we are…trying to assemble some new words about a game in which you move left and right and sometimes push a button. Mario’s Tennis is nowhere near as good as the other Mario sports games on this list, not least because there’s precious little Mario content in it. To be honest, there’s not all that much tennis in it, either, as the experience is boiled down to almost Atari-levels of simplicity. With so little content and such a low skill ceiling, the game would be completely forgettable if not for having Mario in the title. So, sure, swat some balls with Yoshi, wonder why you pulled the Virtual Boy out of storage for this, and never think about it again. That’s my plan, at least. 123) Wrecking Crew NES Developed in that brief window between Mario’s creation and the firm establishment of what that character’s games would be like, Wrecking Crew introduces another early profession for our hero. Here he is a demolition man. NOT THAT ONE. Wrecking Crew is a puzzle platformer in which Mario must destroy a set number of objects in each stage, all the while besieged by walking wrenches and eggplant men. What do these eggplant men wear to work? Auber-jeans. Please hold your applause. It’s a challenging game, as destroying some objects can prevent you from reaching others, but it’s not particularly good. Later stages seem to try to defeat you through sheer frustration rather than difficulty, and the appearance of an evil foreman who keeps knocking you to the bottom of the stage doesn’t make things any more fun. On the bright side, this was Mario’s final game before Super Mario Bros., meaning things almost exclusively got better from here. 122) UNDAKE30 Same Game Daisakusen Mario Version Super Famicom In 1985, a programmer named Kuniaki Moribe created Chain Shot! The computer game was distributed via magazine, and it became what we’d today call a viral hit. In the early 90s, it made its way to Unix, Mac, and Windows platforms as SameGame. True to its name, the various versions of SameGame were all…similar. Then, in 1995, Nintendo added Mario heads. This game doesn’t offer much beyond the chance to see Mario’s severed head stick its tongue out at you. But, hey, maybe that’s enough. I won’t yuck your yum. UNDAKE30 Same Game Daisakusen Mario Version never hit store shelves, but it was an official Nintendo product. It was given out as a prize at tournaments and was used to show off the Super Famicom at retailers. There was a version available for play through the Satellaview, though. It was broadcast on Mondays at 5:30 p.m., if you ever find yourself hurled backwards in time and dying for a fix of UNDAKE30 Same Game Daisakusen Mario Version. 121) Mario Bros. Arcade Well, the title of the game is accurate, because Mario Bros. sure isn’t super. Its legacy is important, though. It established Mario’s name. It established that the brothers live in New York and work as plumbers. And it introduced Luigi…kind of. He was created for this game, but he ended up debuting a few months earlier in a Game & Watch title called…Mario Bros. Which isn’t the same game and…let’s just move on, shall we? Mario Bros. involves bopping enemies from below, to the great confusion of modern gamers who died because they tried to stomp a turtle. There is fun to be had here, but that fun can be measured in minutes rather than hours. Nintendo seems to realize this, as it’s frequently been included as a minigame in other titles as opposed to a standalone release. You can play versions of it in Super Mario Bros. 3, Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, Super Mario Advance, and Super Mario 3D World. And then you, too, can learn that it’s not very good. 120) Kaettekita Mario Bros. Famicom Disk System Mario Bros. have returned. At least, according to the title; I’m told that’s how it translates into English. Kaettekita Mario Bros. is an enhanced semi-sequel sponsored by Japanese food company Nagatanien. Owing to the title, the sponsorship, and the fact that it released on a console that never came to the West, you have probably already inferred that Kaettekita Mario Bros. was exclusive to Japan. We don’t feel particularly bothered by that. It’s better than the original Mario Bros., but so is the massive pile of crap we’re going to cover next. Kaettekita Mario Bros. adds features, improves the controls, and allows you to sit through an advertisement for Nagatanien before you’re allowed to play. Why am I suddenly craving ochazuke nori?! There’s also a mode called Nagatanien World. Hey, have I mentioned this game was sponsored by Nagatanien? Additionally, there was a high-score contest with physical prizes, but I’m fairly certain it’s over now. Sorry. 119) Crazy Kong Arcade Crazy Kong Part II Arcade It’s common knowledge that there were inferior clones of Nintendo’s hit game Donkey Kong. But did you know that Nintendo officially licensed two of those inferior clones itself? Crazy Kong was the result of Nintendo being unable to keep up with demand for Donkey Kong units in Japan. In 1981, Nintendo allowed Falcon to create Crazy Kong, putting more units into production and funneling more money back to Nintendo. Crazy Kong is, essentially, Donkey Kong, only poorly made, worse looking, and much glitchier. Both companies were unhappy with its quality, leading Falcon to release – in the same year – Crazy Kong Part II, which was not a sequel but was rather a fixed version of the first Crazy Kong, with a few gameplay tweaks. A legal battle ensued when Falcon began exporting Crazy Kong to other regions, something Nintendo explicitly forbade them to do. The suit was settled in Nintendo’s favor, and that’s why you probably won’t see Crazy Kong in Smash Bros. any time soon. 118) Hotel Mario CD-i Yes, that’s right; as much as Nintendo would like the world to forget the existence of Hotel Mario, Philips’ bizarre door-slamming simulator is better than a fair few games Nintendo made themselves! Does that mean it’s time to reconsider Hotel Mario? Is it actually a hidden gem? Was it simply ahead of its time? For those of you playing along at home, the answers are: No, No, and Good God No. It can provide several minutes’ worth of amusement, though, so that’s something. Critics who reviewed it upon release in 1994 actually tended to enjoy it. Scores hovered around the 70% mark, with reviewers praising its addictiveness, soundtrack, and creativity. It’s only later that Hotel Mario’s reputation soured, and it became marginally less beloved than COVID-19. It’s by no means a good game, but it’s far from bottom-rung material. It doesn’t even rank among the worst three Nintendo entries on the CD-i. It’s just…kind of dull, really, and if it weren’t for the awful cutscenes, it wouldn’t even be worth talking about today. 117) Famicom Grand Prix II: 3D Hot Rally Famicom Disk System In Famicom Grand Prix II: 3D Hot Rally, you play as Mario or Luigi, though you’d be forgiven for not realizing that; neither of them looks very much like the back of a car. Regardless, according to the game’s official art, those are your drivers. It’s another racer that ostensibly has Mario in it. Hooray. It’s not half bad, though, and for an 8-bit game it looks and runs well enough. 3D Hot Rally was compatible with the Famicom 3D System, essentially a set of goggles that would make some games appear to run in 3D. It was also the only Nintendo-published game to be compatible, meaning it’s yet another example of Nintendo under-supporting its own peripherals. The game was offered to Nintendo of America, but they didn’t expect it would sell due to its cutesy graphics. As a result, and because there were no other countries at that point in Earth’s history, 3D Hot Rally never left Japan. 116) Mario Party Advance Game Boy Advance Is your favorite thing about Mario Party the ability to play with your friends? Is the only thing you like about Mario Party the ability to play with your friends? Then steer well clear of Mario Party Advance, which seems to think you’d rather walk around doing quests for NPCs. It’s a strange game, prioritizing a disappointing single-player experience over multiplayer. Which does exist, I should point out, but which is cumbersome and underdeveloped. Interestingly, we found a number of wikis and blog posts stating that Mario Party Advance was awarded the title of the “Worst-received Mario videogame” from Guinness World Records, but we found no such reporting on any reputable sites. Or, y’know, from Guinness. It’s safe to say that even if it actually were recognized as such, though, the sheer volume of crap you’ve had to sit through just to hear us talk about this entry proves that the title would mean very little. 115) Mario Kart: Super Circuit Game Boy Advance The first handheld Mario Kart game is notable only for being the first handheld Mario Kart game. It was technically impressive to play something like this on the Game Boy Advance, but whereas other handheld titles still compare favorably to the console games, there is no reason to return to Super Circuit today. Its tracks are even flatter and more dull than those in the original Super Mario Kart, and while it’s nice that four friends can play with one cartridge, they’re limited to a single mode in which there are only four tracks and everyone plays as Yoshi. At least it doesn’t give you a wedgie. Its most enduring legacy is the introduction of retro tracks. In this case it’s just stages from the SNES game, but in later sequels the retro tracks would be a welcome opportunity to reimagine old favorites. That’s one positive about Super Circuit, and you don’t even need to play the game to appreciate it. 114) Mario Party: The Top 100 3DS Having 100 games from previous Mario Party releases in the palm of your hands sounds great. Sorry, my mistake; it sounds like Nintendo rushed a minimum-effort title in the hopes of scraping together a few extra bucks. And, what do you know, that’s exactly what it feels like, too! We debated leaving Mario Party: The Top 100 off this list entirely. It’s sort of a collection, but it’s also kind of a new game. We decided to cover it, mainly because we didn’t want any of you to accidentally buy it. The minigames do feature improved graphics and gameplay tweaks, but overall it feels like an excuse to get another title on shelves without having to do much work. It holds a 59% ranking on Metacritic and an even worse – though more deserved – 53% on GameRankings. Ironically, Mario Party: The Top 100 doesn’t even crack the top 100 of our list of Mario games. Actually, is that irony? I don’t know. Nobody knows. 113) Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash WiiU When it comes to poorly received Mario games, fans and reviewers still tend to appreciate the charm, the novelty, or the inventiveness to be found within. Not so with Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash, which was received like an affront to humanity. The main problem with the game was how little of it there actually was. With the WiiU’s struggles, you would think Nintendo would at least attempt to put out a must-have Mario Tennis game. Instead, they released just about the emptiest and most disposable one. This was even more galling when you realize that the Wii port of Mario Power Tennis was available through the WiiU’s Virtual Console for a fraction of the cost. What little – and it was very, obnoxiously little – Ultra Smash introduced to the series was easily counteracted by the sheer wealth of modes and content that it removed. 112) Paper Mario: Sticker Star 3DS Say the words “Sticker Star” to a Nintendo fan and they will react as though you poked them in the eye. Seriously, I have tried both of these things many times and the reactions are very similar! While Super Paper Mario was a bit controversial among fans, Sticker Star was the irrefutable evidence that Nintendo never wanted anybody to be happy ever again. Its puzzles require trial and error, key items are consumable and must be collected all over again before you can move on, everything you do in battle is dictated by limited resources…okay, yes, we know all of that. So, for once, let us focus on the positives. Uh. Erm. Huh…well, the soundtrack is good. And…hmm. Some of the visuals are kind of nice. And…ahh…the music that plays when you fight the squid is great. But I suppose that’s just the soundtrack again. Uh…it ends eventually? That’s got to count for something. 111) Mario Artist: Talent Studio Nintendo 64DD The second Mario Artist title seems to be a sort of homunculus generator. The idea is that you create human characters and then trigger a load of animations. It’s intriguing – this would have been impressive when compared to other character creators of the time – but ultimately it was a bit limited. You could feed actual photos of people into Talent Studio, but that was a bad idea if you ever wanted to sleep again. With RandNetDD you could upload your abominations to the rest of the world. Well, to the rest of Japan. Well, to the rest of Japan who had RandNetDD subscriptions and were browsing the Talent Studio creations of complete strangers. Also, you’d better be quick about uploading those masterpieces, because RandNetDD was operational for a grand total of around 14 months. Pity the kids who had this and didn’t wait for YouTube to come along. That’s a much sturdier platform for uploading horrifying nonsense. 110) Mario Party: Island Tour 3DS The handheld versions of Mario Party will never compare to their console versions. It’s simply a fact that gathering friends around a television for Mario mayhem will always be more fun than playing it alone, or focusing on your own tiny screen. Having said that, Mario Party: Island Tour does take advantage of the 3DS’s Download Play capabilities, meaning four people can join in a full-fledged multiplayer experience with only one copy of the game. You’ll still need four 3DSes, of course, but that’s nice. Less nice is the selection of games, which range from gimmick-heavy to dull, with few standouts. There’s also the fact that if you do have three of your friends together in the same place, it’s probably worth popping a proper Mario Party game into your console than faffing about with an underwhelming one. It is, however, a must-play if you’ve ever wanted Toad to impugn your manhood. 