Best Mario Games of All Time

The Franchise That Built an Industry

Mario is not just Nintendo’s mascot. He is the character who saved the North American video game industry after the 1983 crash, defined what platform games should be across three console generations, and then proved that reinvention — genuine, structural reinvention — was possible when the entire medium moved from 2D to 3D. No other franchise in gaming history has occupied the same position: simultaneously the accessible face of the medium and its most technically daring laboratory.

From the original Donkey Kong arcade cabinet in 1981 to the NES platformers that followed, Mario games set standards that the entire industry chased. When those standards were finally met, Nintendo changed them again. That pattern — establish, perfect, abandon, reinvent — is the Mario franchise in four words.

Super Mario 64: The Reinvention That Worked

Super Mario 64 (1996) is the most important platform game ever made. When the Nintendo 64 launched with it as the pack-in title, it was not simply a new Mario game — it was proof that the entire concept of a platform game could survive the transition to three dimensions. The free camera system, the analog stick movement, the open-world star collection structure: none of these existed in a console game before Super Mario 64. Every 3D platformer released in the following decade borrowed from its template, and most borrowed heavily. Banjo-Kazooie, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon — all orbited the sun that Super Mario 64 created.

Super Mario Bros. 3: The 2D Peak

If Super Mario 64 represents the future, Super Mario Bros. 3 (1988 in Japan, 1990 in North America) represents the pinnacle of everything the 2D era could achieve. Its world map structure, the sheer variety of its power-ups, its eight distinct worlds each built around a unifying visual theme — Super Mario Bros. 3 remains the most purely joyful game Nintendo has ever made. The Tanooki Suit, the Frog Suit, the Hammer Suit, the Super Leaf: no Mario game before or since has matched its density of creative ideas per hour of play.

Super Mario World and the SNES Arrival

Super Mario World launched alongside the Super Nintendo in 1990 and made the case for the new hardware through sheer polish. Yoshi’s introduction gave Mario a permanent companion. The Star Road and Special World added a hidden challenge layer for players who wanted to push beyond the main quest. The cape power-up let players fly with a freedom that the Super Leaf never quite matched. Super Mario World is the most refined expression of the 2D Mario formula — it does not have Bros. 3’s fireworks, but its moment-to-moment feel is perhaps the best in the series.

The Franchise’s Remarkable Range

The Mario franchise’s genius is its refusal to stand still. Super Mario Bros. 2 — the Western version, a reskin of Doki Doki Panic — introduced character-specific abilities and a vegetable-throwing mechanic that felt nothing like its predecessor, and it worked. Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, developed by Square, merged Nintendo’s flagship character with the JRPG genre to extraordinary effect, creating a template that Paper Mario would refine and extend. Super Mario Kart invented a genre in 1992; Mario Kart 64 perfected the multiplayer formula that the original could only suggest.

Super Mario All-Stars collected the NES trilogy and Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels in remastered form, giving an entire generation of SNES owners their first chance to play these classics with updated graphics and sound. It remains among the most value-dense cartridges ever released.

Where to Start — and Where to Go Next

The original Super Mario Bros. is the correct place to understand where everything came from. Super Mario Bros. 3 is the correct place to understand what it all became. Super Mario 64 is the correct place to understand where it was going. Play all three, in that order, and you will have experienced the full arc of one of the most consequential creative projects in entertainment history.