Ranking The Best and Worst Levels In Every Mario Game!

from all the way back on the NES to Super Mario Bros Wonder Mario has had countless different 2D and 3D Adventures but within these games that we love so much there are certain levels that stand out either for a good reason or a not so good reason so today myself and PJ are going to go through every 2D and 3D Mario game and rank what the best and worst level is from each game now obviously there are a ton of levels here to choose from so if you have a favorite or least favorite level we didn't mention let us know down in the comments below use the time stamps to jump from game to game and with that out of the way let's start off Where it All Began Super Mario Bros on the NES and this one's pretty generic but I had to do it let's go 1-1 from Super Mario Bros on the NES is literally the best tutorial ever in any video game level there is so much beautiful game Design Within just this one 2D platforming level that it teaches you everything you possibly need to know about not just this game but the entire 2D platforming genre there is so much good stuff here and just the fact that it's so iconic kind of speaks for itself there's nothing else I need to say I'm going to go with world 8-3 just near the end of the game now this level is just super slow there are way too many Hammer Bros at every step you take and really the only saving grace is a fireflow to Aid you along the way and after going through all of that there's a bunch of one block jumps floating over a pit to where if you have the slightest mess up you're dead let's go Super Mario the Lost Levels is essentially a Troll game if this were any other type of game then 8-4 would be the worst level but given that this game is basically meant to be a troll it makes sense for the finale to be devilishly difficult I mean it literally starts with this absurdly deceptively tricky jump down where you land on this platform beneath and then a long jump across oh and there's a water section in this level yeah okay this is one of the hardest levels in Mario history I mean just look at what you're seeing right now I'm going to go with World 7-3 and honestly this one has to be one of the worst Mario levels in history and I'm not even kidding this entire level consists of heavy wind and you bouncing off from Spring to Spring in order to complete the level it's rage inducing horribly made and just an overall awful experience let go all right Super Mario Bros 2 the doy DOI Panic version 1-3 has always been you know a level that kind of stands out for me in this game maybe it's cuz I've started this game so many times but only beaten it once or twice so I'm just more used to the early levels but I always thought this one was pretty fun and it ends in Mouser which is always a dope mini boss fight I mean look at this FL he's just like look at him I'm going with level 1-2 because this is the first level where this thing appears now I know this game is notoriously known for being just weird let's just say but phanto was another level of annoying it was like the angry son from Mario 3 but 10 times worse I mean it could follow you through other rooms screens and it's basically unkillable just an awful experience let's go all right Super Mario Bros 3 has one of my favorite 2D Mario levels ever and that's world 4-6 you might recognize this as being in giant land which is already an awesome gimmick everything is huge but there's also a Magic Door which changes the size of things in the level for example you come in the door and then everything's way bigger then you go back into the door and then everything's smaller and it allows you to kind of have this puzzle platforming Dynamic that obviously Mario doesn't get much at all like rarely he's you know stopping and thinking but you have to in this level which is pretty neat I'm going with World 8- tank this is just a slow sides scroller avoiding the typical cannonballs and B bombs just like what you face throughout the entire game it's super linear with it just being completely flat unlike some other tank levels where at least you're traveling up and down and honestly playing through this I literally just hold right the entire time due to sheer boredom quick pause here if you like this video hit the Subscribe button less than 5% of our viewers are subscribed that's crazy like seriously I watch a lot of YouTube and a lot of YouTubers show this stat I've never seen one this low that's obviously not great so if you could help me out hit the Subscribe button it means a lot and if you enjoy the content you'll just see more of the content so it's free it helps you out helps me out win-win win let's go Super Mario Land Mario's first handheld entry on this list 4-3 is the only level in the game I'm pretty sure where you fly the sky poop which is Mario's little plane I love when games just completely ditch their you know main gameplay philosophy and just like let you have fun in something completely different I don't know if that's like you know a good game design principal or whatever but like whether it's cuphead and you're playing in the plane levels also this sort of thing is super cool in my opinion I'm going to go with World 4-1 of Super Mario Land now this level just felt like a huge mess to me I mean there's so little space to move around here with so many enemies and P plants coming out of pipes and if you don't have a fireflower here expect some game overs for sure let's go Super Mario World is one of the best 2D Marios of all time and 7-0 sunken ghost ship is one awesome level to play first of all it's an underwater ghost ship that's sick and that's about it but once you beat the level there's also this big Bowser head that's rising up out of the water and I always thought that was super neat but yeah it's an underwater Ghost Ship like a bunch of the other levels in this game are like you know they're they're all so good that they're all kind of like similarish in a way like not too many stand out in my opinion but a sunken Ghost Ship definitely does stand out we don't get many of these in Mario at all it's worst level it has to be tubular from the special zone now in this level correctly named there's no ground or anything you're traveling from pipe to pipe