109) VS. Super Mario Bros. Arcade Nintendo’s 1984 System allowed the company to get versions of its console games into arcades. It’s unlikely that Nintendo saw arcades as a major revenue source at this point; more likely these served as demo units that would inspire players to buy a console and some games of their own. Super Mario Bros. made sense as a port to the VS. System, but that doesn’t mean it worked well as an arcade game. Actually, let me be clearer: Super Mario Bros. does not work well as an arcade game. Super Mario Bros. is not an easy game, but the VS. version was even more difficult. Enemies were replaced with trickier variants, new levels were shuffled into the old ones to increase the challenge, and many 1-Ups were removed. What’s more, arcade owners could adjust the settings to make the timer run more quickly and give the player fewer lives. These represented only a few additional layers of punishment that make the game significantly less fun. 108) Mario Party: Star Rush 3DS Did we need another Mario Party for the 3DS? Nope, but here we are! Star Rush is at least a little bit interesting, with a unique main mode called Toad Scramble. Which sounds disgusting, but I didn’t name it. Here, all characters move at the same time, giving players fewer opportunities to take a bathroom break. The main problem is that outcomes rely even more on luck than they did in previous entries, with the player who moves farthest at the outset having a clear advantage. Other modes – ranging from racing games to puzzle games – are a bit better, so it’s unfortunate that there’s so little strategy involved with the star attraction. Also, I know you’re waiting with barely contained excitement to see where we rank this game’s free companion app, Mario Party: Star Rush - Party Guest, but we’re just going to mention it briefly, because in this list we will spend more time talking about Mario Party than we spent with our loved ones all last year. 107) Wrecking Crew ‘98 Super Famicom Wrecking Crew ’98 is neither an updated version of the original Wrecking Crew nor a sequel. It’s now a match-three puzzle game, more similar to Panel de Pon than Wrecking Crew. Which is good, because Panel de Pon was fun and Wrecking Crew was like learning you had one week left to live and you had to spend that week playing Wrecking Crew. The game includes the requisite Mario imagery, and it certainly looks fine, but it’s not especially fun to play. Whereas games like Dr. Mario and, of course, Panel de Pon have simple movement so that you can focus directly on creating chains and combos, Wrecking Crew ’98 sees you controlling a character who interacts with the game board, adding a level of detachment from the tile-matching that doesn’t really make the game any more engaging. As one might expect, it’s better in competitive two-player mode, but it’s nowhere near as strong as Nintendo’s other puzzle games. 106) Super Mario Bros. 2 Famicom Disk System The original version of Super Mario Bros. 2 was replaced in the West by another game, which we won’t see on this list for some time. The common explanation is that Western players needed easier games. This is true, if you ignore the fact that most games that came westward did just fine, regardless of their difficulty. And the fact that other games were actually made more difficult for their Western release. The likelier reason this didn’t come westward is that it’s not particularly good. As Nintendo was conquering the North American game market, Mario established himself as the company’s strongest ambassador. An incremental sequel like this one might have done well enough in Japan, but America was still reeling from the effects of the video game crash. Nintendo needed more than a harder version of the previous game to convince consumers that the NES was worth sticking with. As such, everyone outside of Japan got a different, superior game called Super Mario Bros. 2, which has entirely overwritten this one in the cultural memory. And thank God for that. 105) Paper Mario: Color Splash WiiU After Sticker Star, Nintendo had two options. They could either have listened to the fans who were craving a return to the series’ roots, or they could have released Color Splash. No points for guessing what they decided to do. Just about everything that fans disliked about the previous game was still present. The lack of RPG mechanics, the gimmicky combat, the absence of memorable characters…Color Splash was the firm declaration that the series had no intention of returning to the formula of the first two games. Overall, though, this one reviewed better than Sticker Star. Critics were grateful for the paint mechanic, which was superior to the previous game’s sticker mechanic because it actually did something. The writing was also seen as an improvement, as were the visuals, though that was probably a given. Few people liked Color Splash, but at least fewer people hated it. At this point in the series, that qualified as progress. 104) Yoshi’s Cookie NES We’re sure Nintendo was tempted to call this game Mario’s Cookie, what with it being a game about Mario matching cookies and all, but it was released as Yoshi’s Cookie instead. It was ported to the Game Boy and the SNES, with Japan getting a deluxe version called Yoshi no Cookie: Kuruppon Oven de Cookie. Forgive me if I accidentally pronounced that as some sort of profanity. Yoshi’s Cookie involves shifting rows and columns of cookies in order to match and eliminate them, which I’m sure Mario is doing for a very good reason. The game was originally released as in arcades as Hermetica. This version was alchemy-themed and met with a less-than-stellar reception. Bullet-Proof Software scooped it up from the original developer, worked with Nintendo to cram some recognizable characters in there, and history was made. Only joking; nobody cares about Yoshi’s Cookie. 103) Family Computer Golf: Japan Course Famicom Disk System Family Computer Golf: U.S. Course Famicom Disk System Family Computer Golf: Japan Course and Family Computer Golf: U.S. Course both released exclusively in Japan in 1987. The titles imply that they are the same game with different courses, but each game actually plays differently. The titles also imply that the courses are based on those found in Japan or the United States, but all of the courses in both games are invented. Each game was compatible with Disk Fax kiosks, which allowed players to upload their scores. “Disk Fax kiosks” is also a tongue twister, I’ve now learned. Nintendo sent prizes to the best players, including harder, official versions of these games that were never released at retail. In fact, only 100 copies of the Family Computer Golf: Japan Course Champions’ Course game were printed, making it one of Nintendo’s rarest releases. The Family Computer Golf games are mainly notable as historical oddities. Are they fun, though? Well, I suppose they are a FAIR WAY to spend some time. [a beat; cough] 102) Mario Sports Superstars 3DS Mario Sports Superstars gives players the chance to take a bunch of Mario sports games on the go in one convenient package. The problem is that fitting them into this package seemed to require the removal of all of the fun. The sports include football, baseball, tennis, and golf…all of which were already available as better Mario sports titles, as you’ll see. The one unique sport, horse racing, actually fares the best, if only because we have no “proper” version to which we can compare it. Whereas the other sports are played more straight and simply than Mario sports games usually are, horse racing feels unique and allows for customization. That’s not enough to save the package, of course. The biggest problem is the fact that a game centered on multiplayer experiences doesn’t offer any form of Download Play. Typically, Nintendo is more generous than that. 101) Mario Tennis Open 3DS While Mario’s golf games tend to get better with each release, his tennis games haven’t maintained the same upwards trajectory. Mario Tennis Open, whose title describes the exact type of window this game should be thrown out of, represents a big step backwards for the series in terms of the quantity and quality of content on offer. Gone are the RPG and story elements, resulting in a stripped-down entry that doesn’t so much feel “simple” as it does “hollow.” The game’s big feature, the Chance Shot, occurs at random and only requires the player to tap color of the prompt that appears on the screen. It’s exactly as challenging as this other handheld game you can probably pick up much more cheaply. Critics and fans were both left underwhelmed, and they complained about it endlessly. In fact, you could say they made a real racket. Ugh, even I want to groan after that one. 100) Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam 3DS The crossover that isn’t really a crossover, Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam does indeed borrow elements from Paper Mario, but is without question a Mario & Luigi game through and through. It’s also not a great one, and it was the last new Mario &Luigi game that developer AlphaDream released before the company folded. No pun intended. Okay…it was intended. Even removed from any associations with Paper Mario, Paper Jam failed to live up to the standards of previous games in the Mario & Luigi series. It was seen as lacking creativity and not really adding much to the formula. It did introduce a Battle Card system, but since that replaced the previous Badge system, it wasn’t quite a net gain. Critics took issue with its poor pacing, dull gameplay, and inability to live up to its own potential. It may be worth picking up for fans of the series, but newcomers will want to start elsewhere. 99) Mario Artist: Polygon Studio Nintendo 64DD Polygon Studio was an application with which gamers could build their own creations out of polygons, essentially giving them the opportunity to learn a bit of 3D modeling. It also contained a few models of Nintendo characters, which no doubt helped kids better understand how Nintendo created the games they loved. There was an explorable 3D world, as well as a collection of microgames which quite clearly went on to inspire the WarioWare series, but ultimately Polygon Studio was a modeling utility. If you owned the Creation Kit, you could upload your projects to RandNetDD and order papercraft models of the things you built. Pretty nifty. This was the last of the Mario Artist releases, though four additional titles were meant to follow: Sound Maker, Graphical Message Maker, Video Jockey Maker, and Game Maker. Would the latter have been an early run at what eventually became Super Mario Maker? It’s impossible to say for sure, but no. 98) Mario Sports Mix Wii You know what the Wii needed? A collection of sports games for casual players. Other than that one. Erm…and that one. And, oh God, other than that one, definitely. Enter Mario Sports Mix, a game that nobody was asking for and even fewer people enjoyed. The game contains Mario-themed spins on basketball, volleyball, dodgeball, and hockey. There is also a fifth game, Sports Mix, which sees you playing…basketball, volleyball, dodgeball, and hockey. It was a rare opportunity to see Mario and Final Fantasy characters getting along, but it felt underwhelming at release and hasn’t disproven that feeling any time since. Critics saw it as an undercooked way to squeeze just a little more money out of Wii owners who weren’t buying Metroid Prime 3, and we hope that strategy worked. It would mean Mario Sports Mix were good for something after all. 97) Yoshi NES Oh look, another Yoshi puzzle game on our Mario list so you can rush to the comments to type the same thing you typed when you heard us talking about Yoshi’s Cookie! In Europe and Australia the game was called Mario & Yoshi, at least making it sound like a better fit. In Japan it was called Yoshi no Tamago, which is a title I can’t understand and possibly makes it a worse fit. You do control Mario in this game, even if he’s little more than a cursor. You swap platters back and forth to match falling enemies. You can also pile them up between two halves of a Yoshi egg. Which allows Yoshi to eat them. Don’t ask, because you won’t like any answer I could possibly give you. The more you eat the thicc’er Yoshi gets and the higher your score. It’s nowhere near as interesting as Dr. Mario, but it’s fun and the music is great. We just wish there were a bit more to it. 96) Mario Party-e e-Reader Mario Party-e is essentially a pack of cards and a game mat, and most of the gameplay takes place in reality. You know, where you are right now, even if you wish you weren’t. You collect Superstar Items and then play a Superstar Card to win. It sounds easy but, being Mario Party, there is plenty of opportunity to ruin your friends’ night. This – of course – involves challenging them to minigames. These are accessed by scanning cards into the e-Reader, and they’re all pretty simple affairs, but it’s fun and the nature of a card game allows for a level of strategizing that many proper Mario Party games do not. This is also the only game on this list you can play without any electronic devices at all; the instructions suggest flipping a coin if you don’t have access to an e-Reader. Then again, you could just flip a coin at the outset and save yourself the entire cost of the game. 95) Yoshi’s Safari SNES Yoshi’s Safari is the best game for the Super Scope peripheral, which means very little as it’s nearly the only game for the Super Scope peripheral. It’s also the only game in the entire Mario series that ends with the plumber pumping Bowser full of hot lead. It’s a rail shooter in which you ride Yoshi around some colorful environments and shoot baddies in the face. Every so often there’s some additional interactivity – mainly choosing which paths to follow or jumping to avoid hazards – but Yoshi’s Safari largely focuses on Mario’s newfound gun-lust. I’m not even joking; Mario turns his gun on Yoshi because, even after defeating Bowser, he hasn’t sated his thirst for blood. The game plays well for what it is and it’s an amusing novelty, but it also makes clear exactly why Mario works better with fireballs and boomerangs than he does with a Heckler & Koch. 94) All Night Nippon Super Mario Bros. Famicom Disk System It may look like the fan-hack to predate all fan-hacks, but All Night Nippon Super Mario Bros. was an official release developed by Nintendo. As the title implies, it’s based on Super Mario Bros., though it includes some elements of the Japanese version of Super Mario Bros. 2 and a few other tweaks. Its selling point is that it stars a number of personalities from the Japanese radio program All Night Nippon. If you ever felt Super Mario Bros. would have been improved by appearances from Takaaki Ishibashi, Hideyuki Nakayama, Miyuki Nakajima, and Sunplaza Nakano-kun, this is the game for you. And yes, I admit I only attempted to pronounce those names in order to irritate you. It’s an interesting curio from a time during which Nintendo needed to hitch itself to the popularity of other franchises, rather than the other way around. Stick with the main games, though. They look a lot less creepy. 