okay, to be clear, I’m not talking about
the whole Mario franchise. this isn’t about how many Mario games there
are, the question is how many Super Mario games there are. within the Mario franchise, there’s a distinction
that can be made between the “mainline games” and “spinoffs”. so like, which games are
which? how many games are actually in the mainline
Super Mario series? no, really, I promise this is an interesting
question. actually, you know what, hey, if you’re
coming into this and you think you already know which Mario games are part of the mainline
series, please pause the video and try to count how many there are. you don’t have to post a comment with your
list or anything, just have your own list of which games you consider to be the main
Mario series on hand. got it? cool, so for everyone else, I guess
I should actually explain what’s going on. I’m going to assume you already know like,
what the Mario franchise is. and you probably also already know that there’s a series
of platformer games at its core. that’s the Super Mario series. but, despite being an incredibly popular series
of games, there is no consensus about exactly which games are part of it. and by no consensus, I mean absolutely no
consensus. if you look at Wikipedia, the Super Mario
Wiki, the official Japanese Super Mario website, and the official American Super Mario website,
you will find at least six completely different lists of games. so like, what’s the deal with that? this
is one of the most popular series of games of all time. how can there be so much disagreement about,
what games are in it? I’m jan Misali, and how many Super Mario
games are there? first of all, does this question even make
sense? is it reasonable to talk about the “Super Mario series” as though it’s
a coherent series of games, and to distinguish between “Mario games” and “Super Mario
games”? personally, I think it does, but a lot of
people don’t. see, as research for this video, I conducted
a survey asking thousands of people which games they consider to be part of this series,
and I got a lot of very interesting results. I’ll be citing the results from this survey
throughout this whole video. one of the most interesting things was just
how many people seemingly think of the “Super Mario series” as being synonymous with the
Mario franchise as a whole. a lot of people down in the “other” option
at the bottom said they consider the Mario Kart or the Mario Party games to be part of
the same series as Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Odyssey and the like. others said that “Super Mario games” are
simply Mario games that have “Super” in the title, so most Mario Kart and Mario Party
games don’t count, but Super Mario Kart and Super Mario Party do. just to be as clear as possible, the series
I’m talking about, the “Super Mario series”, is one of many series of games within the
Mario franchise. it’s the series of (mostly) platformers
that includes Super Mario Bros. for the NES and all of its sequels. there’s a lot of different names people
call this series: “the Super Mario Bros. series”, “the mainline Mario series”,
or even just “the Mario series”. however, the most common name seems to be
“the Super Mario series”, so that’s what I’m calling it. so, now that I’ve hopefully cleared up what
series I’m talking about here, let’s get to actually listing games. I’ll start with the fully uncontroversial
ones, games that basically everyone agrees are part of the series. to be clear, when I skip a game in this list,
it’s not because I don’t think it’s part of the Super Mario series, it’s just
that there’s some statistically significant group of people who don’t think it’s part
of the series. we’ll come back to the ones I skipped soon,
and go over the arguments for and against each one. this list is just a baseline of games that
everyone can agree on. the fully uncontroversial games in the series
are: Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World... ...and that’s it! it’s just those three
games. Mario 1, 3, and World. every other Mario game is at least somewhat
controversial as to if it’s part of the series or not. now, when I first started this project, I
already thought that was the case, that those three games are the only ones basically everyone
agrees are in this series. that’s part of why I did that survey, just
to make sure I wasn’t completely off-base with that, and it was extremely validating
to see the results, that those three games are the only ones that fewer than 5% of respondents
said are not part of the series. of course, that isn’t to say that all three
of these games are definitely part of the Super Mario series. I mean, okay, Super Mario Bros. definitely
is. I think if someone says the Super Mario series
doesn’t include Super Mario Bros., they’re either lying or not talking about the same
series I’m talking about. but for the other two, you definitely could
argue against their inclusion. they wouldn’t be very convincing arguments,
and almost everyone would think you’re wrong, but you could. and naturally, I don’t think there’s anyone
who thinks that, one, a coherent “Super Mario series” of games exists, and two,
the only games in it are Mario 1, 3, and World. however, there are a couple big groups of
games that are sometimes, but usually not, considered separate from the mainline Super
Mario series. first is the 3D games. the split between 2D and 3D Super Mario games
is a pretty noticeable one, so a significant number of people, as in over 5% of the people
who responded to the survey, consider the 3D games as a rule to be separate from the
mainline Super Mario series. although, exactly what the 3D games are if
not Super Mario games is unclear. some consider all 3D Super Mario games to
be one single series, while others divide it up further. the pairs Galaxy and Galaxy 2 or 3D Land and
3D World are sometimes thought of as mini series in their own right. the 3D collectathons Mario 64, Sunshine, and
Odyssey, are often grouped together, sometimes called a separate series and excluded, or
more often considered to be the “true” form of 3D Mario, with all other 3D Mario
games excluded. although, the Galaxy games sometimes get grouped
in with them, and it’s just the 3D Place games that get excluded for not being true
to 3D Mario gameplay. there’s another interesting nuance with
the Galaxies and 3D Places. some people, though not many, consider Galaxy
2 to not be its own distinct game, and think of the two Galaxy games as one thing. however, for the 3D Places, it’s more common
for 3D World to be counted but not 3D Land, even though 3D Land came first. this is, I think, not a case of the two games
being similar and therefore the same game, but rather a case of home console purism,
where some people in general believe that for a game to count as a mainline Super Mario
game it has to be for a home console, so handheld games like 3D Land don’t count. this isn’t a super common opinion, especially
now that the Switch makes the distinction between console and handheld games kinda arbitrary,
but it’s still an opinion held by a substantial number of people! the other set of games that’s almost always