using the Pea balloon while trying to dodge baseballs from Chucks on top of single coin blocks and pipes this is just so infuriating let's go Super Mario Land 2 we're going back to lands we're going back to the Game Boy and we are going to tree Zone number three this level is just fun to me I mean yeah you're in tree zone so of course you're in the trees which is pretty cool but running through this level on the leaves is super cool it's got a nice little vertical section and it's one of those levels where if you fall once you lose a lot of progress so it feels kind of like like you know one of those old like getting over it benit f games in that sense I just love when Mario games have like reasons for why you're platforming like here you're trying to get to the top of the tree so you're jumping on leaves it's not just like oh you know you're on a field and there's random blocks scattered throughout honestly just the entire space Zone this entire area really tricks you because despite it being set in space as the name entails the mechanics feel like you're in a weird underwater level but this is an entire world with the gravity messed up having to time odd jumps and honestly having one of the most annoying boss fights in Mario history at the end of this world this one is just so far from good let's go all right Super Mario 64 how do you pick just one level I mean I could either go you know pick a kingdom I could pick a star but I'm going to cheat here and just pick the Hub World peaches Castle itself technically it is like a level in the game cuz you know it's where you start just like 1-1 in Mario Bros was the tutorial for every 2D platformer to follow this is the same for 3D outside the castle is a beautiful Serene place for you to get anti equated with this new dimension and learn Mario's move set and then inside the castle is an incredibly complex maze at least it feels complex when you're playing it for the first time and the entire game you're driven by this curiosity of what lays deeper in this Castle how many paintings are there how many little hidden secrets are there for me to find when I get more power Stars man it's a great tutorial and a great game I'm going to take dire dire docks this level is honestly one that I dread anytime when I'm going back to 100% the game it's a very generic water level slow and I honestly just don't enjoy it at all the only glimmer of good in this level has to be the music to be honest but past that this Far and Away has to be the worst let's go my favorite level in Super Mario Sunshine has to be the underrated Masterpiece that is Serena Beach you start off outside a hotel with honestly one of the toughest bosses in the game and cleaning up goo and throughout the level shines you explore a haunted hotel that also has a casino in it collect red and blue coins throughout the ventilation system hop through ceiling tiles and so much more and on top of that in level four it has one of the best glitches in the game known as the casino skip which is always a fun one to attempt because it's relatively simple oh and on top of that Yoshi also makes an appearance which is always great in any Mario game now although I think Sunshine is the greatest 3D Mario game out there there's definitely a few notable levels here that I find just to be nauseating to play through in order to get all of the shines like the infamous Pinko machine where it's a gamble to hit the correct flood movement to get red coins or corona mountain where you're controlling a glitchy boat in lava trying to collect all of the blue coins but the one that has to do it for me is a lily pad ride I mean this can just be unbearable it's already half the struggle trying to get to the level because you have to ride Yoshi hop on a boat so you can spray the goop in a pipe halfway across the main area of the game and when you get to the level you better have a lot of lives because this Leaf is just as if not more buggy than the boat in Corona Mountain you're spraying flood from the leaf trying to aim to get the red coins along the way and if you miss one well you're screwed scw because going back with flood is near impossible let's go now let's move into new Super Mario Bros DS with the best Underground Level in any Mario game World 2-3 is an underground maze filled with slopes some water some tricky time sections a bunch of these little oneway path levers it's so so cool and this is how you do an underground level every other game needs to take some notes I'm going with World 2- Castle now when you look at this level it's not inherently bad at all as it's just a typical 2D Mario Castle but if you want to access one of the game's eight worlds via the hidden exit you have to beat this level with a mini mushroom not only is the boss's hitbox super janky but you're literally one hit there's zero room for air and if you're lucky enough to have a mini mushroom in your item slot then it least you can get through the level without it but you still have to beat the boss with it now at most they should have locked one level behind this exit but locking in entire world behind this exit is insane let's go for Super Mario Galaxy we have have Gusty garden galaxy need I say more I'm going to have to go with the dreadn Galaxy now I've never liked this one and it's not super visually interesting compared to the other masterpieces that are in Super Mario Galaxy and honestly I just don't like the design of these gearmo creatures also there's this awful star genuinely one of the few Mario levels that is garbage from a game design perspective let's go moving on to New Super Mario Bros we have world 7-2 and wait what is this it's a one-off gimmick that's actually genuinely neat and isn't used in any other levels are we sure this is a new Super Mario Bros game I love these water bubbles I don't know what it is they're sick the fact that they were pretty much only in this level two is like the coolest part to me like I just love when they get creative like this I'm going to go with world 9-7 now this level may look easy and painless within the first look but when you realize that the floor is made of Frozen coins which are constantly being burned by piranha plants of fire Bros it is so rage inducing you'll need the propeller