93) Super Paper Mario Wii Super Paper Mario is a game about constantly mashing through endless dialogue between characters we cannot possibly care about. I mean, maybe there’s something else to the game, but I certainly don’t remember it. I’m joking, at least partially. Super Paper Mario had the idea of combining light RPG mechanics with a simple platformer. It’s not a perfect fit, but it’s an interesting one. Unfortunately, it also tried to combine a complicated, far-reaching RPG story with a simple platformer, and that doesn’t work at all. The pacing is a mess, with back, keeping you from actual gameplay. Even a fairly unique dimension-shifting mechanic gets lost behind the narrative. If you ever wondered why nearly all core Mario games boil down to “save Peach from Bowser,” this is your answer. The one time Nintendo attempted to weave a complex Mario story resulted in a game that never shuts up. Let’s be thankful for what we’ve got, okay? 92) Mario Party DS DS The final Mario Party game to be developed by Hudson Soft – and therefore, for many, the final Mario Party game worth playing – Mario Party DS earns the backhanded compliment of being the best game in the series designed for a dedicated handheld. It would be a bit much to say Hudson went out with a bang, but they certainly gave fans a reason to miss them. Mario Party DS had creative boards, enjoyable minigames, and even touchscreen implementation that people didn’t hate. What’s more, the multiplayer experience was robust for a handheld offering, with a welcome balance of luck and strategy. It also looked pretty great. Again…for a handheld… The critical response essentially boiled down to advising fans of Mario Party to buy it and advising those who did not enjoy Mario Party to buy something else. Which we probably could have figured out on our own, thanks. 91) Mini Mario & Friends: amiibo Challenge 3DS, WiiU We intended to evaluate these games only on their original platforms. That’s because taking into account all ports – which could be much better or much worse than the originals – would only make them more difficult to rank. And also because this list is long enough as it is; you will be three years older by the time you’ve finished watching it. Mini Mario & Friends: amiibo Challenge, though, was released the same day in all territories on both the 3DS and WiiU, and there isn’t a clear “main” version. Making ranking even more difficult is the fact that it’s free – which is good – but requires amiibos to play – which is…less good. If you already have an amiibo or two, though, you basically get a free game that you can spend a few hours fooling around with. It’s inoffensive and a fine bonus. Fortunately, this was the only game Nintendo ever required amiibos for—OHH MYYY GOOOODGET IT OUT OF MY EYES!!! 90) Mario Tennis Nintendo 64 Most Mario sports games have a high degree of cartooniness, but Mario Tennis for the Nintendo 64 doesn’t seem all that interested in whimsy. I mean, beyond the baseline whimsy that comes from watching a ghost and a dinosaur play tennis. Mario Tennis is, for the most part, a pretty straight interpretation of the sport. If that’s what you’re looking for, you’re in luck. But if you’re picking up Mario Tennis for the expected silliness, you’ll be stuck with a small handful of side modes. It’s neither a bad game nor an especially good one, and it’s mainly notable for introducing the world to Waluigi. You may have forgiven it, but we have not. Interestingly, an evil version of Peach called Warupīchi was meant to be included but, thankfully, cooler heads prevailed. At least, we think that’s what happened. The citation for that fact led us here, so we’ll have to take the Mario Wiki’s word on this one. 89) NES Open Tournament Golf NES Apologies to the die-hard fans of 1984’s Golf, but we won’t be counting that game here. Yes, the golfer in that game has been referred to as Mario and that certainly looks like him on the cover of the Game Boy version, however the Wii game Captain Rainbow definitively established the golfer as a completely different mustachioed man named Ossan. Thank you, Captain Rainbow. NES Open Tournament Golf is a solid if unremarkable golf game, and its mechanics aren’t miles removed from the Mario golf titles still being released today. It’s mainly notable for its historical significance, however. Its sprite design was Eiji Aonuma’s first experience in game development, and he now helms the Legend of Zelda series. It was also the first game developed from start to finish by the late Satoru Iwata, who would go on to serve as the fourth president of Nintendo. 88) Super Mario Land Game Boy Containing only 12 levels, being tragically easy, and looking like I drew it on an Etch-A-Sketch, Super Mario Land is pretty underwhelming to revisit today. The soundtrack is nice, and I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for explosive turtles, but the game ends long before it actually starts getting good. This does make sense. The Game Boy was new hardware, and Nintendo was still trying to get a sense of what it could do. It wouldn’t be until this game’s sequel that Mario really felt at home on the handheld, but it’s interesting to watch Nintendo experiment with ideas. Nearly all of them were dropped because they’re rubbish but, hey, they tried. Weirdly, Nintendo’s eShop page for the Virtual Console release states that the game contains “giant crabs.” There are no crabs in Super Mario Land, giant or otherwise. Please join me in my class-action lawsuit. 87) Mario Tennis Game Boy Color The Game Boy Color version of Mario Tennis, which could easily have been a low-effort port, actually ended up being a better experience overall. While the visuals can’t compare to the Nintendo 64 version, this game demonstrates more creativity and is much more satisfying to master. The pick-up-and-play nature of the game works great on a handheld, and the addition of a single-player story mode with RPG elements helps it to stand ahead of its console counterpart. The story isn’t anything too spectacular; it involves an up-and-coming tennis player on a personal quest to become better at the sport than Mario, a plumber who maybe picks up a racket every ten months or so. Still, though, it is a fun mode, and the gradual increase of tennis skill makes the RPG elements feel more central to the experience than they really are. Toss in some great music and pixel art, and it’s worth a spin for sure. 86) Super Mario Run Mobile Nintendo waited a very long time to get into the mobile game…game, and that was likely for the best, honestly. Remember early mobile games? There was Snake, and then there was everything tied for the worst game ever made. By the time Nintendo embraced the platform, the technology was available for them to do something special. Instead, they made Miitomo, which was moderately less welcome than if Nintendo simply went door to door punching people’s dogs. Super Mario Run followed in the same year, however, and it was much better. It was also free of the in-game monetization people expected, which was nice. It was a bit too easy and far too short, though. A sequel could have fleshed things out significantly, but, sadly, we haven’t heard a peep about another Super Mario Run. Also, the listing advertises it as a “Mario game that you can play with one hand.” Which, hey, I’m not judging you, but maybe don’t play that way in public. 85) Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit Switch As a showcase for augmented reality, Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit is great. Nintendo managed to turn the simple pleasure of piloting an RC car into an actual game of Mario Kart, complete with all of the wackiness and unpredictability that that series entails. Cameras mounted on each of the real-life vehicles bring items, hazards, weather conditions, and even AI opponents into your home. It’s impressive just how much actual Mario Kart content is here, with the expected stage themes, cups, and difficulty settings translating rather well. Where it stumbles is in the logistics required. The game gets significantly less fun and interesting if you don’t have much floor space in your home, and with everyone needing their own kart, the cost for entry is around $100 per player. Those are significant limitations, even if they’re understandable. Those with tiny homes or tight budgets should probably stick to the main games. 84) Paper Mario: The Origami King Switch With true RPG mechanics and combat a thing of the past for Paper Mario, all fans can really hope for is that whatever gimmick Nintendo cooks up next will be entertaining enough to justify a spin. That’s what we get here. It’s not the sequel anybody was asking for, but if this is Nintendo’s new direction for the series, it at least provides some fun along the way. It’s larger and more involved than the previous two games, which makes it feel like a much more substantial experience. The “folding” theme is also better than the sticking and coloring themes of the previous two games, but we do worry that Nintendo is running out things one can do with a sheet of paper. The combat, as is to be expected nowadays, was singled out for criticism as tedious and overcomplicated. If this is what Nintendo is doing with the series now, though, at least they’re doing it a little bit better. 83) Mario and Donkey Kong: Minis on the Move 3DS Instead of Mario vs. Donkey Kong, Minis on the Move is under the slightly different “Mario and Donkey Kong” banner. Which you’d think might imply some sort of cooperation between the two. And it does…though the only real change is that the Lemmings-inspired gameplay of the series is replaced here by something more akin to Pipe Mania. The object of the game is still to guide Minis to the goal, but now you do it by placing and shifting tiles on the 3DS touch screen. It’s a simple premise that does manage to become more difficult and interesting as the game progresses, but neither fans nor critics were entirely convinced that this was a step forward for the series. There are several modes and some optional objectives for those seeking extra challenge, but it doesn’t measure up to the earlier games, and this variation on the gameplay did not catch on for future installments. 82) Mario Tennis Aces Switch Critics and fans were quick to praise Mario Tennis Aces for the sheer fact that it was not Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash. The box could have been empty and it would have received higher scores for that alone. But Mario Tennis Aces really does feel like a step in the right direction. For one, the game has content. Really, that is a selling point. It also has a charmingly wackadoo story, a bunch of fun new shot types, new characters, new courts, and much better online offerings. NintendoLife’s review summed it up thus: “Where Ultra Smash’s extras were a pure Monkey Island’s worth of living without that particular piece of junk, Aces stuffs its kit bag with activities until the zip’s positively pinging off across the locker room like a smartly volleyed can of energy drink.” I couldn’t have said it any better myself. Mainly because I have no clue what they mean. 81) Mario Party 10 WiiU What could possibly save the WiiU? If you answered “a mediocre party game,” you probably work at Nintendo. Mario Party 10 is one of the most poorly received Mario Party games. With 66% on Metacritic and 64% on GameRankings, it scored slightly better than Mario Party 8, but we’re pretty sure critics were taking out the frustrations of a lifetime on that game. Mario Party 10 does actually do some new things, but none of them were received well. The small number of proper boards were criticized, as was the fact that players now traveled around them in vehicles, making that aspect of the game even more mindless. Additional boards were locked behind the use of amiibos and were almost insultingly simplistic. Bowser Party was the game’s single redeeming aspect, with one player controlling Bowser and four others attempting to survive his attacks – via minigames, of course. It was an innovative concept, but it was bolted on to a game that did not deserve it. 80) Mario’s Picross Game Boy Mario’s Picross 2 Game Boy We debated excluding all of the Picross games on the grounds that…well, look at it. It very obviously has nothing to do with Mario beyond an image of him threatening us with a hammer. We ultimately decided that because the game is indeed called Mario’s Picross that we’d be remiss if we didn’t cover it. The direct sequel – Mario’s Picross 2 –has much more Mario in it thanks to its story mode, and it does feel here like the Mario theming was far less of an afterthought. We thought a nice compromise would be to include both in the same entry and never think about either of them again. Developed by Jupiter Corporation – the company that still makes Nintendo’s Picross games to this very day – these are collections of nonogram puzzles. If you like nonogram puzzles…well, here’s some of them. 79) Mario’s Super Picross Super Famicom Don’t worry; this is the last Picross title in this list. There’s only so much one human being can say about nonograms before they transcend their corporeal form and become a beam of purest boredom. If you’re not familiar with nonograms, I don’t think I’d be able to explain them fully before one of us dies. Suffice it to say that they are logic puzzles that require players to determine which spaces in the grid should be filled in and which should be left blank. Mario’s Super Picross looks better than its predecessors, obviously, though it is not portable. There are also Wario puzzles, which are a bit more challenging in the sense that you won’t be alerted to any mistakes. Nintendo’s Picross games have lost their Mario branding over the years, but the series is still kicking, meaning you can now solve the puzzles without a stout Italian man constantly judging your performance. 78) New Super Mario Bros. 2 3DS New Super Mario Bros. was a system seller for the DS. Creating a sequel for the 3DS made sense for a fairly obvious reason. In fact, that reason was so obvious that Nintendo based the entire game around it. Your goal in New Super Mario Bros. 2 is to amass as much wealth as possible. That might seem like a goal Wario would have, so the game also sees you fighting Bowser and rescuing Peach, reminding you that you’re still the good guy…just a really greedy good guy. The game’s focus on coin-collection meant that there was a positively absurd amount of money everywhere, spilling out of blocks, enemies, and even yourself. (See a doctor if that happens, by the way.) The fact that 100 coins still gave you an extra life meant that any potential difficulty was rendered moot out of the gate. It’s by no means a bad game and, in many ways, it’s got the most creativity of any New Super Mario Bros. title, but it does feel a bit soulless. 