included but still sometimes debated is the New Super Mario Bros. series. this one is pretty straightforward: around
15% of people consider the New Soup games to be a distinct series, separate from the
Super Mario series. however, as before, there is nuance here. home console purism is relevant once again,
with two of the New Soups being games for handheld systems. New Soup Wii is the most commonly included
of these games, with the others close behind. for reasons I do not fully understand, the
original New Super Mario Bros. for the DS was included by fewer respondents to my survey
than any of the other three unambiguous New Soups, including New Super Mario Bros. 2 for
the 3DS. hundreds of people said that they consider New Soup 2 to be a Super Mario game,
but not New Soup 1. I have literally no idea why that’s the
case. I know, the reasons you’re thinking of right
now sound very plausible, and I thought it was those too, but from analyzing the data
from the survey, I ruled almost all of them out. it isn’t a case of misplaced home console
purism, where people think handheld games don’t count but don’t know that New Soup
2 is a handheld game. it can’t be that because about 70% of people
who included New Soup 2 but not New Soup 1 also included Super Mario Land. it’s also not just a portion of the respondents
picking their answers completely randomly. within this group, every single one of them
also included Mario 1, and over 95% of them included Mario 3. their most-included games, aside from New
Soup 2, the game whose inclusion defines the group, line up with the general population,
which wouldn’t be the case if they were just picking games randomly. it’s also not people who think that “New
Super Mario Bros. 2” refers to New Super Mario Bros. Wii, the second New Super Mario
Bros. game, because over 80% of people who included this game also included New Soup
Wii. I also don’t think it’s entirely explained
by people just not knowing what game “New Super Mario Bros. (DS)” refers to. New Soup 1 was included significantly less
often than New Soup 2 even among people who described themselves as “experts” on the
Super Mario series. and like, this is not an obscure game. New Soup DS sold over 30 million copies. so like, what the heck? who are these people? what is their reasoning? my best guess is that that, since I put “DS”
in parentheses after the title of this game on the survey, they assumed that this is a
port of some other game without really thinking about it. looking at what other games this group is
less likely than average to include, there’s a lot of other games with parenthetical console
names up there. I don’t know though, I don’t think that
many people who are knowledgeable about Mario games in general don’t know that the first
New Super Mario Bros. game was the one for the DS. maybe it’s just because I was the
right age 15 years ago when this game came out that all my friends were in the target
demographic for a Mario game, so this game is better known among people I know than it
is among the general population. anyway, with those games, we now have the
set of games that are almost completely unambiguous: Mario 1, Mario 3, World, 64, Sunshine, New
Soup, Galaxy, New Soup Wii, Galaxy 2, 3D Land, New Soup 2, New Soup U, 3D World, and Odyssey. these fourteen games are all included by almost
everyone, with very small groups considering some of them to be separate. cool, we can now move on to the games where
the controversy is actually significant. first of all, there’s a pretty obvious gap
between Mario 1 and Mario 3. “where’s Mario 2?” I hear you ask. I mean, you’re probably not asking that,
because the thing with Mario 2 is like the single most well-known piece of video game
trivia. just in case you’re one of the six people who don’t know this already but somehow
are invested enough in this video to still be watching at this point, there’s two separate
Mario 2s. just for the sake of clarity, I’ll be calling
these two games by the names they have that aren’t “Super Mario Bros. 2”. so, the
game that’s called “Super Mario Bros. 2” in Japan is “Super Mario Bros.: The
Lost Levels”, and the game that’s called “Super Mario Bros. 2” in America is “Super
Mario USA”. sometimes, people like to be annoying and pretend that they think “the
game called Mario 2 in America” and “Mario USA” are two separate games, as though the
differences between the NES game Super Mario Bros. 2 and the Famicom game Super Mario USA
are any more significant than the regional differences for literally any other NES/Famicom
game. and uh, they’re just gonna have to deal with it! anyway, yeah, pretty much everyone includes
at least one of the Mario 2s. most people include both, and what I had expected would
be the the case is that there’d be some people who say Lost Levels is the real Mario
2 and other people who say Mario USA is the real Mario 2. and while that is technically
true, there’s a fourth group, people who don’t think either Mario 2 is part of the
Super Mario series, and there’s considerably more of them than I had anticipated. in fact, there’s slightly more people who
responded saying neither Mario 2 is a Super Mario game than people who said Mario USA
is a Super Mario game but not The Lost Levels! I think it’s understandable why more people
include Lost Levels than Mario USA, given the history of the two games that you’ve
already heard before. and excluding the Lost Levels makes some amount
of sense too, because it’s pretty much just Mario 1 again but with different levels. but what’s really interesting is how this
compares to the various authoritative sources on this topic. the official Nintendo of Japan Mario website
says that both Mario 2s are part of the Super Mario series, which most people agree with. the same is true on Wikipedia and the Super
Mario Wiki. but Nintendo of America’s official Mario website claims that Super Mario USA
is a Super Mario game, but not The Lost Levels. this is the least commonly held opinion about
the status of these two games in the series, the one that you’ll find at supermario.com. to be fair, it makes sense that Nintendo of
America would present it this way. from their perspective, The Lost Levels is
an unreleased game. they’re the ones who lost these levels in
the first place, after all! but it’s not like this game is completely nonexistent outside
of Japan. it was one of the games remade in Super Mario
All-Stars, it was included in Super Mario Bros. Deluxe, it was released on Virtual Console
on the Wii, 3DS, and Wii U, it’s part of the Nintendo Entertainment System Nintendo
Switch Online service, and so on. and that said, most people do still agree
that both Mario 2s are Super Mario games. this next pair of games, on the other hand,
has significantly more controversy surrounding it. I’m talking, of course, about the Super
Mario Land games. the Mario Lands are a special case in the
Super Mario series. they’re included more often than not, but
they’re significantly less clearcut than the other games we’ve listed so far. Mario Land 1 was included by about 80% of
respondents, and Mario Land 2 was only included by around two thirds of respondents. there’s a few reasons why these games are
somewhat ambiguous. the first is, again, home console purism.
