The 24 greatest Mario commercials of all time

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As our excitement ramps up for Galaxy 2, we look back on our favorite Mario adverts

After seeing the first US commercial for Super Mario Galaxy 2, we were a tad shocked to see just how expensive it looks. Nintendo must have dropped a pretty penny on this commercial. But that’s nothing new when you look at history and/or YouTube. Look there and it’s obvious that no matter the side of the globe the mustachioed one is marketed on, it’s rarely cheap or shoddy.

But instead of wasting your time searching for the best classic advertisements on YouTube, the Mario experts at GR have collected them all here for you, in this list of the best Mario commercials of all time. And if you’re curious what’s the worst, it should be obvious:

Mario for breakfast?!?!?

We never had the Donkey Kong cereal, but we can attest that the Mario/Zelda cereal really sucked. The packaging and promise of a “Cereal System” only tricked us once before we returned to Fruit Loops and Cap’n Crunch.

Wario debuts to mesmerize us

Quite an introduction for Wario, and we can see why the world would come to love the antihero, even though he’s a full-on baddy here. Does his success mean the hypnotism worked?

Mario plays rough

After all the frou-frou, happy, “gee aren’t Nintendo games fun for the whole family,” adverts, it was satisfying to see them beat the crap out of each other. And the use of the classic Turtles song only made it sweeter.

If only this Mario anime were real

Every time we see this we’re filled with rage that it’s 30 seconds long and not 90 minutes. Can’t you just imagine how great an anime retelling of Mario 3 that looked like that would be? And it will never happen. ARGH!

If only this Mario anime were real - Part 2

Similarly, Nintendo sold Mario Kart 64 in Japan with an even more stylized anime commercial. Kind of a strange choice, considering the big selling point of Kart 64 was the 3D, pre-rendered graphics. In contrast, here’s a US commercial for it:

And when it came time to sell the GBA Mario Kart, Super Circuit, Nintendo of Japan made a sequel of sorts to the 64 ad, though it wasn’t as high quality.

Henry Gilbert
Henry Gilbert

Henry Gilbert is a former GamesRadar+ Editor, having spent seven years at the site helping to navigate our readers through the PS3 and Xbox 360 generation. Henry is now following another passion of his besides video games, working as the producer and podcast cohost of the popular Talking Simpsons and What a Cartoon podcasts.