Best Mario games

There are five Mario games better than Super Mario Galaxy, and yet there is still a debate over whether Mario is better than Sonic? :-P

SMB3 is definitely the best. Sad that there's no Paper Mario though... Also, you used "tale" instead of "tail" for the SMB3 part...

How about a discussion of SMB 3 on NES vs. SMB 3 on SNES (Mario All-Stars)? After playing in All-Stars it has always been hard to return to the NES original. Would nintendo ever do a hd remake of some of these games today? On a side note, Mario 64 blew my mind when it came out. Easily the biggest technological leap in videogames ever, I didn't even think that shit was possible. Amazing game.

No Paper Mario? I thought it was very creative and fun.

Yoshi's Island is monumentally better than Super Mario Bros. 2 and New Super Mario Bros. It may even be better than most these... If it counts as a Mario game.

The description on Mario Land 2... I swear that it has been copy/pasted like 4 times so far on this site.

I glad I'm not the only one who thought that.

I think Sunshine was awesome.

New Super Mario Bros is one of the worst games in my opinion, it was short, boring and crossed the line between nostalgic and repeating... It was a wasted £30

Super Mario Land 2 "not the esiest Mario game?" I found it probably the easiest game on GB. The first day i bought it i finished it in a few hours on my first sitting. Of course i had to play more to discover every level and secret, but generally this game was not challenging. Except the very last stage which was pretty hard. It was great though.

I don't get why people don't love Sunshine. It's always been my favorite Mario game, I understand liking 64 and certain other games that were maybe more "classic" than Sunshine was, but I'll never get how people preferred the nauseating, restricting, repetitive gravity tricks and tiny planets of Mario Galaxy over the world of Isle Delfino

As someone who thought Sunshine was a flawed but overall good game, I can think of a few reasons off-hand why some folks were turned off by the game. The first issue was FLUDD and how so much of the gameplay revolved around E. Gadd's water pack; spray this, water that, use the secondary nozzle to hover for a bit. Yeah, it switched things up and I liked that, but I think some folks thought it took things too far. Also, instead of special Mario power-ups like the magical caps from SM64 or the like, we got fancy new nozzles for FLUDD which, while useful, didn't transform Mario himself and thus didn't feel as magical as a classic Mario power-up. Then there were the levels. Say, what was your favorite level? The tropical-themed level or the tropical-themed level? I notice a lot of people really liked that tropical-themed level, but I'm more partial to that other tropical-themed level. Noticing a pattern? Sure, the levels were a little more varied than that (including an amusement park and a beachside resort hotel with a ghost problem), but the variation wasn't quite as varied as it was in previous iterations. No snow levels, no desert levels, only levels that revolved around a tropical theme of some sort. Also, this game gave us Bowser Jr. and Petey Piranha - a shoddy Koopaling replacement and an ugly, badly designed creature, respectively - both of whom would go on to inexplicably appear in quite a few Mario spin-off games as playable characters. All it needed was Waluigi and the trifecta of stupid, unnecessary Mario characters making their grand debut in one game would've been complete. It's hard to like a game when it was also responsible for spawning such lousy characters who would pollute the Mushroom Kingdom for years to come. Me? I liked Sunshine, as flawed as it was. FLUDD kept things interesting, I really liked the cel-shading, and the levels - abeit overdoing it on the tropical theme - were mostly well-designed and pretty too look at. If you ask me, that should've been on the list instead of NSMB.

Mario Kart anyone?? The best online game ever. But Super Mario World is in my Top 3 games ever. Great memories of me and my mate going through it as kids.

henry hates super mario world

Super Mario 64 will always be #1 to me. I'd argue that SM64 has, by far, the best level design in any Mario game. I also found Galaxy 1 to be better than Galaxy 2. Don't get me wrong, I liked SMG2, but it was far less memorable. I remember a lot of different worlds from SMG1, and hardly anything from SMG2. In fact, the only level I can remember with any detail from Galaxy 2 is the Throwback Galaxy, which Whomp's Fortress was from SM64. The way I see it, the difference between Super Mario Galaxy 1&2 is similar to that of Bioshock 1&2 or Valkyria Chronicles 1&2. The second trip to the respective worlds was a great time and a hell of a lot of fun in its own right and perhaps even better in a technical aspect, but the first trip was magical. Something the second trip failed to replicate.

WHERE IS SUPER MARIO SUNSHINE?!

I refuse to accept that SMB3 is better than Super Mario World.

So does the writer. He says that Super Mario World beats Super Mario 3 in almost every way. Ther, err, puts SMB3 at number 1. Hmmm...

I wholeheartedly agree with this list. I might change the order a bit, but I wouldn't change what games are on it for sure. I love Mario games, and everything about them, even Super Mario Sunshine. It may have been weird (not as weird as Super Mario Land though) and the gameplay seemed a radical change at first, but once I got into it I enjoyed it thoroughly. The only thing Mario can't make fun is Golf, but it's not his fault. Golf is just so damn boring nobody can make it interesting.

I love Mario Golf, both N64 and Gamecube versions...