77) Mario Kart Arcade GP VR Arcade Of all the Mario Kart arcade games, Mario Kart Arcade GP VR is definitely the most interesting. Overall, it feels like a very impressive proof of concept, and it’s a natural one as well. Who hasn’t wanted to wipe out on a banana peel dropped by a smiling mushroom man? A proof of concept is all it really is, though. The game features exactly one track, which is limited to exactly one lap. Each cabinet also allows you to play as exactly one character. There’s a good deal of variety within those confines, but it’s impossible to stop playing Mario Kart after a single lap and feel satisfied by the experience. There are also only three items, which adds to the sense that the game isn’t quite “finished.” It’s not all that easy to find in the wild, but perhaps that’s by design. Maybe it’s preparing us for a full-scale Mario Kart VR experience. I’d enjoy that. Until then, though, this is just an impressive oddity. 76) Mario Party 8 Wii Mario Party backlash was in full swing by the release of Mario Party 8, with critics hammering it for flaws that had been present in the series all along. Don’t get me wrong; by the time of the eighth numbered game, it’s reasonable to expect the series to evolve, but by no means is it a bad game. It holds 62% on Metacritic, with the low scores feeling more like a punishment for the series than anything specific to Mario Party 8. Yes, it’s a minigame collection on the Wii which means you will be shaking your controller in ways you would regret if anyone walked in on you, but it looks nice, the minigames are fun, and you can use your Mii in dedicated areas. Also, the game contains the Koopa’s Tycoon Town board, which mixes the gameplay of Mario Party with some basic ideas lifted from Monopoly. The result combines chaos with strategy to an extent not often seen in the series. 75) Mario Hoops 3 on 3 DS I’d assume a large percentage of Mario fans didn’t even know he had his own basketball game, but that’s not surprising; Nintendo does not seem keen to remind anyone. A Mario game without any kind of sequel is a genuine rarity – even the jumper-knitting game got a sequel, remember – and it’s not clear why Mario Hoops 3 on 3 languishes in solitude. It’s not great, but it certainly could have grown into something beyond this touchscreen-centered throwaway title. The Mushroom Kingdom sportsmen OR SPORTSWOMEN team up with some character types from Final Fantasy. And yes, that’s character types and not actual characters. Don’t ask me why. Maybe Square Enix wasn’t thrilled with this one either. Mario Hoops 3 on 3 is definitely a fun and simple experience, well suited for a handheld, but it also feels slight for a Mario game of that era. 74) Mario Power Tennis GameCube Mario Power Tennis is a huge step up from its predecessor on the Nintendo 64, even if it’s still not quite up to the level of its Game Boy Advance equivalent. Critics adored its sense of humor, its improvements to the mechanics, its court gimmicks, and its chaotic multiplayer matches. The game was rereleased for the Wii as a New Play Control title, upsetting everyone by adding motion controls and automating much of the strategy that players used to enjoy. Bold move, porting a game for the express purpose of making it less fun. Mario Power Tennis is not perfect, but it isn’t the last we’ll be seeing of Mario on the tennis court. Really, how many tennis games does this guy need? Ten. Is the answer. Ten is. Listen, you try writing separate entries for eight different tennis games and see how much better you do. 73) Mario Kart: Double Dash!! GameCube Yes, we know you don’t agree with this placement. We know that, because no matter where we put Mario Kart: Double Dash!! we’re going to get yelled at. It’s an understandably polarizing game, with some believing it’s the best in the series and others believing it’s one of the worst. We think it’s…neither of those things. It’s a game with excellent ideas but which doesn’t execute them all that well. The primary gimmick of Double Dash!! is that there are two exclamation marks in the title. The secondary gimmick is that each vehicle has two characters in it, allowing for cooperative play, with one player driving and the other using items. This is a great concept, but neither driving nor tossing turtle shells is all that much fun on its own. Double Dash!! is a strange outlier in Mario Kart’s history, and it doesn’t seem like one Nintendo is interested in returning to. That’s okay; I’m not that interested, either. 72) Mario Golf Nintendo 64 The first Mario golf game that was actually a Mario Golf game, this is considered the start of the series proper. It owes a lot to the innovative simplicity of Nintendo’s earlier golf titles, but it now has that distinctive Mario flair and a decent number of characters to unlock after defeating them in head-to-head matches. Critics enjoyed it, praising it for its accessibility and sense of fun. The fact that it lacked the complexity of competing golf games was usually seen a selling point rather than a detriment. It earned an impressive 91% on Metacritic, but barely cracked 87% on GameRankings. It was an excellent start to a series that continues to this day, but for the life of me I can’t work out why Nintendo didn’t give us Zelda golf games instead. I mean, the titles write themselves. Links to the Past, Links Between Worlds, The Adventure of Links… Call me, Nintendo. I think I can teach you so much. 71) Mario Tennis: Power Tour Game Boy Advance IGN called Mario Tennis: Power Tour the best tennis game in the entire Game Boy Advance library. That’s…not saying much, to be honest, but we can all agree that the sentiment is nice. The game has a story mode, though it’s a mite predictable. Who exactly are you training up to beat? I’ll give you a hint: His name is in the title of the game, and also it’s Mario. Where the game shines, though, is in its stripped-down portrayal of the sport, which is simple to understand but has an impressively high skill ceiling. It also still has the largest roster in any Mario tennis game. Critics were disappointed that the matches themselves used pre-rendered models when the game already had lovely sprites at its disposal, but it’s an easy game to…love. That’s a tennis term, right? I’ve heard tennis people say that, definitely. 70) Super Mario Maker WiiU It’s difficult to rank Super Mario Maker, as nearly all of its actual content comes from fans. As a level-design tool, it’s fun, simple, and versatile. Its sequel outdoes it in practically every respect, but if you’re interested in playing community levels…well, the sequel outdoes it there, as well. Not least because nobody can upload new courses for the WiiU version anymore. Fan creations would tend to gravitate either towards the simple and amateurish or the complex and fiendish, and rarely were they any fun. Super Mario Maker seemed like it might give everyone a chance to embrace their inner game designers, but it only ended up proving that it’s usually best to leave that to the professionals. We are lumping the later 3DS release in with this entry, as that only exists because both people who owned a WiiU already bought the game and Nintendo wanted to sell a few more copies. Greedy, greedy. 69) Super Mario Maker 2 Switch Super Mario Maker 2 is similar to its predecessor, as might be expected, but it offers significantly more as far as course design goes. There are more enemies, more items, more level themes, more options, and even a token reminder of Super Mario Bros. 2, so that Nintendo can make it very clear to us that they haven’t forgotten the game; they just don’t care about it. Super Mario Maker 2 offers more than just new stuff, too; it allows for much more freedom of design. This doesn’t mean that the ratio of great levels to crap ones has gotten any better, but it does mean that the great ones have a lot more to work with. There’s also a story mode, which was a strange omission from the original game, especially since it does an admirable job of teaching players how to actually design levels as opposed to cram them with hazards and laugh. 68) Mario Party 5 GameCube Most of the criticism levied at Mario Party 5 is identical to the criticism the series has received as a whole. Not much changes from game to game, assets are reused, it’s not fun without friends, et cetera. Well, let me tell you something, Mr. Critic. You know what else isn’t fun without friends? Life! Go make friends, ya dingdong. Mario Party 5 fared more harshly than most, earning a not-so-nice 69% on Metacritic. It wasn’t all bad news, though; critics and fans both appreciated the soundtrack, which had an orchestral feel before the series actually started using an orchestra. The game’s dream-like setting and appearances from Paper Mario’s Star Spirits also went over well. Unfortunately, fatigue was setting in and Mario Party 5 did little to dispel the suspicion that the series was beginning to stagnate. 67) Super Mario Bros. 2 NES The Western version of Super Mario Bros. 2 was a reskinned version of Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic. Did you know that? Of course you did, but all video game channels have a legal obligation to mention that fact at least once. This worked out well, as Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic was a far better game than the original Super Mario Bros. 2, even if it was mechanically very different. The game looked better, the levels were more varied and interesting, and you could play as four characters instead of two. Nintendo did make some tweaks, such as inserting Koopa shells, adding a run button, and making it so you could complete the game without playing through it four flipping times. In return, the game introduced its own elements to the Mario franchise, such as bombs – and Bob-Ombs – and Peach’s predilection for plant plucking. All these years later, Super Mario Bros. 2 still stands out as the odd duck, but it’s a darned enjoyable one. 66) Mario Golf Game Boy Color Mobile Golf Game Boy Color As with Mario Tennis, we’re ranking the Game Boy Color version of Mario Golf higher than the Nintendo 64 version. The Nintendo 64 game obviously looks and sounds better, and we couldn’t possibly fault anyone for preferring it, but it’s again the RPG mode that elevates the handheld version. The depth of the mode came as a surprise to reviewers, most notably IGN, who gave the game a perfect 10. Critics enjoyed the exploration and customization the mode allowed, and felt that it was an excellent addition to an already pretty sturdy experience. There was also a follow-up called Mobile Golf, which we can’t quite justify giving a separate entry to, as there is so little information available about it. It did come with an adaptor that allowed you to play online. Considering the state of wireless connections in 2001, we have to assume the functionality left quite a bit to be desired, but kudos for trying. 65) Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Minis March Again! DSi The DSi had very few exclusives that could not be played on a standard DS. So few, in fact, that when we ranked every handheld from worst to best, we didn’t even give it its own entry. It did, however, have downloadable DSiWare. Most DSiWare was…what’s a polite word for dung? Doesn’t matter; point is, Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Minis March Again! was one of the few DSiWare titles that was worth playing. The nature of that service meant that the game was fairly small, but it evolved Mario vs. Donkey Kong in a significant way: It removed the ability of players to change the direction of the Minis. This shifted the emphasis entirely to the environment, which must be manipulated as the Minis march…again…towards the exit. It’s not quite a must-play, but it was inexpensive and served as a nice treat for fans of the series. 64) Super Mario Strikers GameCube Soccer? I hardly know her! I know even less what that joke means! In 2005, Nintendo tried to find a sport Mario hadn’t played yet. The only remaining three were jai alai, cheese rolling, and soccer. Or football, if you want to actually be correct about this. Nintendo made the wrong choice, introducing football to the Mushroom Kingdom, where unchecked hooliganism immediately wiped out half the population. Critics enjoyed the game, mainly singing its praises for multiplayer matches, and it holds a 76% average on Metacritic. Mario’s first football game was also nearly the first game Nintendo advertised by evoking Mario's genitals, but, unfortunately, the ad was cancelled. And no, we did not make that up. I think they missed a trick, though, by not having the gang compete in the Super Mario World Cup. See? I know enough about football to end this entry on a bad pun, and that’s all that really matters. 