these two games were both released for the Game Boy, after all. but it’s not that simple, of course. as early handheld games, the Mario Lands have
a completely different vibe from other Super Marios from the time, mostly due to the limitations
of the hardware they were made for. Mario Land 1 in particular was really janky. it was one of the very first games developed
for the Game Boy, so naturally nobody on the development team had any experience yet. another major contributing factor is that
the Mario Lands were released during a time when Super Mario games were still being numbered. in Japan, Super Mario Land was released between
Mario 3 and Mario 4, and in North America, it was released between Mario 2 and Mario
3. so, that’s a clear separation between these
games and the other Super Marios. the other big factor is the existence of Wario
Land. Wario was first introduced in Super Mario
Land 2: 6 Golden Coins as the main antagonist. Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 featured the
character as the protagonist, and from Wario Land came a full new series of games starring
Wario. almost half of respondents to my survey said
that they consider Mario Land and Mario Land 2 to be Super Mario games, but not Wario Land. the other two most common opinions on the
matter are roughly equal, with about 20% saying that none of the Mario Lands are Super Mario
games, and another 20% saying that all three games, including Wario Land, are Super Mario
games. most of the other respondents said that Super
Mario Land is a Super Mario game, but not 6 Golden Coins or Wario Land. are these people
suggesting that Wario’s presence in this game means that Mario Land 2, not 3, is the
first game in the Wario Land series? it’s definitely possible. however, I think it’s more likely that people
just haven’t heard of Mario Land 2 before. this is one of the lesser known Mario games,
and I think someone who can see Mario Land 1 and say that its gameplay is similar enough
to the rest of the Super Mario series to count would have to agree that Mario Land 2 is a
much more traditional Super Mario experience. before we move on, I think I should talk a
bit more about Wario Land. why do most people who consider the Mario
Land games to be part of the Super Mario series not consider Wario Land to be part of it as
well? it is subtitled “Super Mario Land 3” after all, so on paper it should count. the most obvious thing about it is that Mario
isn’t in it. you don’t play as Mario, you play as Wario,
so this isn’t a Mario game, it’s a Wario game. and, of course, there’s sequels to
Wario Land. Wario Land is very clearly a whole series
of games, outside of the Super Mario series. please keep these facts in mind, they’re
going to be relevant again soon. for now, we have a list of Super Mario games
that I think most people will agree with. it’s all the games we had before, plus both
Mario 2s and the first two Mario Lands. personally, I would say this list is complete. there are eighteen Super Mario games, simply
because these are the eighteen games that a clear majority of people (over two thirds)
can agree are Super Mario games. in fact, this exact list was the single most
common response to the survey I conducted. now, that isn’t to say that this list represents
any sort of consensus. there is no consensus. even though this was the most common list
of games, it still represents less than 2% of everyone who responded to the survey. while most people’s idea of the Super Mario
series is similar to this, almost everyone’s personal list deviates from it slightly. I intend to present the full range of ways
that people classify games in this series, and even though I have now given the list
of games I personally consider to be part of the Super Mario series, there are still
several more games worth discussing. we are now ready to get into the games where
there is no clear consensus regarding if they are part of the series or not. at the time of writing, the most recently
released game that more people than not would describe as a “Super Mario game” is Super
Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury. this Switch cartridge includes two games: the Switch port
of 3D World, and the new game Bowser’s Fury. so, what’s up with Bowser’s Fury? this isn’t the most ambiguous game in terms
of what the consensus around it is, but it is the one I’m personally most unsure of. here’s the main points for and against it. Bowser’s Fury does not exist as a standalone
game. you cannot just get Bowser’s Fury, you have
to get it bundled with Super Mario 3D World. so, in terms of what the product itself is,
Bowser’s Fury is “the same game” as the the Switch port of 3D World. but like, why is that important? it’s clearly
a different game. it’s two games included on one cartridge,
like how Super Mario Bros. was commonly bundled with Duck Hunt. however, Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt were
also released separately. that’s not the case for Bowser’s Fury. Bowser’s Fury is built off of the 3D World
game engine, reusing many of its assets. but the gameplay is significantly different;
it’s a 3D collectathon instead of a linear course-clear platformer. Bowser’s Fury is more different from 3D
World than, say, Galaxy 2 is from Galaxy 1, or The Lost Levels is from Super Mario Bros.. however, it should be emphasized again that
Bowser’s Fury does not exist by itself. it is one half of “Super Mario 3D World
plus Bowser’s Fury”, and honestly calling it “half” is generous. Bowser’s Fury is clearly a different game
from 3D World, but can the same be said of the whole package? on the survey, I included two separate options
for Bowser’s Fury, one for just the game by itself, and another for 3D World + Bowser’s
Fury. most people selected at least one of those
options. in fact, the two options collectively were
included by more people than Super Mario Land 2. however, between the two different options,
the results are... inconclusive. the least common opinion was that Bowser’s
Fury on its own is a Super Mario game, but not the bundle, and the most common opinion
was that neither Bowser’s Fury nor the bundle are Super Mario games. so, you could argue that this suggests that
most people think that Bowser’s Fury on its own is not a Super Mario game, but that
the bundle that has it and the port of 3D World is. that said, it’s not very clear, and I’m
not confident in coming to any sort of conclusion about it beyond my own opinion, which is that
Bowser’s Fury isn’t a separate game, so it shouldn’t count. there is one more game which is ambiguous
at this same level as to if it’s a separate game or not, and this one is arguably an even
bigger mess than Bowser’s Fury. New Super Luigi U. this game was first released in 2013 as DLC
for New Super Mario Bros. U. then, later that same year, it was released as a standalone
game, and then, still in 2013, the bundle New Super Mario Bros. U + New Super Luigi
U was released, with both Ensm-Bu and Ens-Lu on one disk. then in 2019, a port of New Super Mario Bros.
U + New Super Luigi U was made for the Switch, called New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, a title
which consists of three adjectives, a letter that refers to a console the game is not for,
the instantly recognizable name of an internationally famous video game character, and the word
“Bros”. unlike Bowser’s Fury, New Super Luigi U
does actually exist as its own standalone game. but also unlike Bowser’s Fury, that standalone
game is just, the same game as New Super Mario Bros. U, but with different levels. and yeah, you could say the same thing about
Galaxy 2 or The Lost Levels, but I think the similarities between Luigi U and Mario U are
significantly, more, than those other cases. but still, a lot of people say the different
levels and the Luigi-fied physics are enough for Luigi U to be counted as a separate game,
and that’s completely understandable. of course, there’s another sillier argument
against this game. you’re not playing as Mario in New Super
Luigi U, you’re playing as Luigi, so it can’t be a Mario game. remember, this was one of the key points against
Wario Land, so this does really matter. between these uh, four(?) versions of New
Super Mario Bros. U, there’s at most like two separate Super Mario games, right? I mean, I certainly think so. as you probably
expected, there’s no consensus about that. most people either said that all four of them
are Super Mario games, or that New Super Mario Bros. U is a Super Mario game and that the
rest of them are just different versions of that. I would like to focus on the third-largest
group here, however, the people who said that exactly two of these versions of New Soup
U count as Super Mario games. this group is split almost evenly between
people who say the two Super Mario games in that set are Mario U and Luigi U, and people
who say the two games are Mario U and Mario U Deluxe, with just slightly more people in
the New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe camp. I don’t really understand this viewpoint,
that New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe is a separate Super Mario game from New Super Mario Bros.
