The Best And Worst Things About The Super Mario Games
Image: Nintendo
The Super Mario series has come a long way since Mario first rescued Peach from Bowserâs clutches on the Nintendo Entertainment System. Mario has cleaned up an island with a sentient hose, launched himself through the stars alongside Rosalina, and possessed innocent bystanders with the help of a living hat. Itâs Mario Day (March 10), so what better time than now to look back at years of Super Mario history and determine the best and worst part of each of our second-favorite Italian plumberâs adventures. (He gets second place because Luigi will always be #1 in our hearts.)
This piece was originally published on April 20, 2023. We are re-publishing it today with the addition of Super Mario Bros. Wonder for Mar10 Day 2025.
Best: That Iconic Mario Movement
Itâs really tough to single out one thing about the original Super Mario Bros. that stands out as its best aspect. It was a triumph on so many levels: unforgettable music, distinctive character design, and the best platforming levels the nascent genre had yet seen, just to name a few. But none of that would have mattered if just running and jumping as Mario through all those treacherous environments and making those Hail-Mary leaps over Bowser at the end of each castle didnât feel so damn good. Today, of course, playing as Mario doesnât feel particularly remarkable, but thatâs just because Nintendo knocked it out of the park in designing his movement, creating something that immediately felt so intuitive, natural, and amazing that games have been building on it ever since.
Worst: The Water Levels
Look, I appreciate that Nintendo wanted to change up the action as you traversed the Mushroom Kingdom, so I can totally forgive the presence of Super Mario Bros.â water levels. But in a game that was revolutionary in part because of just how good the movement feels, these stages, in which you sluggishly try to avoid swimming straight into a slow-moving Blooper or Cheep Cheep, really deflate the momentum. Swimming stages have continued to be a staple of Marioâs adventures, of course, but Nintendo would tweak the movement to make them less of a drag. By Super Mario Bros. 3, you already felt like you had more control underwater, and if you scored one of those snazzy frog suits, you were really in business.
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Best: The Four Playable CharactersÂ
Mario had to share the spotlight for the first time in this oddball sequel, and the distinctive abilities of each of his playable companions added a lot to the fun. Toadâs strength and speed and Peachâs float are cool, of course, but my favorite has always been Luigi with his floaty jump and its adorable animation. Thatâs my Mario brother right there! Notably, this is the first time that Luigi was depicted as taller and skinnier than his brother, rather than simply being a palette swap like he was in Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros., and the Japanese version of Super Mario Bros. 2.
Worst: Sub-space
SMB2 has this thing called Sub-space, a dark alternate dimension that you access with the potions you occasionally find. If you happen to enter at the right spot, youâll score a mushroom for your trouble, but unless youâve previously memorized where those lucky spots are, youâll likely waste a potion and come up empty. Secrets and discovery are a great part of Mario games and have been ever since we first had our mind blown by warp zones in the original, but this trial-and-error method of hunting down helpful items wasnât fun or rewarding.
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Best: Giant Land
Like the original Super Mario Bros., this sequel is such a work of genius, a product of the creative team firing on all cylinders, that itâs extremely difficult to point to one thing as the stand-out feature. But if thereâs one aspect thatâs particularly indicative of the gameâs excellence for me, itâs Giant Land, the gameâs fourth world, in which everything is super-sized: huge goombas, koopas, blocks, and piranha plants totally shake up your sense of scale. But again, itâs not really Giant Land in isolation that makes Super Mario Bros. 3 so great. Itâs just one instance of the inventiveness with which the creative team approached making this game, with each of its realms feeling like a distinctively different step of your epic journey into the heart of Bowserâs territory.
Worst: All those autoscrollers
Bowserâs airships have a real sense of drama to them. They suggest that Bowser isnât some flailing, impotent baddie and that heâs got real military might, an empire at his disposal. But the way in which the screen scrolls at its own pace through these stages, often more slowly than you might want to yourself, feels constraining in a game that, like the original, is at its best when youâre enjoying remarkable freedom of movement. And then, just as youâre approaching the gameâs climax, youâre hit with several more autoscrollers in Bowserâs world, as you face his tank fleet, his navy, his flotilla of little airships, and then another group of tanks before finally entering the challenging final castle. I appreciate the effort to make Bowser feel formidable, but these stages needlessly prevent you from speeding through, making them both a late-game drag and the bane of speedrunners everywhere.
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Best: Yoshi
Super Mario World is when Nintendo finally introduced Marioâs dinosaur companion Yoshi, who our hero gets to ride around throughout the game. He rules because he can just eat enemies Mario would have to stomp or throw a well-timed fireball at. Then, when he eats certain koopa shells, he gets powers like flight, earthquake stomps, and three-way fireballs. We love a multi-talented king, and he deserves to be the star of his own game. Which he was in the next one.
