And it’s hard - really, really hard.
See what you think of our choices.
New Super Mario Bros. U
Wii U, Nintendo Switch.
It gets really tricky!
More than that, it requires an engagement with every part of the Mario moveset.
Super Mario 3D World
Wii U, Nintendo Switch (Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury).
To see it is to feel true joy.
There’s more, though.
Chaotic, hilarious multiplayer.
A lovely felty-feeling to the places you rush through.
Play it on Switch to get the fascinating open-world experiment Bowser’s Fury included.
It’s secretly kind of brilliant in its own right.
PSA: this may be the best Christmas game ever.
Throw in some glorious turn-based battles and you’ve got a cracker.
Enemies zoom into and out of the screen, devouring platforms or sending out sprays of water.
Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door
GameCube.
Thousand Year Door shines for me in a cluster of quite specific ways.
We can all relate to an MC who falls asleep during exposition, right?
It gave Princess Peach something plot-related to do while cooling her heels in the villain’s castle.
Oh, and I love the floral patterns in Boggly Woods.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
Is it too obvious to sayMario Kart 8 Deluxeis the best Mario Kart?
- and the Nintendo Switch iteration practically has them all.
Mechanically, 8 Deluxe is something of a middle-ground between the more experimental Double Dash!!
and more conservative follow-ups that didn’t let you hold two items or achieve pink flame boosts.
It’s nice you’re able to go anti-gravity here, but it’s hardly the selling point.
Can Mario Kart be perfected?
8 Deluxe is the closest we’ve come so far.
Purists may prefer the NES original, but for me, Deluxe is where it’s at.
I must find my old cartridge.
So many memories here.
Mario asleep in a tree.
At the top of a flagpole.
That gets at the heart of this game, I think.
It’s not just Mario in 3D, and making 3D look easy.
It’s not just those beautiful analogue controls, perfected on their first outing.
And even the levels fit into this logic.
The landscape here seems to have come first.
Or was it the controls?
That brilliant suite of moves that works as naturally in three dimensions as it previously had in two.
Mario 64 really is something else.
Super Mario Galaxy
Wii, Nintendo Switch (Super Mario 3D All-Stars).
To me, Super Mario Galaxy and its sequel remain at the absolute apex of Mario 3D platforming.
Better yet, Galaxy does all this while never becoming too complicated.
Its spaces beg for experimentation, for play.
After Super Mario Sunshine’s FLUDD-based training wheels, Super Mario Galaxy is a truly cosmic upgrade.
Also, the honky-tonky player piano soundtrack has never been better.
AND there’s a level where Mario can be straight-up swallowed by a fish.
Super Mario World
SNES, Game Boy Advance, Virtual Console, SNES Mini, Nintendo Switch Online.
In Japan, Super Mario World came with a map you could unfold and pin on the wall.
That’s the magic of this game, I think.
It’s Mario, but it’s also a sustained exploration of his home.
What an astonishing, generous, creative, mind-boggling game.
It slots them together to give you a playable atlas of Mario.
Oh, and we get the best incarnation of Yoshi too.