suit here to 100% the level and yet with all the fire Bros while trying to get all the star coins it's near impossible to keep the suit the entire way let's go all right back to Mario Galaxy we got Super Mario Galaxy 2 and cloudy Court Galaxy is my favorite I love the Aesthetics of this level it just reminds me why Galaxy was so ahead of its time graphically like you look at this now and it's like this does not look like a game that came out in 2010 but it did and that's crazy to me not only that but it introduces the cloud PowerUp which is one of my favorite power-ups in all the Galaxy games by a long shot not that it had much crazy competition I mean it had a drill and a spring but for what it's worth the cloud power up is super cool the music gives me a Gusty Garden type of vibe and you already know how I feel about that and yes it's just an overall very solid level I'm going to go with battle belt Galaxy this entire level consists of you going from small planet to planet defeating enemies and moving on it's so Bare Bones and could have been executed so much better than it actually was which funnily enough describes most of Galaxy 2 for me let's go Super Mario 3D Land gets 7-4 you know the part in Tik Tok clock on Mario Kart where you're driving and there's the red and blue like rotating cogs that you're driving across and you could be flying above that's what this entire level feels like you just jumping from like clock to clock like Cog to Cog is all some giant machine I don't know I don't think it's ever explained you're just jumping from Cog to Cog or platform to platform it's super engaging and again it actually has a theme a lot of 3D Land is just oh they're giant clouds in the sky jump across them but this is like you're platforming up a giant Clock Tower it's so cool I'm going to have to go a special World 2-1 now this is just another slow Sid scroller in which you're climbing a slanted Tower and as you might be able to tell throughout the list I'm not the biggest fan of these side scrollers but while 3D Land was nowhere near as good as a squel 3D World this level just feels so dry and especially for it being labeled a special world I would not be able to tell this whatsoever if it wasn't labeled as such let's go all right staying on the 3DS with new Super Mario Bros 2 when you think about this game you think of coins and 2-4 has more than enough coins to tide you over it's just a great time you're just running collecting coins you get to be gold Mario you just it's just cool I'm going to go with World one- rainbow this is just simply due to the fact that this is the first appearance of this monstrosity that are all the Rainbow levels in the game now the levels are colorful and pleasing to look at for the most part but come on Nintendo I get the whole gimmick of this game was coins coins and more coins but this was just way overdoing it let's go and then sticking with new Super Mario Bros but going to the Wii U there's this van go level in World 5 which like always puzzled me it's so cool it's the coolest thing to ever come out of the new Super Mario Bros series and it's like a one-off thing that Nintendo never acknowledged they played with the entire art style made all these new assets for this one level that's not even that fun when you're playing it like level design wise they're not doing anything special here on the gameplay side of things it's all just visuals it's so so so so so it's just really cool it's so cool please Nintendo do something like this again like actually you know just change the way everything looks like they did this in Odyssey kind of like the lunch in Kingdom has this like low poly athetic like you know they've done this before but never in like a 2d Mario game like this like it's so I don't know let me know in the comments like what what were they cooking here what was being cooked I'm going to go with meteor mode 8-1 now at first glance this seems fine it's just a lava level with Fireballs raining down from the sky but then you remember that the same level being 8-1 in New Super Mario Bros Wii is also a lava level with the gimmick being fire raining down from the sky and same with new Super Mario Bros world 2 6-1 in which world 6 being that game's final world equivalent of World 8 is the same thing now this isn't a bad level in any sense but it's the third straight game Tod do is exact same gimmick in the first level in the lava World honestly just loses points for lack of originality let go all right now we got Super Mario 3D World and I really can't pick one I'm going just say Champions road though because like all the other 3D World levels I've gotten to the point where I can kind of play them like you know and not really have trouble but Champions road is so difficult that e you know whether I'm playing Solo or with friends Champions road is a level that I can still play and not win like it's very difficult to beat it's just really fun it's a great you know it kind of encapsulates all the chaos of why I love 3D World multiplayer in one level cuz you will be screaming at the TV when you're playing this with your friends it is just a fun time I love Champions Road I think Super Mario 3D World is one of the best 3D Marios of all time but un Ely it does have a couple of stinker levels hey stinky one of them being Cosmic Cannon cluster this is definitely the worst level in the game I wanted to choose an enemy level where all you do is you know go fight the charging Chucks or whatever you know fight the gumbas but those don't even really count as levels and I wanted to be fair Cosmic Cannon cluster the last level in world star is just not fun there's like a 2 and 1/2 minute Autos scrolling water section in here which is just so boring and then there's also this part where you have to aim with the cannon on top of your head and you have to hit these little blocks that are far away but unfortunately you can only point in eight directions in this game which makes actually aiming to hit a far off Target almost impossible in a game full of excellent level design and beautifully crafted levels this one feels like an AI made it it's just not that fun let's go Super Mario Odyssey I'm not just picking one Moon I'm going to pick a you know a whole Kingdom