U, but not New Super Luigi U on its own, or the bundle that U Deluxe is a port of. that said, this is actually Nintendo’s official
stance on the matter! both the Nintendo of America website and the Nintendo of Japan
website’s official lists of games in the Super Mario series include New Super Mario
Bros. U Deluxe, but not New Super Luigi U. my own take is that Luigi U and Bowser’s
Fury are the two games that come closest to being separate Super Mario games without actually
being separate Super Mario games. these games are both incomplete without the
games they come packaged with, even though Luigi U technically also exists as a standalone
game. that said, I completely understand the viewpoint
of people who include either or both of these, and I have changed my opinion on this matter
multiple times over the course of making this video. New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe and Super Mario
3D World + Bowser’s Fury are both weird edge cases. but the funny thing is, there’s another
game that’s far more unambiguously just a new version of an older game that’s included
more often than either of these games. that game is Super Mario 64 DS. this makes sense to me. 64 DS has tons of new content, with new graphics,
new playable characters, new courses, new mechanics, and so on. I would say that remakes in general shouldn’t
be counted as separate entries, but there is a pretty strong argument you could make
that Mario 64 DS is different enough from the original to be thought of as a distinct
game. it’s pretty clearly more different from
Mario 64 than New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe is from New Super Mario Bros. U + New Super
Luigi U, that’s for sure. Mario 64 DS is one of the handful of Super
Mario remakes and rereleases that some people consider to have enough new things to be counted
separately, while also believing that remakes in general shouldn’t count. New Super Luigi U and Bowser’s Fury are
simply the most extreme cases of this. but the question is, where do you draw the
line? how different do two games need to be to be
considered separate games? the Super Mario series has seen plenty of remakes, rereleases,
and ports over the years. many of these add new content to the games
they’re remaking. so, when enumerating the Super Mario games,
should these, in general, be counted? this is a case where the limitations of a
simple binary checkbox survey question make interpreting the data difficult. many people, myself included, would say that
remakes and rereleases of Super Mario games are definitely Super Mario games, but they’re
not entries in the Super Mario series. so, how people respond to the question depends
on how they interpret it. the other remakes that are most commonly counted
separately are Super Mario All-Stars, Super Mario Bros. Deluxe, and the Super Mario Advance
series. each of these has a substantial amount of
differences from the games they’re remaking. All-Stars is a full remake of four separate
Super Mario games, bringing the NES and Famicom entries into the mid-90s. notably, this was
the first time The Lost Levels was released outside of Japan. Deluxe is a port of Mario 1 and The Lost Levels
to the Game Boy Color, finally allowing people to play these classic games on a screen that’s
too small to see the game. there’s also a decent amount of new content,
including the You VS. Boo side mode. the Super Mario Advance games are where things
get interesting, I think. these are four Game Boy Advance ports of different
Mario games. two of them are ports of games originally
released for the Super Nintendo, and the other two are ports of individual remakes from Super
Mario All-Stars. there’s a whole range of how much new stuff
these remakes add. for the most part, they’re the same as the SNES originals, but with new
voice acting, and slightly worse music. the one that has the most new stuff is Super
Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3. wow, Nintendo is, good at naming things. Advance 4 was the first Super Mario game to
have DLC, which it implemented in the most archaic way possible. there was this card reader accessory for the
GBA called the e-Reader, and you could swipe cards that stored the data of individual levels
to download to the game. it was this whole convoluted process, and
when I played this game as a kid literally nobody I knew had an e-Reader so I never played
any of these levels. they were included in the Wii U port of this
remake though! honestly, I think that if someone thinks New
Super Luigi U or New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe should count as separate Super Mario games
from New Super Mario Bros. U, there’s no reason not to also include Super Mario Advance
4. and sure, throw in Mario 64 DS while you’re at it. the rest of these remakes don’t have as
much going for them, but their inclusion as entries in the Super Mario series depends
on what your standards are for what counts as a unique game. is it original levels? then
Mario Deluxe, 64 DS, and Advance 4 are all Super Mario games. naturally, there are several other remakes
and rereleases that generally aren’t thought of as separate games; it’s mostly just these
ones that people include in their lists of Super Mario games, unless again they consider
remakes in general to count. I’m not sure if that’s because of people
actually thinking these remakes are the ones that differ the most from their corresponding
original games, or if it’s just a lack of familiarity with some of the more obscure
remakes and rereleases. I’ll talk about those obscure games later,
since there’s still a few pretty important games that haven’t been brought up yet.
for now, we’ll just leave it at these remakes of the NES/Famicom games, Mario World, Yoshi’s
Island, and Mario 64- wait, Yoshi’s Island? Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island is the
single most ambiguous game regarding its inclusion in this series. opinion surrounding this game is split almost
exactly down the middle, with 49% saying it is a Super Mario game, and the other 51% saying
it’s not one. Wikipedia says this game is part of the Super
Mario series, and the Super Mario Wiki says it isn’t. who’s right, and why are so many other people
wrong? here’s the main argument in favor of including
Yoshi’s Island. first of all, it’s called “Super Mario
World 2”. practically everyone agrees that Mario World
is unambiguously part of this series, and Yoshi’s Island is a direct sequel to Mario
World, so it has to also be part of this series. additionally, multiple developers who worked
on the game have said in interviews that they consider the game to be part of the core Mario
series, including Shigeru Miyamoto himself. so, that settles it, right? primary source directly saying what the game
is. but, hold on, right, because remember, there’s
official websites from Nintendo that have lists of Super Mario games. and both Nintendo of Japan and Nintendo of
America’s official lists exclude Yoshi’s Island. so then, what’s the case against Yoshi’s
Island? well, the biggest factor is that Yoshi’s
Island can’t be a Super Mario game because you’re not playing as Mario, you’re playing
as Yoshi, and there’s a whole separate series of Yoshi games, including multiple direct
sequels to Yoshi’s Island. the way I see it, there’s five different
ways someone could analyze this game’s relationship to the Super Mario series. option one, you could say that Yoshi’s Island
is not part of the Super Mario series, because it’s part of the completely separate Yoshi
series. option two, you could say that yeah, there
is a Yoshi series that exists that’s a distinct thing from the Super Mario series, but Yoshi’s
Island isn’t a part of it, because it’s part of the Super Mario series instead. option three, you could say that Yoshi’s
Island is part of the Super Mario series and the Yoshi series. nothing stopping a game from being in two
series at the same time. option four, you could say that there is no
divide between the Yoshi series and the Super Mario series. the two series are one and the same. and option five, you could say that yes, Yoshi’s
Island is part of the Yoshi series and not the Super Mario series, but it’s also a
sequel to Super Mario World, so therefore Super Mario World is also part of the Yoshi
series and not the Super Mario series. wait, do you hear that? oh hey, it’s Wario Land again! hi there,
Wario Land! so, Wario Land is in a very similar position to Yoshi’s Island. both games have titles that suggest that they’re
sequels to Super Mario games, but completely different gameplay styles, and both games
also were the starting point of completely separate series of games. so, those five different analyses of Yoshi’s
Island all have direct parallels with Wario Land. and there’s a lot of great insights
we can find by comparing these. first of all, there’s no reason why someone
has to analyze these two games the same way. if you think Yoshi’s Island is a Super Mario
game, that doesn’t mean it’s completely irrational to not also think that Wario Land
is a Super Mario game. second, it’s actually really common for
people to use Wario Land as evidence that the first two Mario Lands can’t be part
of the Super Mario series, but that argument is almost never applied to Super Mario World,
which is very interesting. now, my survey didn’t include any Yoshi’s
Island or Wario Land games beyond these ones, since the list of Super Mario games I used
comes from the Super Mario Wiki’s article about the series. however, a significant number of people wrote
in that they consider some of the Yoshi’s Island or Wario Land sequels to be part of
the Super Mario series. so then, is Yoshi’s Island a Super Mario
game or not? what’s the correct answer here? well, obviously, there isn’t a correct answer. it’s all subjective, you can choose to analyze
these games however you want. personally, I don’t think it should count,
and statistically, about half of you will disagree with that, which is completely okay.