63) Donkey Kong Arcade Donkey Kong is Mario’s very first adventure, and it’s one that features him just as we know him today. Well, kinda. Donkey Kong was also, debatably, the first platformer. Space Panic debuted the previous year, but it lacked the ability to jump. If you feel that jumping is a key component of the genre, then it’s Donkey Kong that will be your platforming patient zero. One of the most successful, famous, and influential games in history, Donkey Kong was actually birthed from a mistake. In 1980, Nintendo had shipped 3,000 Radar Scope cabinets to America, where only a third of them actually sold. The game flopped and Nintendo tasked a young Shigeru Miyamoto to develop a better game that the cabinets could be converted to play instead. Alongside another future video game legend, Gunpei Yokoi, Miyamoto created Donkey Kong, which gave video games their most recognizable hero and gave Nintendo two bankable mascots for decades to come. 62) Mario Party 7 GameCube The seventh numbered game in the series – and therefore the sixth time critics would complain about these games being too similar– Mario Party 7 did try to innovate. Part of the problem was that previous Mario Party games had already done a great job of creating and facilitating a fun party atmosphere. How, exactly, could the series improve on that? Well, it could make the party bigger. Mario Party 7 introduced eight-player minigames, which is the sort of simple tweak that seems obvious in retrospect, but which actually did a great job of making the game feel like more than just “another Mario Party.” Scores ranged from 30% to 85%, so clearly there was little agreement as to what critics even wanted from Mario Party. It scored a 64% overall on Metacritic, which we think is a bit too low. Lord knows we’ve seen what bad Mario Party games look like, and they’re not this. 61) Mario Party 9 Wii Mario Party 9 is propelled this high on the strength of its critical response alone. With 73% on Metacritic and 75% on GameRankings, critics seemed to start appraising the games on their own merits again rather than simply vent their spleens about the inherent failings of the series. At least, that’s the only explanation I can come up with; Mario Party 9 isn’t significantly better than its immediate predecessor, and yet the difference in critical response between the two is night and day. There are a few things Mario Party 9 does better. It does not rely as heavily on motion-controlled minigames, it has a great presentation, and it contains boards with interesting gimmicks. Destructoid even praised it for feeling like an actual Mario game for once. As always, the single-player mode was singled out for criticism, but it’s nice to see critics having fun with the games again. We’re pretty sure that was the point of this series to begin with. 60) Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem! DS Nintendo has done a decent job of keeping the Mario vs. Donkey Kong series from becoming stale. Fans would almost certainly be happy with a mere level pack now and then, but just about every entry introduces some new feature or mechanic that then becomes standard. In the case of Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem!, the new idea is the ability to generate bridges for the Minis to follow. It’s a small addition, but it opens a lot of possibilities for both the level designers at Nintendo and for those fiddling around with the game’s Construction Zone. Speaking of which, Nintendo, the Switch has a touch screen and this series would be an excellent fit for it. Just…putting that out there. Mini-Land Mayhem! received positive reviews and sits at 79% on Metacritic, with reviewers being surprised by how fresh the series still felt this far into its history. I have to admit, that is an achievement on its own. 59) Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins Game Boy As often as Mario games are derided for their standard “rescue the princess” plots, there are a number of notable exceptions. For instance, Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario 3D World, and Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins all feature Mario curb-stomping a villain for entirely different reasons! Here it’s because Wario stole Mario’s castle while the latter was away on one of his much more traditional adventures. How a plumber can afford a castle – and why the government has yet to investigate his finances – is something I cannot answer. In order to regain his throne – again, this is a plumber, so maybe he just means his toilet – Mario must platform his way through a variety of themed stages and ultimately crush Wario’s skull. It’s far from the most memorable Mario adventure, and you’ll probably only find it difficult if you try to play it with your eyes closed, but it’s excellent fun and has a great soundtrack. It’s also the only time you can explore Mario’s…moving on. 58) Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour GameCube If you don’t count Mario Kart as a sports game, Mario Golf is the most consistent sports series Nintendo has. And yet, on the whole, it’s a simple one, meaning we run the risk of underselling it simply because there isn’t all that much to say about each entry. Early in the NES era, Nintendo nailed the basic mechanics and controls of a rewarding game of golf. They haven’t deviated from that basic formula since, which is probably wise. There’s little room for improvement, and overcomplicating things only adds its own problems. And so each Mario Golf game tends to refine what came before. Toadstool Tour on the GameCube adds more varied courses, new characters, and some additional ball-spin options, but overall it’s just a better, more-polished version of the games that preceded it. And that’s a huge compliment, even if it might not sound that way. 57) Mario Strikers Charged Wii Mario once again takes to the pitch to play football. It’s a nice expansion on the previous game, featuring a larger roster, new Mega Strike moves, and more stadiums. Stadiums…do I mean stadia? Oh god, god no, I do not mean Stadia! The game also featured online multiplayer, which is great until you remember it’s a Nintendo game and therefore you’d have a smooth experience maybe…six percent of the time. I’m being generous, I know; I’m such a fanboy. Also in this game, the ball remembers how many times it’s been passed between players, changing colors to show how powerful the next shot will be. Just like in real life! Right? I don’t know; again, not much of a sports guy, but I have to assume Mario Strikers Charged did its homework. It scored 79% on Metacritic, pulling off the rare feat of pleasing critics even with its single-player mode. 56) Mario & Wario Super Famicom Mario & Wario is a puzzle platformer that’s mainly interesting for how few Mario fans got to play it. It seems to have been planned for a Western release –all of its text is in English – but it never left Japan. Perhaps Nintendo forgot they released the SNES Mouse in other markets, as it’s required to play the game. Or perhaps they thought it wasn’t up to snuff, but that’s even less likely as it’s not half bad. Mario and friends are trying to locate Luigi, but that dastardly Wario has put a bucket on Mario’s head. Rather than take it off, Mario decides to walk blindly and constantly forwards while hoping for the best. You control Wanda, a sentient cursor, and manipulate objects to keep Mario safe. Between levels you can play a minigame in which you try to cause Wario to die in a horrific plane crash. It’s fun for the whole family. 55) Dr. Mario NES Isn’t it insulting that people still refer to Mario as a plumber, a full three decades after he earned his license to practice medicine? He…he has earned his license, right? The Game Boy version of Dr. Mario might be slightly better known, but we’re spotlighting the NES version because: a) it released slightly earlier than the Game Boy version in North America, b) Australia never got the Game Boy version at all, and c) looking at NES footage doesn’t make me wonder if I’ve gone colorblind. Dr. Mario is a puzzle game and it’s a genuinely great one. The simple color-matching gameplay is elevated by an excellent soundtrack and an almost perfect difficulty curve. It’s even better with two players, in which you try to ruin each other’s work rather than defeat the viruses together. You know, just like real medical research! Boot it up for a few minutes and you’re almost guaranteed to realize that you’ve been playing all night. If he does have his license, Dr. Mario should probably lose it for peddling such addictive substances. 54) Mario Party Nintendo 64 Mario Party not only launched another major series for Nintendo, but it led to a multitude of imitators, very few of them successful. Nintendo’s virtual board game had exactly enough creativity and imagination to make it universally appealing, and yet was simple enough for literally anybody to play. It reviewed well, earning 79% on Metacritic, with the main complaint being something that is obvious in retrospect: As GameSpot put it, it is “nowhere near as good in single player mode.” Which – and I say this with all due respect – duh. You might as well criticize Super Mario Sunshine for lacking a Nazi zombie mode. The original isn’t the best game, but it is the bloodiest. A bit over a year after release, Nintendo set aside $80 million to provide players with gloves as a result of, according to the settlements, “blistering, burns, lacerations, punctures, and cuts.” Really, though, what kind of party would it be without those? 53) Mario vs. Donkey Kong Game Boy Advance Initially developed as a direct follow-up to the Game Boy version of Donkey Kong, Mario vs. Donkey Kong spawned a series of its own. Here, Mario must navigate a series of puzzle-like levels without being humorously disemboweled by Donkey Kong’s traps. They do have fun! In that sense, it’s like the Game Boy game, but it also introduces the Minis, who would go on to define the series moving forward. This leaves Mario vs. Donkey Kong feeling like an outlier. It’s not quite as good or creative as the Game Boy game and its gameplay is far removed from the games focused on the Minis. It also looks rough and muddy, and that’s especially disappointing considering how easily the Game Boy Advance brought other Mario games to life. Plus, it’s full of obnoxious voice samples that will keep you from ever forming an opinion on the soundtrack. It’s a good time and it has great level design, but it is much less memorable than the games on either side of it. 52) Mario Golf: Advance Tour Game Boy Advance Just as the original Mario Golf did not attempt to compete directly with its Nintendo 64 counterpart, Mario Golf: Advance Tour knows better than to try to measure up to its GameCube equivalent. In fact, Mario Golf: Advance Tour took the sturdy foundation established by the Game Boy Color title and improved upon what was already there. The game looked better and sounded better, there was more variety, and it was more refined. Sure, it’s another sports RPG with Mario playing the role of the ultimate adversary, but it’s a hell of a good one. Mario Golf: Advance Tour is not the deepest golf game – or Mario Golf game – but it’s certainly the best example of the series’ flirtation with RPG elements. Even if you’re not interested in the story, Advance Tour’s Quick Play mode is perfect for a few holes on the go. And if anything other than golf popped into your mind, you should be ashamed of yourself. 51) Mario & Luigi: Dream Team 3DS By this point, the Mario & Luigi series had stumbled upon a formula. The tone, the combat, the narrative beats…all of it had been established for several games now. That formula was a good one, though; people enjoyed it, and there’s no reason to fix what isn’t broken. What is broken is how overtutorialized this game is. Nintendo intermittently gets the urge not so much to hold players by the hand but to drag them from the beginning of the game to the end credits. Dream Team is where that tendency hit the Mario & Luigi series, and as a result it is a slog to play. It interferes with the pacing, the humor, and the gameplay, leaving players to feel like they’re spending more time being told what to do than actually doing it. Its gimmick – Luigi, uh…sleeps – is also not nearly as engaging as those found elsewhere in the series. It is a genuinely fun game, but boy did Nintendo try to hide that fact. 50) Mario Artist: Paint Studio Nintendo 64DD Paint Studio was intended to be the “killer app” for the Nintendo 64DD. Since the only reason anyone ever mentions the Nintendo 64DD today is to point at it and shudder, you can probably guess how that panned out. Paint Studio is a drawing program, as you might expect, but it does have a few nice surprises. Up to four people can draw simultaneously, for instance, which probably led to chaos far more often than it led to art, but, still. You could also roam 3D worlds while taking photos of the wildlife, similar to Pokémon Snap, which came out the same year. Plus, it had a banging soundtrack, as did all of the Mario Artist games. Pre-release builds of Paint Studio made the game’s connection to Mario Paint more clear, as it contained a 3D reimagining of Gnat Attack. It actually looks like fun. Probably why they took it out. 49) Mario Party 6 GameCube Critics may have been sick of Mario Party by the second game, but fans didn’t seem to mind similar sequels that didn’t do much more than add new batches of boards and minigames. I mean, it’s either play Mario Party with your friends or talk to them. No choice at all, really. This game introduced two things to the series: a day/night cycle that wasn’t tied to a specific board, and minigames that didn’t work. The latter was accomplished through microphone functionality, and I’m sure everybody enjoyed paying for a peripheral that they would never use again. Eurogamer described it as “one of those parties where there’s nothing to drink but warm Heineken and no one to talk to but people who are having trouble with their boiler and students who’ve just spent three months in Thailand and want to tell you all about how they got dysentery in Chiang Mai, while a Savage Garden fan hangs round the stereo all night glaring at anyone who tries to suggest an alternative.” Or, more succinctly, 71% on Metacritic. 48) Super Mario Party Switch The Mario Party series has had some serious highs and lows in terms of its critical reception, but Super Mario Party is an oddity. Typically, reviewers tend to judge the games harshly while fans continue to enjoy them. Here, though, the fan response was lukewarm while critics rated it higher than almost any other game in the series. That’s still only 76% on Metacritic, but the point stands. After the traffic accident that was Mario Party 10, Nintendo wanted to bring the series back to its roots and provide simple, engaging fun. That’s the correct impulse, certainly, but fans were left a bit cold by the basic minigames and thoroughly underwhelming online mode, which should have been a huge selling point. Critics of course believed that this was exactly the return to form that the series needed after a stretch of underwhelming games. Who is correct? Nobody, because these are opinions rather than facts, you silly goose. 47) Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Tipping Stars 3DS, WiiU Another Mini Mario game that was released simultaneously on the 3DS and the WiiU, Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Tipping Stars is a much more traditional affair than Mini Mario & Friends: amiibo Challenge. Here, you get precisely the sort of game you’d expect: a series of increasingly complex levels that require you to guide tiny tin-men to the exit. Tipping Stars had a substantial single-player mode, but its main focus was on creating, uploading, and sharing levels. As the title suggests, you’d “tip” other players with stars when you enjoyed their creations. Miiverse shut down only two years after this game’s release, however, meaning that that entire aspect of the game is gone for good. Sorry! As it released on two systems, Nintendo allowed players a rare cross-buy: Purchasing one version netted you a download code for the other. I hope you enjoyed it, because Nintendo will never do it again. 46) Puzzle & Dragons: Super Mario Bros. Edition 3DS Released as a solo title in Japan, Puzzle & Dragons: Super Mario Bros. Edition came bundled with Puzzle & Dragons Z in the West. This led reviewers to consider one of the games to be little more than a “free bonus” when buying the other. Which game was considered the lesser one? Well, there was no real agreement on that. Many reviewers praised Super Mario Bros. Edition for breathing life into an otherwise stuffy color-matching RPG, while others felt that Puzzle & Dragons Z was the only game that had any real thought behind it. Super Mario Bros. Edition indeed feels like a familiar coat of paint applied to a completely different series, but it works well enough for what it is. It was received positively, with a rating of 73% on Metacritic. We think that’s about right. Fans of puzzle games and Super Mario Bros. should absolutely pick it up. If your tolerance for either of those things is a bit low, however, you have better options. 