Worst: Lost some flavor
Super Mario World portended Nintendoâs general approach to sequels on its new, 16-bit system: refine, refine, and refine some more. This resulted in countless memorable classics, but was not without drawbacks. One reason some people prefer Super Mario Bros. 3 over its sequel is that Super Mario World filed off so many rough edges it may have lost some of its âflavor.â The movement physics feel less weighty, the various landsâ themes are a bit mundane and donât do much to inform the level designs (what makes a level designâŠchocolate?), and overall the game is just too easy. (That said, fans who create custom levels have addressed that last point quite thoroughly.)
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Best: Throwing eggs at shit
As the title suggests, the star of Yoshiâs Island is none other than the green dino himself. Because Yoshi isnât playing second fiddle to Mario, the second Super Mario World game builds around him, and he gets a whole new set of abilities he didnât have before. This includes being able to change enemies into eggs, which follow you in a single-file line until you decide to hurl them. This factors into combat, puzzle solving, and coin collection as you throw your spawn into places you canât reach. Who among us doesnât want to throw eggs at our enemies without consequence?
Worst: Saving that damn baby
In Yoshiâs Island, our egg-wielding hero is tasked with delivering baby Mario across the Mushroom Kingdom. Every time youâre hit by an enemy, the baby will float away in a bubble, along with all his hopes and dreams of becoming a moderately successful plumber in adulthood. So every time you get hit by a stray koopa shell, you have to chase after Mario before he floats too far away. Sure, itâs better than dying in one hit, but then the baby starts crying up a racket and you start to doubt the life decisions that led to this dangerous babysitting gig.
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Best: The jump to 3D was a cultural reset
Super Mario 64âs transition from 2D sidescroller to 3D platformer was a capital-M Moment for video games. Nowadays we rarely see many consoles have a âkiller appâ that sells you on everything a system is about, but Super Mario 64 did just that in 1996 when it launched alongside the Nintendo 64. It proved popular 2D games like the Super Mario series could exist in 3D spaces and transcend previous technical limitations. Though the Nintendo 64 conceded market dominance to the original PlayStation by the end of its lifecycle, the system still stands tall as a symbol of Nintendoâs ability to adapt old structures into new ideas and Super Mario 64 is a key part to that.
Worst: But by todayâs standards, it can feel pretty rough
But like some influential games, Super Mario 64 does feel a bit sluggish compared to everything it helped pave the way for. Even by 1996 standards the N64 juggernaut has a troublesome camera, and Mario doesnât move with a lot of the same precision he does now, though a lot of that could be attributed to the systemâs controller, which was the companyâs first foray into analog stick control. A lot of these issues were improved upon in the Super Mario 64 DS remake, which served as a technical showcase for that handheld the same way the original did for N64, but this is the way of things when something truly special is iterated on. Take it easy, old timer, the future games will take it from here.
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Best: Bowser Jr.
Some might say Bowserâs son is the Scrappy Doo of the Super Mario universe and that weâd be better off without him, but I say, âThose people are wrong and should be thrown in Bowserâs dungeon.â This guy frames Mario and gets him thrown into jail and forced to do community service. Thatâs already more hardcore than anything his fatherâs ever pulled off. Heâs also super cute, a talented artist, and a villain in his own right. And meta aside, heâs fun as hell to play in Super Smash Bros. Thank you Sunshine for bringing this good boy into the world.
Worst: Needed more TLC
Super Mario Sunshine felt strangely unpolished for a new Super Mario game. There are lots of glitches, random difficulty spikes, and just a surprising number of rough edges in general. Even the F.L.U.D.D. jetpack system is a little clunky at times. One bit that really symbolizes Sunshineâs inchoateness is its infamous pachinko level, in which Marioâs launched into a giant pachinko machine to gather red coins without falling to his death out of the bottom. Sounds fun! And it couldâve been with more iteration, but the levelâs unreliable, quarrelsome physics and unavoidable-feeling deaths remind us that even Nintendo has to work really hard to make these games feel as effortlessly perfect as they often do.
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Best: Revitalized the seriesâ 2D rollout
When the first New Super Mario Bros. game launched in 2006, the series hadnât seen a new 2D side-scroller since Super Mario World 2: Yoshiâs Island, and you didnât even play as Mario in that one. The âNewâ in the New Super Mario Bros. title positioned it as a resurgence of the classic Mario formula, which came as a welcome surprise because people were missing that style of game by then. In the years since, âNew Super Mario Bros.â has become the default branding for games of this style.
Itâs now been several years since weâve had a new Mario side-scroller. We have all these questions about a possible 3D game after Odyssey, but itâs been 11 years since New Super Mario Bros. U. So maybe itâs also time we got a new New Super Mario Bros.