more than okay, I think it’s really cool how open to interpretation this is. that’s like, the whole point of this video. I don’t want to just give you one list of
Super Mario games and say that’s the right answer, my goal here is to present the tools
necessary for you to create your own. was that a good transition? I’m talking about Mario Maker now. most people agree that the Mario Maker games
are not part of the Super Mario series, but there is still a lot of ambiguity surrounding
them. interestingly, Maker and Maker 2 are two of
the twenty games that Wikipedia, the Super Mario Wiki, and the two Nintendo websites
all agree are part of the series. the main thing going against the Maker games
is their genre. while the Mario Makers do feature traditional
2D Mario platforming gameplay, playing courses isn’t really the main appeal; the main appeal
is creating your own courses. so, the Mario Makers are often classified
as creative tools instead of platformers. however, another way you can think about these
games is as platformers that just happen to contain extensive level editors. both Mario Makers have selections of original
courses included in the base game, so you could theoretically play either of them without
ever playing any online courses or creating any yourself. Mario Maker 2 is slightly more fleshed out
in this aspect, featuring what can generously be described as a “story mode”. and, if you’re thinking of the Mario Maker
games in terms of the levels that come packaged with the games themselves, then technically,
there is a third Super Mario Maker: Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS. about a year after Mario Maker 1 was released
for the Wii U, it was ported over to the 3DS. this is, practically speaking, just a worse
version of Super Mario Maker. you couldn’t upload levels online, you could
only play levels people had uploaded from the Wii U version. of course, this is now true for the original
Mario Maker as well, but you know. anyway, one thing this 3DS port has that the
original doesn’t is the Super Mario Challenge, which features a set of 100 completely new
levels. so, if that’s the defining thing that makes
two games distinct, then the 3DS version of Mario Maker is a different game from Mario
Maker for Wii U. but like, that’s obviously missing the point
of Mario Maker. when people think about playing Super Mario Maker, I don’t think most people
think of the sample courses or Mario Maker 2’s story mode. these games are about making
original levels and playing levels made by random people online. and as for whether playing courses or making
courses is the main focus, well. I mean, it’s open for interpretation. all analyses of these games are valid. there’s no clear answer here, it could go
either way. who’s to say for sure what the focus of
these games really is, truly. it’s hard to say one way or th- oh yeah, remember Super Mario Run? you know,
that mobile game from 2016? all four of the big sources for lists of Super Mario games
call this game part of the Super Mario series, but is it? very few people seem to think so.
in the survey, it ranked lower than the cancelled Nintendo 64DD sequel to Super Mario 64. it’s
not like, definitively not a Super Mario game, but there’s more agreement that this game
isn’t part of the series than there is for some of the games I was comfortable saying
unambiguously are part of the series. so, okay, why isn’t this game a Super Mario
game? Nintendo has officially referred to it as
a mainline entry in the series, so is that enough? much like the Maker games, genre plays an
important role here. while Super Mario Run is definitely a game
with Mario in it that features jumping and platforms and the word “Super” in the
title, it’s not exactly a 2D platformer. it’s an auto-runner game, like Temple Run
or Subway Surfers, or, I don’t know, Jetpack Joy Ride? it’s- it’s one of those games. it’s a whole established genre of mobile
game is the point, and Mario Run has gameplay that’s closer to these games than it is
to Celeste or Sonic Mania or a third example of a 2D platformer. but does that actually matter? I mean, a whole bunch of games in this series
are 3D collectathons, and very few people consider that to be a reason to exclude them. is there something about auto-runners that
makes them in particular too different from what Super Mario games are “supposed”
to be? another factor is an updated version of the
home console purism of old. Super Mario Run is a mobile game, it’s not
a game for a real video game system. I disagree with this mindset, but it is a
very common one nonetheless, and there’s a lot of subtler things that this overlaps
with. Super Mario Run was never released physically,
it’s not available for any Nintendo-created hardware, stuff like that. I think wholesale disregarding mobile games
in general is a bit narrow minded, but I completely get why Run in particular is generally not
thought of as a core part of the Super Mario series. the thing with Mario Run not being made for
Nintendo hardware in particular is an interesting point, actually, since there’s a few other
games where that’s relevant. Super Mario Bros. Special is a sequel to Super Mario Bros. developed
by Hudson Soft for the PC-8801 and Sharp X1 computers. on the surface, it looks kinda like a port
of Mario 1, and it’s commonly confused for one, but it’s not. it’s a new game made with Mario 1’s assets,
similar to The Lost Levels. this game is really weird. it was officially licensed, but beyond that
Nintendo wasn’t involved in its creation in any way. it’s a relic from an era before Nintendo
was as protective of their intellectual property as they are now. so hey, is this game part of the Super Mario
series? this is another one I feel mixed about. its gameplay is about as faithful to Mario
1 as you can expect for the hardware they were working on, but the fact that it wasn’t
developed or published by Nintendo makes it hard to justify calling it part of the actual
series. but like, who cares what company owns the
building that a game’s developers worked from? that’s not how art works. sure, Nintendo might be the copyright holder
of the Super Mario brand, but games aren’t actually made by corporations, they’re made
by people who are employed by corporations. that said, uh, no, nobody who worked on Super
Mario Bros. Special also worked on Mario 1. but also, most Super Mario games weren’t
made by the people behind Mario 1. two people were credited as programmers for Mario 1. Toshihiko Nakago hasn’t been a programmer
for a Mario game since 2004, and Kazuaki Morita hasn’t been a programmer for a Mario game
since 1995, unless Yoshi’s Island isn’t a Mario game, then it was 1993. (also, Toshihiko Nakago was credited as uh,
the “Level Design Adviser” for both of the New Soup games released in 2012? I don’t know how much work that actually
involves, but I don’t think that counts as being a programmer.) anyway, while I don’t really like using
game companies to decide what games should count, basing it on what specific developers
made a game would mean that like, the last real Super Mario game was Mario 64, since
that was the last time Shigeru Miyamoto had any sort of actual active role in the development
of a Super Mario game and not just “General Producer” or “Supervisor” or “Game
Design Concept”. so, for Super Mario Bros. Special, the hardware the game was made for
is the clearest thing to point to as something that differentiates it from the “canon”
Mario games. but even that feels like a strange thing to
focus on. like, seriously, the main reason to consider
Super Mario Bros. Special to not be part of this series is just
its vibes, you know? like, maybe if some developer Nintendo granted