45) Super Mario Bros. 35 Switch Released at the end of 2020 and wiped from existence in early 2021, Super Mario Bros. 35 was the cause of understandable frustration for many Mario fans. It was a free download, but with a limited amount of time to play it, what was the point? If you enjoyed the game, you’d have it taken away in the twinkling of an eye. And if you didn’t enjoy it…well, that’s not all that much better. It was a strange decision on Nintendo’s part. Releasing it was a way for the company to celebrate the 35th anniversary of Super Mario Bros., but deleting it felt more like Nintendo giving Mario 35 birthday punches. It was fun while it lasted, with a battle-royale-inspired twist on the original game being a great way to make an old experience feel new again, but you can’t play it anymore, so who cares how good it was? It earned 75% on Metacritic. Not that it matters. 44) Mario Party Superstars Switch After a few underwhelming Mario Party games in a row, Nintendo deigned to…whelm us again? It would probably be too much to describe Mario Party Superstars as “overwhelming” so, yeah, let’s just go with “whelming.” They aimed to return to the things that fans enjoyed about the earliest games by…giving us the earliest games again. I mean, you can’t fault them on their logic. Mario Party Superstars includes boards from the first three Mario Party games and…sorry, the sentence ended there; I’d assumed it kept going. Still, that’s a legitimate feature for fans who have been craving a return to form. It also includes a selection of minigames from just about every other Mario Party game. That’s also what Mario Party: The Top 100 did, only this time, human beings actually enjoyed it. Its online functionality isn’t too bad, either, making this a perfectly reasonable way for old-school fans to revive their love of the series, possibly with their own kids. Or grandkids. Because, face it, those games released a very long time ago, pops. 43) Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis DS The second Mario vs. Donkey Kong game is the first in which the gameplay revolves entirely around the Minis. Though these miniature, mindless mechanical Marios were present in the previous game, this is where they became the main focus. That makes sense; Mario himself already has a platforming series. Or two. Or, like, six. Turning Mario vs. Donkey Kong over to the Minis gives it a clearer identity of its own. In this game, the player has more direct control over the little guys than they would in future games. They can be stopped, started, or given commands via the stylus, which you also use to manipulate the environment around them and protect them from hazards. It’s Lemmings-inspired, to be sure, and future games make that even more clear, but the game has enough in the way of its own unique ideas that it never truly feels like a knockoff. 42) Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time DS Hey, you know those baby characters who appear in every Mario sports game, eating up slots on the roster even though nobody ever picks them under any circumstances? Well, here’s a whole game about them! What can I say except…you’re welcome? In all seriousness, Partners in Time is the first Mario & Luigi game on the DS, and it’s an impressive debut for the system. Your mileage will certainly vary when it comes to the humor, but we can all agree that you just can’t go wrong with a Mario adventure involving time-travel. Actually…no, wait. Okay, I take it back! Partners in Time is worth a spin for RPG fans who don’t mind a bit of light-hearted chicanery in their epic quests. The babies even manage to pull their weight, expanding upon the exploration and combat options introduced in Superstar Saga. And look! You get to meet young Toadsworth. 10/10, GOTY, GOAT. Aside from the 41 games still to come, obviously… 41) Dr. Mario World Mobile We’d happily cite this as another example of why we think Nintendo should stick to console games, but Dr. Mario World is pretty good. Yes, it’s free to play, which means I can’t praise it without half the internet raining blows upon me, but the game was fully playable and enjoyable without touching the microtransactions. Also, it was a nice reimagining of the formula. In most Dr. Mario games, the round ends when you’ve either cleared all of the viruses or stacked pills to the top of the screen. In Dr. Mario World, though, you’re presented with a limited selection of capsules on each stage and need to work out how to kill all of the viruses before you run out. It was a nice little time waster. Plus, it had. What more could you possibly want? The game to still exist, I suppose. Ah well. 40) Mario Party 2 Nintendo 64 Mario Party 2 was a significant improvement on the first. It may not have evolved the core formula very much, but it certainly spiced it up with the introduction of collectible items, new types of minigames, the ability to practice games on their own, and – most importantly – the fact that the characters would dress like little cowboys or pirates depending on the theme of the board. It was adorable, especially Wari-Potter over here. Critics enjoyed the game, with the notable exception of Game Informer, who gave it an unfavorable review. Probably not coincidentally, Game Informer had also been rather harsh on the first game. This shook Nintendo so much that they sent the world’s most sarcastic certificate of appreciation to the magazine. We’ve been critical of your games as well, Nintendo. Where’s our frameable tantrum? 39) Mario Party 3 Nintendo 64 Rounding out the Mario Party trilogy on the Nintendo 64 – and being the final Mario game released for the console – Mario Party 3 isn’t a bad way to go out. Fans are split on whether or not it’s superior to the previous game, but we’re giving it a nod simply for the fact that it tried to address the lack of single-player content that critics had bemoaned since the series’ inception. Did it address it well? No, not really. The story mode is too clearly adapted from the multiplayer experience, meaning it offers none of the fun of playing with friends and all of the tedium that comes from watching other computer-controlled characters take their turns. It tried, however, and other features are more successful. This is the first game in the series to have all minigames unlocked from the start, and the Duel Boards are a nice twist on the familiar gameplay. 38) Mario Party 4 GameCube Ain’t no party like a Mario Party because a Mario Party don’t stop and I also don’t get to stop talking about Mario Party. Mario Party 4 moved the series to the GameCube, which was both smart and foolish on Nintendo’s part. Smart because nobody was buying the Nintendo 64 anymore. Foolish because nobody was buying the GameCube, either. Still, the game looks great and shows off the system’s higher processing power, bringing the series closer to how it always looked in our imaginations. The boards are also larger and more involved, which is either a great improvement or makes the game more tedious, depending on which critic you asked. Overall, reviewers were split between those who felt Mario Party 4 was refreshing and those who saw it as evidence that the series had nowhere left to go. It scored 70% on Metacritic but did a bit better with 73% on GameRankings. 37) Super Mario Bros. NES It would have been silly to expect that any one game could resurrect the industry after the video game crash of 1983, and yet that’s exactly what Super Mario Bros. did. The crash is often thought of as a North American phenomenon, but its impacts were felt severely in Japan as well. They even had their own name for it: Atari Shock. Nintendo was seeing decent success with its Famicom, but the damaging effects of the crash made the company reluctant to bring the system westward. They eventually did so, but didn’t see much success until they bundled the NES with Super Mario Bros. Probably a good move; I can’t imagine the system would have taken America by storm with Clu Clu Land. Miraculously, the story of a plumber who killed turtles in his spare time resonated worldwide, and the game raised Nintendo’s profile significantly. To this day, Super Mario Bros. is the sixth best-selling game in history and it’s also one of the most influential. Plus, it’s the reason video games are around today for us to complain about. Thanks for that! 36) Super Mario Sunshine GameCube Boy, Super Mario Sunshine would be so much fun if it worked. Glitchy and unfinished to the point that we might as well call it Mario 76, this game deserved so much better than its rushed development allowed. With the GameCube sinking and dragging Nintendo down with it, a proper Mario game was exactly what the console needed. Instead, we got about 60% of a proper Mario game and 40% gaffer tape. With Nintendo games in general and Mario games specifically, you can usually count on them having been refined and play tested to the point of near perfection. With Super Mario Sunshine, we’re fairly sure they just made certain it wouldn’t cause your GameCube to explode. And yet, beyond the very rough edges, there is a lot to enjoy. The island setting is unforgettable, the soundtrack is predictably great, and it still has some of the best-looking water we’ve ever seen in a video game. It’s a pity Super Mario Sunshine is held back by…actually playing it, but it’s surprisingly enjoyable for what it is. 35) Super Mario Kart SNES If you’ve ever wondered who would win in a go-kart race between a gorilla and a princess, Super Mario Kart let you find out first hand. It turned out to be one of the defining multiplayer experiences of the entire 16-bit era, launching one of Nintendo’s most beloved and enduring franchises. As well as launching an entire genre that is…less beloved. While nearly every game to follow improved upon Super Mario Kart’s formula, it’s impressive just how well-formed the concept was from the outset. Steering an assortment of silly characters around creative maps and knocking the tar out of each other with absurd weapons turned out to be quite fun. Who’d have guessed? The original SNES release earned an incredible 93.6% average from GameRankings, which is well deserved, considering how much work Nintendo must have put into what could have been a disposable spinoff. 34) Dr. Mario 64 Nintendo 64 Sequels to puzzle games are difficult beasts. Even Tetris arguably didn’t get a worthwhile sequel until Tetris Effect in 2018. The difficulty comes from the fact that puzzle games are both simple and addictive. Mess with the simplicity too much, and the addictiveness suffers. Keep it too similar to the previous game, and people will lose interest. Or, even worse, decide to buy something else. Dr. Mario 64 does manage to improve upon the original, but it does so around the margins, keeping the main game largely intact and introducing some welcome features on the side. Four-player mode, for instance, is a no-brainer. And there’s now a story mode, at last fleshing out that deep Dr. Mario lore. As a nice touch, not only can you also play as Wario – who, to be clear, we do not think should be responsible for handling anybody’s medication – but he even gets a unique story of his own. 33) New Super Mario Bros. DS Prior to the 2006 release of New Super Mario Bros., the most recent 2D Mario platformer was Super Mario Land 2 in 1992. This was because…well, because of everything you’ve seen on this list so far. Nintendo had struck gold with Mario’s various subseries and spinoffs, and the company made a hell of a lot of them. New Super Mario Bros. assumed that there was still an appetite for simple side-scrolling adventures, and it was correct; with more than 30 million units shifted, it’s the best-selling game on Nintendo’s best-selling console, and it’s the 17th best-selling game ever made. It was a critical success as well, scoring 89% at both Metacritic and GameRankings. Does it hold up? Really, that depends what you’re looking for. New Super Mario Bros. is a little light on creativity, which makes sense for a game specifically aiming to recapture the glory days. You do however get to watch Bowser get his flesh melted off, so points for that. 32) Mario Paint SNES 1992’s Mario Paint was not the first drawing program for a home console. Videomation for the NES came out the year prior. That was probably also not the first, but I wanted to mention it only so we could bask in the glow of its incredible box art. Anyway, the point is, Mario Paint may not have been the first, but at the time it was easily the best. It took full advantage of the SNES Mouse not only for drawing, but for general interactivity that allowed players to uncover dozens of creative Easter eggs. What’s more, it provided an animation studio, music composer, sprite-art creator, and – the reason we are all here – Gnat Attack. Yes, sure, Mario Paint was fun and encouraged children to develop their artistic skills and creativity, yadda yadda yadda. But I want to pick up a flyswatter and dish out some Mariopain on this robotic bug, and there is nothing you can do to stop me. 31) Mario Super Sluggers Wii Retaining much of what worked about Mario Superstar Baseball, Mario Super Sluggers is certainly a competent sequel, but it’s one that didn’t impress critics nearly as much as the first game did. That’s ultimately down to this game’s motion controls, which were considered to be both less reliable and less fun. Super Sluggers overall, though, was still great, with the single-player mode getting fleshed out a bit and times of day affecting which stadiums were available for play. It also had more levels and more characters, which no doubt kept things interesting for those who were already familiar with the original. The game sold well enough in Japan and North America to be rereleased as a Nintendo Selects title, but for some reason it never released in Europe, making it the only Mario game on the Wii to skip out on us. Not sure why. We would love baseball. It’s basically cricket, but sometimes you explode birds. 