Worst: They all kinda blend together
While each New Super Mario Bros. game has distinguishing factors, like New Super Mario Bros. Uâs Boost Mode that lets someone use the Wii U GamePad to interact with the environment, the series broadly lacks the same innovation we see in 3D Mario games. Theyâre solid, clearly meant to be evocative of classic game design, and can be fun to play with friends. But thereâs a reason the New Super Mario Bros. games arenât talked about with the same breathless fervor of Super Mario Bros. 3 or Super Mario Galaxy. Theyâre fine! Theyâre good! But thatâs all they really are. Hopefully that changes somewhere down the line and we can see side-scrolling Mario games innovate in the way they did before.
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Best: The level design
Because Super Mario Galaxy takes place in space with Mario jumping and running around different tiny planets, Nintendo was able to play with level design in a way that felt truly special a decade removed from Super Mario 64. On top of some excellent Mario platforming, Galaxy brought new layers to getting around that gave both Nintendo and players new space to play in. Now, rather than just considering âcan I make this jump,â there are scenarios in which the gravitational pull of a small planet creates some really clever design moments. It might not have had the same cultural impact as Super Mario 64, but Galaxy was still a pretty innovative spin on the formula.
Worst: The Wii Remote waggle
Super Mario Galaxy is a game I sometimes have trouble finding fault in, and even this point I donât have too much of an issue with it because itâs such a small thing in an otherwise stellar game. The Wiiâs motion controls can either feel baked into a gameâs core, or bolted onto it out of obligation, and Super Mario Galaxyâs definite feels like the latter. The Wii Remote is used to gather items by pointing at them and is utilized in some levels to deal with obstacles. The motion controls do ultimately feel unnecessary, but that didnât stop Nintendo from trying to emulate them in the Switch port.
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Best: Four-player co-op
Between Mario Party and Mario Kart, the series has never been lacking in multiplayer experiences, but there hadnât been one in a 3D platformer before Super Mario 3D World hit the Wii U in 2013. Up to four players can band together as Mario, Luigi, Peach, and Toad to jump through some exceptionally polished Super Mario levels. It captures the chaos of New Super Mario Bros. Wiiâs co-op design in a 3D framework. Itâs a blastâŠ
Worst: Four-player co-op:
âŠbut itâs also a nightmare. Have you ever been minding your own business navigating a level only for one of your co-op partners to pick you up and throw you off a ledge? Have you ever tried to coordinate with a group of friends who cannot, for the life of them, follow instructions without picking a fight or griefing you in one way or another? Iâm not talking about Overwatch, Iâm talking about Super Mario 3D World. Choose your coop partners carefully, friends, as they will color your 3D World experience.
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Best: âJump Up Super Star!â
Yes, yes, Super Mario Odyssey is a joyful platformer with a lot of excellent game design to back up its hype. But when we talk about the best part of the Switch game, itâs clearly the song âJump Up Super Star!â Featuring Paulineâs soaring vocals (as portrayed by Kate Higgins), the jazzy track serves as the backdrop for one of Super Mario Odysseyâs best levels. Itâs a swinging certified banger that perfectly encapsulates the joy of Super Mario games with a catchy hook and a ton of swagger. Sucks that Nintendo wonât put it on streaming services.
Worst: The moral conundrum of possessing the innocent
One of the main conceits of Super Mario Odyssey is that Mario has a living hat companion named Cappy. Throwing the hat onto certain enemies, objects, and even human beings allows Mario to make them do his bidding. Sure, the game doesnât sit with the implications of that very long, but you do. A wise man once asked in a since-deleted tweet what would happen if Mario were to throw his hat onto the head of a pregnant person. Does the plumber control not only the parent, but the unborn child, as well? I saw that question asked six years ago and have not been able to look at Cappy the same way since. And now, neither will you.
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Best: The Wonder Flower
Most levels in Super Mario Bros. Wonder have multiple paths to the ending thanks to the Wonder Flower. This new power-up triggers a Wonder Effect, which shifts the level entirely in varied and unpredictable ways. In one stage, it might conjure bubbles from the ground that can send Mario and friends bouncing above (or, if youâre not careful, into) hazards, sparing you the need to arduously trek through the environment, while in the next, it may turn the stage into an auto-scrolling musical. Some can make you feel like youâre in a whole new level entirely, like one that launches Mario into space, allowing you to float through zero gravity over the original terrain. You never know quite what youâre going to get, and seeking them out makes each level worth replaying.
Worst: Repetitive bosses
Itâs nothing new for a Mario game to make you face the same boss or bosses multiple times throughout your journey; in fact, this trend dates back to the original Super Mario Bros.However, it sticks out a bit more in Wonder when mechanics like the Wonder Flower are constantly shaking things up. You fight Bowser Jr. four times in the main quest and while Marioâs strategy changes depending on what power-ups you have at your disposal, the little koopaâs doing the same withdraw-and-spin maneuver throughout. Different villains sprout up in between those encounters, but Wonderâs boss runs can feel monotonous when the same angry kid keeps popping up.