the Mario license to back in the day actually managed to capture the same feeling as the
Nintendo-developed Super Marios then these games would be harder to dismiss. and naturally, I can’t talk about Mario
games made for non-Nintendo hardware without bringing up Hotel Mario. MARIO: you know what they say, all toasters
toast toast! MISALI: Hotel Mario is a game for the CD-i
released in 1994, developed by Fantasy Factory and published by Royal Philips Electronics. it’s mostly remembered for its animated
cutscenes, immortalized through the tradition of youtube poop. it’s an arcade-style platformer,
more similar to the Mario games from before Mario was Super than it is to any of the Super
Mario games. that said, it is still a platformer game starring
Mario, so it deserves a mention. I didn’t include Hotel Mario in my survey,
because, as I said before, that list of games comes from this article on the Super Mario
Wiki; it is not my own. nonetheless, Hotel Mario was one of the most
common games people wrote in for “other”, with some specifying that they were only doing
this as a joke, and others specifically saying that they’re not doing this as a joke. now, I did include a different CD-i game on
that survey, one which is not nearly as well-known as Hotel Mario. years before Hotel Mario was released, a sequel
to Super Mario World began development for the CD-i. this game was going to be called
Super Mario’s Wacky Worlds. it was in development for about half a year
before being shelved in 1993. so, is Super Mario’s Wacky Worlds a Super
Mario game? like, it was going to be a sequel to Super Mario World, and the player character
was Mario, so that should mean that it’s at least as much of a Super Mario game as
Yoshi’s Island, right? the only problem is that this game doesn’t
exist. it was never finished or released. if it had been finished, it could have been
a full entry in the Super Mario series, but it wasn’t. all that exists of it is this
clearly unfinished pre-alpha build. Super Mario’s Wacky Worlds isn’t the only
potential Super Mario game that we know of that was never finished. it’s joined by a Virtual Boy Mario Land
game, and the highly elusive planned sequel to Super Mario 64 for the Nintendo 64DD. I think most people would say that none of
these are part of the Super Mario series. like, who cares that they would have been
Super Mario games if they existed, they don’t. there’s infinitely many Super Mario games
that could have been released but weren’t. so, unless you’re satisfied with that, then
there needs to be some sort of standard of existence for a game to be part of this series. so, let me ask a different question. is Super Mario Bros. 35 a Super Mario game? Super Mario Bros. 35 was an online multiplayer
version of the original Super Mario Bros., created for Switch as part of the 35th anniversary
of the Super Mario series. this game doesn’t exist. it did exist for a while, but it doesn’t
anymore. the game was taken offline and made completely
impossible to play on April 1st 2021. is there a difference between Mario 35 and
those unreleased games, and if so, what is it? there’s a couple different relevant things
here. the more significant one, I think, is that
Mario 35 was actually completed and released at one point, even though it’s impossible
to play currently. the other is that unlike those unreleased
games, Mario 35 wasn’t a completely original game. it was a different version of Super Mario
Bros.. notably, the official Japanese Mario website
lists Super Mario Bros. 35 as part of the Super Mario series, but the official American
Mario website does not. Mario 35 is not the only Super Mario game
that used to be available but isn’t anymore. also made for the 35th anniversary of the
series was Super Mario 3D All-Stars, a collection of slightly updated ports of three 3D Super
Mario games. this too was only available for a limited
time. however, this game still exists. you can’t buy it from Nintendo anymore,
but like, you can still play it. you can still buy physical copies second-hand
for way too much money. if the requirement for a game existing is
the ability to buy a new copy directly from its original publisher, most video games don’t
exist. yet, there are other Super Mario games that
are, just like Super Mario Bros. 35, completely impossible to play legally, due to being released
through a games-as-service platform that has since been taken offline. these are the games released for the Satellaview. the Satellaview was an add-on for the Super
Famicom that allowed gamers in Japan to “tune in” to games that were broadcasted through
a satellite radio station. you could only download games that were currently
being broadcasted, so each game was only available for a limited time. BS Super Mario USA was a slightly altered
release of the All-Stars remake of Super Mario USA, released episodically, with four weekly
installments broadcasted to the Satellaview throughout April 1996. while the gameplay was mostly identical to
the All-Stars version, it took full advantage of the satellite broadcast format, featuring
radio quality background music and full voice acting. [Mario speaking in Japanese] see, it wasn’t just a game. BS Super Mario USA was also a radio drama,
with a story that continued in each new episode, and stuff could happen in the game to line
up with what was going on in the story. it’s such a wild concept, it’s almost
ahead of its time. it’s a shame that none of this stuff has
resurfaced at all. none of the Satellaview games have. the other Super Mario game broadcasted through
the Satellaview was BS Super Mario Collection. IN-GAME VOICE: BS Super Mario Collection! MISALI: this was the Satellaview version of
the rest of Super Mario All-Stars, released in four weekly installments in January 1998,
with the first part featuring Mario 1, the second and third being different parts of
Mario 3, and the fourth being The Lost Levels. like BS Super Mario USA, it featured new music
and full voice acting, as well as some completely original gameplay elements, like this completely
unique world map for Mario 1. the Satellaview games were a bizarre period
of Nintendo’s history, and they do not exist anymore, just like Super Mario Bros. 35. but, for the brief windows when it was possible
to play these games legally, were they actually part of the Super Mario series? and, if so,
should they still be considered part of the series today? luckily for me, I don’t consider remakes
or rereleases in general to count as separate games, so the status of these ethereal games
doesn’t change the number of Super Mario games I think there are one way or the other. but like, surely, these games are at least
as distinct from their respective original games as New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, right? and, on that topic, I guess we’re back to the question of how
much new content needs to be added to a game for it to count as a separate game. I’ve already mentioned most of the games
that are generally included in this discussion, but there’s still several more. Super Mario All-Stars has been released a
few different times. the Satellaview and Game Boy Advance versions
of the remakes added a decent amount of new content, but other versions are really just
Super Mario All-Stars again. there was that time it was bundled with a
slightly different version of Super Mario World on the SNES, and there was also the
Wii version that was just a Super Nintendo ROM on a Wii disk. and, honestly, All-Stars and Mario 64 DS are
really the only Super Mario games that I feel completely comfortable calling full remakes
and not just enhanced ports. other people will draw the line in other places,
and that’s obviously completely fine. outside of the remakes already discussed,