which might be a little cheating I don't really know uh new donk city is definitely the best Kingdom in Odyssey though I know so many people like you know a lot of people like sand because it's just so big and vast a lot of people like wooded a lot of people like lunch and a lot of people even like Moon Kingdom even though I hate the gravity on that Kingdom I don't know man is it just me is New City the best Kingdom in Odyssey hands down let me know if that's just me in the comments but like I think this is by far the best next up we got Super Mario Odyssey now it's so difficult to find a bad Kingdom in this game because it's so perfect in my opinion but the cloud kingdom was just very Bland to me through all of my playthroughs of Odyssey it's forgettable and in no way bad but one Kingdom has to go here let's go Bowser's Fury the side mode in the 3D World port to switch Bowser's Fury doesn't really have levels but it has a bunch of different sections within Lake lapcat and the one that I think is the best is slip skate slope if you don't know the Bowser Fury sections by names shame on you no I it's okay I don't either this is the one where you grab the ice skate and you like skate along and then there's the giant you know spikes that you go over and then there's the giant like dut thing that you go through and it's like rotating basically Bowser's Fury as a game can kind of be summed up like philosophy Wise by this following sentence make something short that's really fun and then reuse it that is exemplified not just by Bowser Fury as a whole but specifically by slip skate slope it is a very short blast of fun you're riding the skate down this massive thing you're trying to collect all the uh all the little cat shine shards you're going super fast and boom then it's over but then you come back and oh wait what there's a blue button you can ground pound and then you got to you know get all the blue coins at the same time so you can't go back you got to go super fast and it makes you take like an alternate path boom that's awesome there's all sorts of different variations that lead you to different cat shines of this little mini level and of course that's the case for all the sections in Bowser's Fury but this one is so short it's so like direct into the point that it's insane that they were able to squeeze five different cat shines out of this small little location it's super short but super fun and that kind of exemplifies Bowser Fury so that's why I like this section so much it's so difficult once again to find a bad level in here just because this game is so short and yet so polished but with that being said I've got to go with Mount magmo well it's a visually interesting finale it actually tanks the FPS when Bowser's in Fury mode which is one of the only times in the Mario series I can say that the first half of this level really isn't platforming it's a slow ride on a switch panel which is kind of the equivalent of a loading screen now in no way this is a bad section of Bowser's Fury but it's just not as great as the others for sure let go Super Mario Bros wonder is the newest 2D Mario game and what a game it is I honestly think this game is so good because of a couple of reasons one the level design here is some of Nintendo's best work ever 2D games are naturally more restrictive than 3D games but Wonder has some of the tightest level design I've ever seen two is the enemy variety gone are the Goombas and Koopas that litter every single level in the old new Super Mario Bros games it feels like in Wonder there's a new enemy every single level and then last but not least the most important reason number three the Wonder effects these completely change up how you play the game and in my opinion no level exemplifies these three things better than World 2's con Darts Away first of all these con darts are sick they're a brand new enemy that at first seems simple they drop down from the ceiling and try and kill you but then you find out they can break blocks you have interesting little Parts like this the level design is on point and then you grab the wonderf flower and it's no longer a 2d platformer that's right this is the level that first introduced the ability to walk on the back wall as a Wonder effect and man this is so cool this section is also pretty difficult I died a couple of times here either getting squished by these things or D of cond darts it's not a walk in the park but it's so creative so genius so fun that well yes you could probably say other levels are better I think no level exemplifies The Wonder of Wonder better than karts away finally to round off this list Super Mario Bros wonders worst level comes in World 4 in the form of search party pipe Park in the search party levels you have to find five of these Wonder tokens that eventually give you the W seed in order to do this you have to try going through a ton of different pipes that just shoot you out randomly there's no indication which of these are actually useful it's not rewarding at all none of these are fun this level is complete ass it feels like a shitty Mario Maker level for a game that Prides itself on good level Design This level is complete it pissed me off while I was playing it and it pisses me off even thinking about it it's awful I I can't believe Nintendo let this go through with that all out of the way those are the best and worst levels in every single Mario game we upload tons of videos all about Mario so hitting the Subscribe button just lets us know that you like what we're doing and you'll see our videos again more frequently thank you guys for the support I'm Thomas from the switch stop signing off [Music] [Applause] [Music] peace

Channel: Switch Stop

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Keywords: Nintendo Direct, Switch News, Super smash bros ultimate, Switch Stop, nintendo switch games, Nintendo switch review, best nintendo switch games, mario odyssey, switch games sale, animal crossing switch, animal crossing new horizons, super mario 3d world deluxe, mario, super mario, best mario levels, mario games ranked, best mario games, super mario odyssey, super mario wonder

Id: KCtTm7jxgxs

Length: 21min 20sec (1280 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 20 2024