30) Dr. Mario Online Rx Wii Dr. Mario Online Rx is Mario’s only WiiWare appearance. And it isn’t a bad one. Or, wasn’t, I should say; Nintendo shut WiiWare down in 2019 and you can’t buy it anymore. So allow me to tell you why it was very good and make you wish you had it! Well, okay, it’s Dr. Mario. All Dr. Mario games are Dr. Mario. It’s fun, but if you didn’t like one of them, you won’t like the others. What Dr. Mario Online Rx adds, however, is online multiplayer, which certainly made the game more replayable than other versions. Oh, and there was an extra mode, but it was motion controlled which means it was rubbish. The game was known as Dr. Mario & Germ Buster in Europe and Dr. Mario & Saikin Bokumetsu in Japan. That translates as Dr. Mario & Bacteria Extermination, which is also the name of my video-game music cover band. 29) Mario Kart Arcade GP Arcade It’s difficult to judge the Mario Kart arcade games, I admit. Part of the fun of Mario Kart is how easy it is to lose yourself in the experience. It’s difficult to ignore the passage of time if you need to keep pumping money into a machine, however. I will say that developer Namco has an excellent understanding of what makes Mario Kart fun, and they managed to craft an experience that feels right at home in an arcade. They also didn’t skimp on putting their own stamp on the series, adding three Pac-Man characters to the roster and introducing an insane 72 new items. Critics had the fair complaint that the game was simply too expensive to enjoy thoroughly; by the time you learn any of the tracks, you won’t have the bus fare to get home. We hold out hope that one day we will get these arcade games on the Switch. Perhaps on a single cartridge. A Mario Cart, if you will. 28) Mario Kart Arcade GP 2 Arcade Remember a moment ago when I said it was difficult to judge the Mario Kart arcade games? I must have been out of my mind, because it’s at least easy to judge Mario Kart Arcade GP 2 as superior to Mario Kart Arcade GP. Overall, it’s a similar experience to its predecessor, but with more stuff in it. There are new drivers, for instance. One of them is Memetchi, who is a…Tamagotchi thing? Ah well, it’s the thought that counts. Come at me, Memetchi fans. There are also more tracks, which is always welcome. And, most importantly, the game now takes your photo and sticks cartoon features onto it, so you can spend the entire race being stared at by the hideous offspring of yourself and Waluigi. 27) Dr. Mario: Miracle Cure 3DS The best of the Dr. Mario series, Miracle Cure brings together modes and features from throughout the franchise’s history, provides local and online multiplayer, and adds a few new tricks of its own. It’s pretty much everything a Dr. Mario fan could ask for. Except to be a fan of a better series. BOOM. Roasted you! You are so roasted. Also, I can use this time to speak just a bit about Dr. Luigi, which we aren’t covering on the grounds that Luigi is not Mario. Look! His clothes are a different color and everything! That game’s main mode is included here, meaning you can use L-shaped pills and wonder why anyone thought that would be a good idea. This was also the final Mario game released before the death of Nintendo president Satoru Iwata on July 11, 2015, exactly one month after the Western debut of this game. 26) Mario Kart 64 Nintendo 64 If you owned a Nintendo 64 but didn’t own Mario Kart 64…then we probably have differing tastes in video games, and that’s okay. But if you did own it, you know what a huge step forward it was for the series. As impressive as the SNES game’s Mode 7 graphics were, Mario Kart 64 was far superior. It had actual depth, for instance. And hills! And a train that would sometimes run you over! This game had fewer tracks than its predecessor, but every one of them was more interesting, creative, and fun than anything we’d seen before. It was a genuine case of quality over quantity. It also had what might still be the series’ best battle mode, not least because eliminated players could drive around as a little bomb to seek revenge on whoever had the gall to burst their last balloon. 25) New Super Mario Bros. U WiiU With a score of 84% on Metacritic, it’s easy to see that New Super Mario Bros. U is a good game and also easy to see why it didn’t shift as many WiiU units as Nintendo had certainly hoped it would. Like the WiiU did with the Wii itself, New Super Mario Bros. U represented a step up for some fans from New Super Mario Bros. Wii, but it wasn’t enough of a step to matter. It’s a difficult game to play without feeling like you’ve played it before. Four-player mode returns, the previous game’s powerups return, just about all of the enemies and hazards return. It’s a fine release, but it just didn’t feel necessary. The big new powerup was the squirrel suit, which was clunkier and less fun to use than the cape from Super Mario World, a game released 22 years earlier. New Super Luigi U was a great optional expansion, but we’re not considering it here. One day we’ll cover your games, green stache. One day… 24) Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story DS The best of the dual-screen Mario & Luigi games, Bowser’s Inside Story answers the question every Nintendo fan had been asking for years: What if two Italian men were shrunk down and viciously abused a turtle’s internal organs? The plot centers around “blorbs,” a disease that causes Toads to inflate, meaning Bowser’s Inside Story caters to more kinks than we ever thought possible. Gameplay involves controlling Bowser as he moves through his own adventure and controlling the brothers, who fight their way through Bowser’s lower intestine and try really hard not to think about their predicament. The game was remade for the 3DS…puzzling, as the original was playable on that system. It sold poorly and developer AlphaDream filed for bankruptcy and ceased operating as a result. Bowser’s Inside Story is both therefore a high point for the series and the reason the series is dead forever. Covering all bases, there. 23) Mario Golf: Super Rush Switch How do you make a golf game that doesn’t feel like a golf game, yet still satisfies those who are seeking a golf game? Don’t ask me, man; I don’t make games. I only complain about them on the internet. Instead, ask the people behind Mario Golf: Super Rush. The most recent Mario Golf game on this list is also the most experimental, implementing both a push for speed and some brutal jostling between strokes. I’m pretty sure that’s the right terminology, though I wish it weren’t. Super Rush manages to avoid the familiarity that settles in with most golf games; it keeps you on your toes by pitting you against others not only in terms of score, but in terms of speed and power. And, surprisingly, it works darn well. Critics were disappointed by an overall lack of content and modes, but Nintendo began a series of updates to address this. Even focusing solely on the game’s original release, though, it’s a darned solid foundation, and it manages to keep itself interesting longer than golf games usually do. 22) Mario Kart 7 3DS It’s easy to overlook Mario Kart 7. It’s not the best game in the series or even the best one available for a handheld, but it’s a solid racer with some excellent tracks and an online mode that works great. What’s more, it laid the groundwork for the sublime Mario Kart 8. Mario Kart 7 allows players to assemble their karts from unlockable parts, introduces air and sea track segments, and also gives us single-lap courses, in which racers follow one long track instead of looping around it several times. Rainbow Road in this game even takes this approach, giving the feature a mark of honor. It’s a fully competent and well-made entry, and it’s not its fault that it was rendered more or less obsolete by the very next game. 21) Super Mario 3D Land 3DS Taken on its own merits, Super Mario 3D Land is a fully competent and fun 3D platformer. Considering the hardware that ran it, however, it’s a masterpiece of game design. Super Mario 3D Land is a truly beefy game for the modest 3DS. It looks great, sounds great, plays great, and even makes good use of the system’s 3D functionality. That shouldn’t be noteworthy in itself, but if you’ve played many 3DS games you know full well that it is. Where does it fall down? Well, it’s far from Mario’s most inventive game. And while it is indeed impressive that a 3D platformer runs so well on this adorable li’l handheld, it’s designed much more like the obstacle courses of Mario’s 2D games than like the explorational sandboxes of his 3D ones. Also, this game introduced us to hot-lady Boom-Boom, and I’ve been reeling with emotional confusion ever since. I can’t forgive it for that. 20) Super Mario 3D World WiiU After the Wii conquered the globe with great games such as Wii Sports, Animal Crossing: City Folk and, yes, Super Mario Galaxy, Nintendo decided to experiment a bit: What if they released a console with no games worth playing? The answer was that it didn’t sell very well, but it’s not as though they could possibly have predicted that. The WiiU did get a mainline Mario game in the form of Super Mario 3D World, but it never felt like a must-have. Is that fair? Well, yeah, actually, because 3D World is definitely one of the plumber’s slightest platformers. It’s far too easy, and most of the stages are both short and linear, with a few of them clocking in at only a few seconds of playtime. Having said that, simultaneous four-player action in a 3D platformer is a rare thing indeed, and that’s where the game really shines. Well, that and its genuinely wonderful jazzy soundtrack. Then, of course, there are the creative Captain Toad stages, which spun off into a game of their own. It’s excellent for what it is, surely, but we wished it tried to be a bit more. 19) Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle Switch The fact that Ubisoft made a Mario game that doesn’t involve running all over a big map collecting Paratroopa feathers is admirable. The fact that Ubisoft made a Mario game that compares favorably to most of Nintendo’s own output is downright miraculous. Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle is a tactics game, meaning that Mario now has a game in every genre except…let me check, here…dating sim and…actually, that’s it. Just dating sim. What are you waiting for, Nintendo? Anyway, the game combines the charm of the Mushroom Kingdom with the zany humor of the Rabbids, and it holds together quite well, with some genuine depth to the combat. It’s also surprisingly challenging, and rarely does it feel unfair. It’s not an experiment many people expected to work as well as it does, and it’s promising that, at this late stage, Nintendo is still open to experimenting with its biggest property. So, dating sim next. Right? Right. 18) New Super Mario Bros. Wii Wii New Super Mario Bros. is the 17th best-selling game of all time, and number 18 is New Super Mario Bros. Wii. It’s safe to say that people liked this series…at least for a while. New Super Mario Bros. Wii retains the giddy simplicity of its predecessor, but is much more fun. The design is better, the motion controls work well, and it offers simultaneous multiplayer for up to four people. What’s more, the game is great whether you’re playing with three friends or playing alone, wondering if your phone will ever ring again. It feels neither empty in single-player nor crowded in multiplayer. That’s an impressive design feat. New Super Mario Bros. Wii was lauded by critics, who rated it just slightly below the previous game, likely because of how similar it was visually and sonically. It was a must-have game for the console, however, and it’s safe to say that if you or a friend owned a Wii, its distinctive was not far away. 17) Mario Superstar Baseball GameCube It’s fitting that Mario’s first baseball game is a home run. Some of the plumber’s dalliances with major sporting events have been underwhelming or needed time to find their footing, but Mario Superstar Baseball had a great handle on how to stay true to both the sport and the Mario spirit. A variety of game modes allowed players to enjoy something very close to actual baseball as easily as they could enjoy cartoony chaos. The expected roster of silly characters and minigames round out the experience, and it contains a great multiplayer mode. I can’t say I’m looking forward to the next Mario baseball game, however, because it doesn’t seem like there’s likely to be one. Mario Superstar Baseball only got one sequel before the series vanished, possibly forever. And that’s not fair at all; even I know that you’re supposed to get three strikes before you’re out. 16) Mario Kart Arcade GP DX Arcade Mario Kart Arcade GP DX builds upon the two excellent games that came before it, introducing more complex tracks, better design, and absolutely gorgeous visuals. Of particular note is the co-op mode, which allows one player to drive a tank-like vehicle while the other bombards opponents with shells. Shells…right, I just got that pun. The basic issues associated with modern arcade games are present and accounted for. They’re expensive, they’re difficult to find, and you don’t really have the luxury of developing much skill unless you also have very deep pockets. Look beyond that, though, and you have the one arcade game we feel is truly worthy of the Mario Kart name. Also, the cabinet’s software has been updated numerous times since its 2013 release to add new characters, tracks, and features. So if you played it upon release, you’ll have new things to experience today. 15) Mario Kart Wii Wii Yes, I said “wee wee.” Mario Kart Wii is the third-best-selling Wii game, and the second-best-selling if you don’t count the packed-in Wii Sports. Fans enjoyed it and, overall, so did critics, with the game earning an average of 82% on both Metacritic and GameRankings. Or 82.07% if you want to get rounding to the nearest hundredth about this. The game looked great and played phenomenally. It allowed more concurrent racers than ever before, it was the first console game in the series with online multiplayer, the Mii integration was fun, it added motorcycles, and the battle mode…erm, existed. Okay, the battle mode was pants, but the rest of the game was excellent, with some of the best track design the series has ever had. There was even a Tournament mode with different race types that Nintendo would roll out regularly as long as it supported the game. It’s not the best entry in the series, but it’s close, and it offered more than enough to justify its place in anyone’s game library. 