the majority of remaining Super Mario rereleases are pretty unambiguously not separate games. the various Virtual Consoles, the Nintendo
Switch Online games, those weird GBA ports of Mario 1 and Lost Levels, the Classic Mini
plug and play consoles, and so on. Mario 1 and The Lost Levels specifically have
had an absurd number of different releases. I’ve already talked about the Game Boy Color
version, and I very briefly just now mentioned the Game Boy Advance versions, but there’s
a couple others that have a bit more potential to be considered separate games. one notable one is the arcade version from
1986, VS. Super Mario Bros.. it might look like yet
another direct port of Mario 1, like the Playchoice-10 version, for instance, but it has several
changes, both major and minor, to the level design. its levels are mostly from Mario 1 with minor
tweaks to make them harder, but a handful are from The Lost Levels instead, and the
levels aren’t in the same order they were in originally. it’s also the game this version of the Mario
1 ground theme is from. much more obscure is All Night Nippon Super
Mario Bros.. this game is an officially licensed ROM hack of The Lost Levels that replaces
some of the sprites with different Japanese celebrities who had appeared on the radio
program All Night Nippon. it’s kinda like VS. Super Mario Bros. in some ways. the levels are taken from both Mario 1 and
Lost Levels, but for All Night Nippon it’s mostly Lost Levels instead of mostly Mario
1. the levels are in a different order again,
and there’s some minor tweaks to their general layout. I don’t really know what to make of this
game, but now you also know that it exists, so I don’t have to bear this knowledge alone. oh right, and I can’t forget the most recently
released version of Mario 1 and The Lost Levels, the 35th anniversary Game & Watch: Super Mario
Bros.. I guess this handheld is kinda like Mario
Deluxe in that it includes both Mario 1 and Lost Levels separately, with some random extra
bonus features. that said, I don’t think any of those new
features are enough to make this a “new game”. it’s definitely less of a new game
than VS. Super Mario Bros. or uh, or the other one. in contrast to Game & Watch: Super Mario Bros.,
we can look at Super Mario Bros. (Game & Watch). unlike Game & Watch: Super Mario Bros., Super
Mario Bros. (Game & Watch) is a very different game from
the NES game it shares its title with. in fact, there’s really no ambiguity with
this one. Super Mario Bros. (Game & Watch) is very clearly not the same
game as Super Mario Bros. (NES). but is it a Super Mario game? it is a platformer,
kinda, that features Mario as the main character, and it has “Super Mario” in the title. Game & Watch games are often ignored when
discussing Nintendo’s old franchises, and I absolutely believe that these pocket-sized
games can still have value and shouldn’t be overlooked. but uh, are Game & Watches video games? like, isn’t a video game a game, with video? Game & Watches don’t have video, not really. I mean, the fake new promotional Game & Watches
Nintendo is doing now have video but I’m not talking about those. okay, here’s a question. if we say Super Mario Bros. (Game & Watch) is a Super Mario game, what
about Super Mario Bros. (Game Watch)? you know, the Nelsonic Game
Watch? it’s the thing from BDG: you say Zelda Game & Watch, what about
the Zelda Game Watch? that’s right, the Nelsonic Zelda Game Watch. MISALI: yeah, it’s that. the Nelsonic Game Watches were these watches
that had games on them, which is a completely different thing from what the Game & Watches
were. and yes, some of these games were based on Mario games. it’s very hard to find literally anything
about them because absolutely nobody cares at all about the Nelsonic Game Watch games
but hey. are these part of the Super Mario series? also, fun fact, one of these is based on Super
Mario World, and apparently it was released internationally as “Super Mario Bros. 4”,
so technically, this is the only game that was officially sold outside of Japan with
that title. this wristwatch that I can’t find any good
pictures of, a game too obscure to have a dedicated article on the Super Mario Wiki,
is the true Super Mario Bros. 4. but wait! BDG: you say Super Mario Bros. Game & Watch and you say Game & Watch Super
Mario Bros. and you say Super Mario Bros. Game Watch, what about the Super Mario Bros. Watch? that’s right, MISALI: the McDonald’s Happy Meal Super
Mario Bros. Watch. is this part of the Super Mario series??
is this trilogy of wrist-mounted Super Mario games canon or not??? can somebody please
acknowledge the existence of Mario’s Egg Catch, Luigi’s Hammer Toss, and Princess
Toadstool’s Castle Run???? there are so many of these games is the thing. you have no idea how massive the Mario franchise
is. if your idea of “the Super Mario series”
is just, “games with Mario in them”, there are hundreds of Super Mario games, and we’re
back at the start with the idea that maybe it doesn’t make sense to say that the Super
Mario series is a thing in the first place. that said, we can go further with this without
just saying that every single Mario game is also a Super Mario game. I’ve already gone over all the ones I included
on the survey, but there’s still a few specific categories that- oh, wait, I haven’t gone over all the ones
I included in the survey! Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker was also on
there! Treasure Tracker was the game that the fewest
people consider to be a Super Mario game, which makes perfect sense, I absolutely agree. the reason it’s listed by the Super Mario
Wiki with the other games is that it’s like a full game version of something that started
as a small section in Super Mario 3D World, but it’s still really weird that the Wiki
considers this game to be “related” to the Super Mario series, but not Super Princess
Peach or the Luigi’s Mansion games or indeed Hotel Mario. like, come on, at least Wikipedia’s Super
Mario series template has the decency to call Super Princess Peach a major spin-off! although,
Wikipedia’s Super Mario series template also calls Yoshi’s Island, not, a spinoff. so uh- there’s a few specific categories that some
people single out as part of the mainline Super Mario series. earlier, I dismissed the idea of someone calling
the Mario Karts or Parties part of the main series, but it’s not that out there. I disagree, I think calling these different
series makes way more sense, but there are worse ways you could talk about the Super
Mario series. unrelated, a lot of people consider the RPGs
to be part of the main series. once again, I think this is a case where an
analysis that calls these multiple separate series just makes more sense, but I can see
why someone else might want to include these. Super Paper Mario gets a special mention,
since it’s another platformer with both “Super” and “Mario” in the title. also, for some reason, a lot of people brought
up some of the edutainment games. I’m assuming that’s mostly a joke, but
Mario Teaches Typing was the single most commonly included write-in game for the survey, with
Hotel Mario very close behind. I guess some of the edutainment games are
more like platformers? the NES version of Mario’s Time Machine looks vaguely like
a platformer, kinda. so uh, sure, this one could work, I guess. another big group is platformers from before
Super Mario Bros.. the un-Super Mario Bros. arcade game and its blatantly anticapitalist
Game & Watch predecessor have the strongest case, since they are the games that “Super
Mario Bros.” is the “Super” version of. granted, the Game & Watch original isn’t
a platformer, but the branding is still very strong here. it is not hard to argue that Super Mario Bros.
