Nintendo’s Super Mario series is so monumental to the medium of video games that you might even think of the mustachioed plumber when you hear “video games” mentioned at all. From his earliest days as “Jumpman” battling Donkey Kong, to his latest adventures on the Nintendo Switch, to his latest movie appearance in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Mario has consistently been one of the greatest characters in video games. He’s such an iconic character that countless video games have had him as the star, and we attempted to rank them.
For our list, we had two main criteria. First, the games have to be platformers — either 2D or 3D. This eliminates Mario sports games, the Mario Kart series, role-playing games, and all the Mario Parties. Secondly, the games have to have Mario himself as the lead character. This eliminated Super Mario Land 3 and Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island. In the end, we were left with 20 games. None of them are bad, but we did have to name a loser. We also chose to omit The Lost Levels and instead considered Super Mario Bros. 2 as the definitive second game in the series.
This is the Super Mario series, ranked from best to worst.
If you liked this ranking of our favorite Mario titles, you should check out our other all-time rankings for Nintendo franchises like The Legend of Zelda, Pokémon, and Kirby.
Editors’ Recommendations
Nintendo’s Super Mario series is so monumental to the medium of video games that you might even think of the mustachioed plumber when you hear “video games” mentioned at all. From his earliest days as “Jumpman” battling Donkey Kong, to his latest adventures on the Nintendo Switch, to his latest movie appearance in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Mario has consistently been one of the greatest characters in video games. He’s such an iconic character that countless video games have had him as the star, and we attempted to rank them.
For our list, we had two main criteria. First, the games have to be platformers — either 2D or 3D. This eliminates Mario sports games, the Mario Kart series, role-playing games, and all the Mario Parties. Secondly, the games have to have Mario himself as the lead character. This eliminated Super Mario Land 3 and Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island. In the end, we were left with 20 games. None of them are bad, but we did have to name a loser. We also chose to omit The Lost Levels and instead considered Super Mario Bros. 2 as the definitive second game in the series.
This is the Super Mario series, ranked from best to worst.
If you liked this ranking of our favorite Mario titles, you should check out our other all-time rankings for Nintendo franchises like The Legend of Zelda, Pokémon, and Kirby.
Editors’ Recommendations