14) Mario Golf: World Tour 3DS The best of the Mario Golf games – so far, at least – Mario Golf: World Tour was a hint, deliberately or otherwise, of the next step in Nintendo’s overall evolution. No, really! Hear me out! Traditionally, Mario Golf games had very different iterations on handhelds and consoles. The handheld games had an element of role-playing adventure, while the console games had deeper and more impressive mechanics. This played to the strengths of both types of systems. Then, during the WiiU era, there was no console version of Mario Golf. Instead, we only got World Tour on the 3DS, which combined a more complex approach to the sport with stripped-down RPG elements. In short, it was the culmination of both the handheld and console design philosophies of the series. And then Nintendo gave us the Switch, which combined handhelds and consoles in a physical sense. Mario Golf: World Tour was trying to tell us what was coming, and we just didn’t listen. It’s also extremely good, with excellent course design, brilliant challenge modes, and even online tournaments. It is, as they say in the world of golf, a slam dunk. 13) Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door GameCube A number of commenters were disappointed that we didn’t talk much about Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door in our Every Nintendo Franchise Ranked from Worst to Best video. They were so disappointed that they called us profane things and questioned our parentage. Please understand, in that video we were discussing entire franchises rather than each and every individual game contained within. We were obligated to provide an overview, a history, a discussion of the critical response, interesting facts, and even a joke or two, all within the strict confines of 150-word entries. It’s difficult to accomplish all of that, and outright impossible to do so while also meeting every expectation that each member of the viewing audience is likely to bring with them. So, please, accept my humble apology for not having discussed Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door in that video. To make it up to you, I will discuss it now. Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is…yeah, it’s alright. 12) Mario Kart DS DS It took until Mario Kart DS before the series allowed for online play, but it was worth waiting for. Mario Kart DS would have been worth a purchase for that alone, but in actual fact it was the best game in the series up to that point, with some of the all-time best Mario Kart tracks, a varied roster of characters, and even the ability to draw a wilson in the game’s emblem creator. In many cases, older Mario Kart games can feel lacking due to the fact that later entries build upon everything that came before. Mario Kart DS, however, has a number of features that we still haven’t seen in later games, such as the rightly beloved Mission Mode, which – shockingly – gives the game some actual single-player content. The game has aged a bit in terms of its visual presentation, and obviously its worldwide servers are long gone, but if you have a few DSes laying around, and, y’know, friends, there’s still a lot of fun to be had here. 11) Donkey Kong Game Boy Donkey Kong for the Game Boy is often dismissed as a port, and though that’s far from the case, we can’t blame anyone for coming to that conclusion. The title is identical, the box art gives little indication that anything is different, and the first few levels are direct reconstructions of the arcade original. All of that is intentional misdirection, as once Mario completes those early stages, the game becomes something else entirely; it’s suddenly a puzzle platformer, and a darned good one at that. Mario indeed needs to avoid obstacles and hop across tricky platforms, as usual, but now he also needs to find and use keys and other items to navigate levels that are rarely as simple as they appear. It’s a frequently overlooked game in Mario’s history, and that’s unfortunate, as it’s not just “good for a Game Boy game.” It’s good, full stop, and it introduces a surprising amount of agility to Mario’s moveset, something that has stuck around to this day. 10) Paper Mario Nintendo 64 Beginning development as a direct sequel to Super Mario RPG, Paper Mario had big stompin’ boots to fill. Miraculously, it nearly did. As Nintendo’s relationship with Square started to fracture, Paper Mario became its own game and even launched a new series. The story saw Mario and friends in search of the Seven Star Spirits, which is a completely different and legally distinct concept from the Seven Stars in Super Mario RPG. While the main defining aspect of Paper Mario is its aesthetic, its sense of humor is what elevated it above being yet another Mario spinoff. The game was bursting with personality and creativity, two things that have carried through the entire series, no matter how…questionable the gameplay of later titles has become. Paper Mario holds an impressive 93% average on Metacritic. Super Mario RPG isn’t listed there, but whichever game you prefer, I think we can all agree that both are great. 9) Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga Game Boy Advance The first game in the Mario & Luigi series is more or less uniformly regarded as the best. Personal opinions won’t always align, of course, but it’s difficult to argue that Superstar Saga does not deserve a lofty placement. As with Paper Mario, this game had a striking art style of its own, with vivid colors, thick outlines, and a decidedly cartoonish aesthetic. It perfectly matched the humorous tone of the game and the exaggerated characters within. Then Superstar Saga was remade in 2017, exclusively to make it look worse. But I digress. It’s a single-player game, as you might expect, but you control both brothers at once, leading to some interesting puzzles on the overworld and the option to attack simultaneously in combat. The stakes are low – the plot essentially kicks off with Peach having laryngitis – but it’s charming and genuinely funny. It’s worth a spin even if you don’t normally enjoy Mario games. Maybe especially if you don’t normally enjoy Mario games. 8) Super Mario 64 Nintendo 64 The game that showed the world how 3D platformers should be done – you know, shortly after Bubsy 3D tried to convince the world that they shouldn’t be done – Super Mario 64 is still a classic. Alright, yes, it’s aged about as well as…well, me, but its influence can’t be denied and its charm remains infectious. Not literally; that would be hideous. The adventure takes place in and around Peach’s castle, with Mario hopping through paintings and other portals to distinct and memorable worlds. The variety is stellar, the soundtrack is phenomenal, and it’s still tons of fun simply to move Mario around. It’s not perfect. Mario won’t shut the hell up for two seconds, for instance, and he’s not even voiced by Chris Pratt – he’s so cool. Also, the camera is a nightmare and a number of the worlds are disappointingly barren, but we’re picking nits at this point. Super Mario 64 is the 3D platformer every other 3D platformer wanted to be. Very few of them ever got close. 7) Mario Kart 8 WiiU We’ve seen the WiiU a few times on this list, and usually not in happy circumstances, but somehow, against all odds, “the little system that absolutely could not” gave us the best game in one of Mario’s – and Nintendo’s – best franchises. Okay, yes, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on the Switch is better and people actually play that one online but you get the point. Mario Kart has never been a game about perfect balance, realistic physics, or anything other than cartoon characters spraying squid ink into each other’s eyes. The games live and die simply on how much fun they are and the designs of their courses. The former is found in most Mario Kart games, but the latter is on full display here. Mario Kart 8’s courses are beautiful. They’re clever, they stay entertaining for dozens of hours, and the anti-gravity gimmick leads to some truly memorable moments. Mario Kart has gone from strength to strength, so as great as Mario Kart 8 is, we’re not sure it will stay at the top for long. 6) Super Mario Bros. 3 NES Are there better games on the NES than Super Mario Bros. 3? Perhaps. Are there many of them? Absolutely not. Super Mario Bros. 3 is among the very best 8-bit games ever made, and with the exception of a slight bit of stiffness in the controls, it holds up extraordinarily well today. It discards just about everything that Super Mario Bros. 2 – either version of Super Mario Bros. 2 – brought to the series, focusing instead on refining the approach to bouncy, colorful platforming from the first game. Arguably, it’s this game that defined what Mario games were, and later entries worked hard to recapture exactly the magic that this one brought to the series. Some of them, as we’ll see, even succeeded. It’s also the game that saw Mario becoming so much more comfortable with who he is. Prior to Super Mario Bros. 3, he would only dress up like animals when nobody was looking. Now he was perfectly open to dressing up as a frog, a tanooki, a turtle, and even a foot fetishist. Good on you, Mario. Dig yourself. 5) Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars SNES Still the best of Mario’s RPG outings, Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars was developed by the reining lords of the genre, Square. The company used its Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest experience to craft an unforgettable adventure for Mario, and the game is a gem by every measure. It’s a gem of an RPG, of the SNES, of the 16-bit era, of Square’s history, and of Mario’s history. It truly is fantastic, and there’s a reason it’s still held in high regard a quarter century after its release. Super Mario RPG never got a direct sequel, but its spirit briefly lived on in Paper Mario. More recently it was found in the Mario & Luigi series. Yoshihiko Maekawa, one of Super Mario RPG’s designers, even moved to AlphaDreams, where he worked on Mario & Luigi. In conversation with Jason Schreier, Maekawa stated that he never saw a need for a sequel to this game, because he was able to accomplish everything he wanted to do with the original. It’s hard to disagree. 4) Super Mario World SNES Without question a firm contender for the title of Best 2D Platformer Ever, Super Mario World is an almost impossibly fun game, and just about everything it did in 1990 holds up very well today. Its graphics and sound helped define what we now remember as the 16-bit era of gaming, and it refined the Super Mario formula that had already served Nintendo so well. Returning foes and allies all look great, the controls are fantastic, the level design is among the best the series has ever had, and a wealth of secret exits and hidden levels gives it a surprising amount of depth. It’s particularly noteworthy just how much fun it is to simply control Mario in this game. That’s often said about the 3D games, and it’s valid there, but it’s even more impressive that the movement in a 2D game can be so fluid and exciting. Spin-jumping, flying with a cape, sacrificing a friendly dinosaur’s life so you can jump just a bit higher…it’s damned close to perfect. 3) Super Mario Odyssey Switch The WiiU’s failure can be attributed to…well, almost anything. But the lack of compelling Zelda and Mario games certainly didn’t help. Then the Switch launched with one of the best Zelda games and that was followed quickly by one of the best Mario games. The success of Nintendo’s newest console is no coincidence. Super Mario Odyssey is everything Mario fans have been waiting for since…ever, actually, now that I think about it. Its sense of movement is unrivaled, its environments are gorgeous and expansive, and there are secrets and hidden items to be found just about everywhere. Much of the game lacks challenge, but that was by design; Super Mario Odyssey is meant to appeal to both younger players and those who have followed Mario’s evolution from the very beginning. It currently sits at an incredible – but much-deserved – 97% on Metacritic, and it’s easily one of the greatest 3D platformers ever made. It’s gaming history in the making, and it’s a testament to Mario’s success that this is only his third-best game. 2) Super Mario Galaxy 2 Wii No matter which of the two Super Mario Galaxy games we ranked higher, we’d disappoint half of you. Frankly, that’s a good thing; it means that there really isn’t a wrong answer when it comes to choosing between them. In fact, they both hold stellar – get it? – ratings of 97% on Metacritic. Galaxy 2 is only, we feel, a hair less impressive than its predecessor. For starters, it borrows so much from that game that it often feels more like a level pack. Which is exactly how it began development, actually. It’s also more linear, with an emphasis on moment-to-moment challenges rather than exploration. Some players prefer that, and that’s okay, but we feel that it doesn’t measure up to the sheer, expansive majesty of the first game. Traveling around on a world map also doesn’t feel nearly as impressive as the Comet Observatory did. On the bright side, you do get to ride Yoshi in this game, which is something the team wasn’t able to pull off in the first Super Mario Galaxy. Speaking of which… 1) Super Mario Galaxy Wii The apogee of Mario’s career, Super Mario Galaxy was and remains a revelation. And while many games do often show their age over the years, the recent port included in Super Mario 3D All-Stars revealed that Super Mario Galaxy has aged like fine wine. The controls are perfect, the levels are inventive, and the entire experience is absolutely beautiful. Every moment of Super Mario Galaxy is awash in charm and creativity, and it introduced Rosalina, one of the few Mario characters who is actually…a character, with desires and goals and feelings and fears. What’s most impressive is just how well the game works, considering how heavily it leans on the brand-new gravity mechanic, which never feels anything short of natural and perfectly intuitive. It was exciting to control Mario as he zipped around different planetoids, and it always felt right, like the next logical step for him. Nintendo took its most audacious idea for a Mario game yet, and gave us something that still felt comforting, rewarding, and familiar. The soundtrack is also among the best in the medium, with a full orchestra giving every song a sense of life and wonder that could not possibly be more fitting. Perhaps one day Nintendo will outdo themselves. But, even if they don’t, it’s a miracle they brought us this far.

Channel: TripleJump

Views: 801,898

Keywords: mario ranked, every mario game ranked, every mario game ranked from worst to best, every mario game ever, ranking mario games, best mario games, worst mario games, obscure mario games, weird mario games, triplejump, triple jump ranked, nintendo, mario, super mario, mario odyssey, mario galaxy, super mario world, super mario rpg, super mario bros, mario kart, mario party, donkey kong, mario paint, dr mario, hotel mario, mario and luigi, mario golf, mario tennis, yoshi

Id: aOv1DOK9TLk

Length: 146min 30sec (8790 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 01 2022

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[u/NFFUK]

Here we go !