is meant to be a direct sequel to at least one of these two unrelated games with the
same title. there’s also some other non-Super Mario
Bros. games. uh, I’m not going to list all of them here
because I explicitly do not want this video to turn into just a list of every single game
in the Mario franchise, but a bunch of people will yell at me in the comments if I don’t
say “Punch Ball Mario Bros.” at some point. the other extremely significant Mario game
from before Mario was Super is Donkey Kong, the game Mario first appeared in. I think the separation between the Donkey
Kong series and the Super Mario series is pretty clear, but it’s still important to
not forget where it started, so it makes sense to include it. the main point I want to make against Donkey
Kong being the first Super Mario game (rather than simply the first Mario game) is that
every series within the Mario franchise can be traced back to Donkey Kong. like, is Donkey Kong also the first Mario
Kart game? is it the first Mario Party game? I think the analysis that makes the most sense
is that the Super Mario series is a spinoff of the Donkey Kong series. the connection of being the same genre (platformer)
is important, but I don’t think genre alone is enough. obviously, a lot of people disagree with that,
which I actively encourage. if you want to argue that every platformer
in the Mario franchise is part of the mainline Super Mario series, please do. I just want you to be aware of exactly what
that entails, because this franchise has a lot of platformers. the Donkey Kong series in particular has a
lot of strange edge cases. sure, this game may be a platformer where
you play as Mario, but Donkey Kong Jr. and Donkey Kong 3 definitely aren’t. and that’s
not to even mention the entire Donkey Kong Country series. I think the most interesting rabbit hole here
is found with Donkey Kong for the Game Boy. I think a lot of people who don’t know about
this game assume that it’s a port of the arcade game, but it’s not. it’s a full sequel, with like a hundred
different levels. its scope is honestly really impressive. and yes, this is a platformer game where you
play as Mario, putting it in the running to qualify as a Super Mario game. there was a spiritual successor of sorts to
Game Boy Donkey Kong for the Game Boy Advance called Mario vs. Donkey Kong. if you’ve heard about the vs. Donkey Kong
games before, you can probably predict where this is going. so uh, this game is about how Mario set up
his own toy company that manufactures these Mini Mario toys, and Donkey Kong steals all
of them, so Mario has to get them back. so the whole game you’re going through these
puzzle platformer levels getting these Mini Marios, and then after you’ve done a few
of those there’s a level where you have to guide all of the Mini Marios you rescued
in the other levels to the goal, just as like a little side mode thing. so then Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2 comes out
and it’s all about guiding Mini Marios through puzzle platform challenges. and that is what the Mario vs. Donkey Kong
games have continued to be. this series has successfully Ship-of-Theseus’d
itself from a revamped take on the original Donkey Kong into Mini Mario & Friends: amiibo
Challenge. also, uh, Wrecking Crew, exists. Mario, is there. there are hundreds of Mario games that exist,
and even more that don’t. most gamers agree that some, but not all,
of these games make up some sort of nebulous series of games that either mostly or entirely
consists of platformers. however, there is no consensus regarding which
games are part of this series, which is not only okay, but really cool. there’s a list of eighteen games that happens
to be the most commonly held model of what this series is, but almost everyone disagrees
with it at least a little bit. some people consider the Mario Land games
to not be part of it, some people consider the New Soups to be separate, and some people
consider some or all of the 3D Marios to be separate. New Super Luigi U and Bowser’s Fury are
weird, and it’s very ambiguous if either of them should be thought of as full games
or not. separately, many remakes and ports of Super
Mario games have significant added content. opinion on these games’ status ranges from
excluding all of them to including all of them. in the maximal case, there is no meaningful
number of Super Mario games that you can give, due to just how many times Nintendo has rereleased
their old games in slightly different forms. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island is the
single most ambiguous game with regards to its relationship to this series, with opinion
on its inclusion split almost exactly in half. Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 is a game in
a very similar position, but including it as part of the Super Mario series is not nearly
as common. official sources additionally include the
Mario Maker games and Super Mario Run, which is not in line with how most people think
about those games, though significant groups of people do still include them. there are also several games that are extremely
obscure, so they’re generally not thought of as part of the Super Mario series. however, it’s likely that if more people
knew that these games existed, they would have similar amounts of controversy surrounding
them as there is for games like Yoshi’s Island. the level of ambiguity surrounding the Super
Mario series is fascinating, and is only increasing with time. you’re probably watching this in the future,
so it’s a safe guess that between when this video was made and the time you’re watching
it, another Super Mario game has been released that we here in the past don’t know about
yet, and there’s a very good chance that it’ll be another weird edge case like Bowser’s
Fury or Super Mario Bros. 35. either that, or it’ll be the first truly
unambiguous entry in the series since 1990. when a Mario game’s status of being part
of the Super Mario series or not is completely uncontroversial, that’s the exception, not
the rule. I’ve been jan Misali, and please stop saying
that Jumpman and Mario are different characters. it doesn’t make any sense, and there’s
so much stuff in the text of these games that directly contradicts it.
I think this video is a part of a bigger discussion about what "canon" means when it comes to works of fiction, and how much it's what the creators think, and how much it's what the audience thinks.
This is an especially complex topic when it comes to video games, as they are releases, ported, re-released, enhanced, expanded all the time.
But anyway, I think that it is funny that Super Mario Run is considered a mainline Super Mario game by Nintendo, but almost everyone disagrees with that.
I wasn't expecting this video to be really interesting, my opinion has always been if it's a platformer it's a mainline game so it's really interesting to watch a breakdown of what people think is or isn't.
Side note it's amazing how pretty all of Mario games are good like mainline or not there's so few bad ones.
I'm surprised that Yoshi's Island is such a dark horse choice here, given that the "Super Mario World 2" header was pretty obvious in the packaging and marketing. I'll bet that age was a huge predictor of this choice in the survey; if you're looking back on it, it's easy to sort it in with the later Yoshi games, but if you were there, you remember it being called "Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island"
There are only two Mario games. Mario is Missing, and Mario Teaches Typing. Those are the only two Mario games where the title is ostensibly about Mario and the thing that he is doing. All other games are about nebulous concepts like brotherhood or odysseys, or about a land or a world or a galaxy. Those cannot be Mario games. Mario is Missing and Mario Teaches Typing are the only pure Mario games.
Mario and Sonic at the Olympics would count if they changed the name to Mario and Sonic go to the Olympics, however. Sega, make it happen.
Definite inclusions for me:
These I see as spin offs but they share enough similarities with the mainline series that I half include them:
It's sort of like any semantics debate where it mostly just comes down to what definition of the word is most practical. Imagine I asked a friend to bring a Super Mario game to play at my house. If they brought any game in the first category I listed, I'd be happy. If they brought a game from the second category I listed, I would be alright with it, but I would probably had been expected something from the first category. If they brought any of the other games listed in the video that I didn't list above, I would probably be a little upset.
I've been wondering how many Super Mario Bros sidescrollers there have been, also, maybe break that down further to all non-handheld and all handheld.
Personally, not sure if you need a super long video for this.
Public polling fans for what is a “canon” for a franchise is usually a bad idea. As they can’t usually look at things objectively.
Too much passion for the franchise, hence so many “purist” would remove mobile and handheld games because of arbitrary reasons.
When those games are clearly officially part of the franchise on any other official lists.
I would stick with wiki/wikia lists on this. Like he say wikipedia timeline has 24. The wikia has 21.
The three that’s missing from wikia are:
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (wikia consider related game)
New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe (wikia consider remake)
Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury (wikia consider remake)
So really the only consideration is whether you count remastered/remake stuff, and whether you count Yoshi Island one. That’s gonna depends on people I think, but again not worth making a 40 minute video.
Wikipedia list:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario
Wikia list:
https://www.mariowiki.com/Super_Mario_(series)
I guess games like Wario Land and Yoshi’s Island could be considered part of the Mario series because they were probably titled as sequels due to them not having been intended to become standalone series at the point of their release. So, they became a standalone series only after their first game, so the first game’s in both the Mario and it’s later respective series.