Like many folks of my vintage, I first encountered Mario before he was even known as Mario, way back in the early eighties on an arcade machine called Donkey Kong that was everywhere at the time, closely followed by that lovely orange flip-screen Game & Watch, then dozens of ports, clones and even type-in listings for every early system under the sun! Now, as we’ll possibly see later, I’m not dismissing that as a Mario game at all, but at this point, he was still a carpenter known as Jumpman, so I’m going to fast-forward a few years to 1987 to meet the finished article, not long after the NES got its belated launch in the UK… No one I knew actually had one, but there were two shops in my hometown of Bedford – Boots and Dixons – that had regular demo units (rather than the M82 NES demo kiosks fancier places had), and those demo units would generally have either Duck Hunt or Super Mario Bros. running on them, so that’s where I’d often be found of a Saturday afternoon, alternating between the two for as long as the staff would allow! It would take me a very long time to properly explore the NES after that, and same for the SNES and N64, but all the iterations of the Game Boy and Game Boy Advance, the GameCube, the DS and 3DS, the Wii and the original Switch would keep Mario familiar over the years, and I definitely made up for lost time with those other systems in the end too! As I write, I’m not sure where the brand new Switch 2 will take this countdown in the future, and although I’m sure I’ll get one in the end, I’m honestly not fussed about it currently either, but I’m sure Mario or Zelda or Samus will sort that out eventually, so in the meantime, let’s get into this top ten, with a paragraph on each of my Mario favourites of any kind in reverse order, then we’ll finish with any honourable mentions left to cover… And maybe a few excuses, caveats and any other get-out clauses I’ll need by then on top!

10. Mario Superstar Baseball (GameCube)

Of all the games here, I think this one by Namco in 2005 is the one I discovered most recently, probably around the middle of 2023, when I also discovered the sport it does a very good, very accessible, and very Mario take on! Before I get into it though, I want to quickly mention three other games – Mario Smash Football (aka Super Mario Strikers) on the GameCube, Mario Hoops 3-on-3 on Nintendo DS, and Mario Golf World Tour on 3DS – all of which I agonised over not putting in this spot, and all of which I just realised by total coincidence are also sports games! Anyway, as usual with any of these, you’ve got the full roster of Mario and associates to play with, and they’re all so well characterised here, with big, bold and uniquely animated sprites in a choice of equally vibrant stadiums, and while the sound isn’t massively memorable, it works just great all the same. Gameplay will be familiar if you’ve ever played a baseball game before, with intuitive at-bat, pitching and fielding controls, and there are various charged moves too, albeit nothing too wild or massively game-changing. There are plenty of solo and multiplayer game modes and challenges to keep you busy, with a little bit of team management if you want it, but it’s mostly all about a fast-paced, fast-played game of arcade-like baseball with all your favourite Mario characters, and that’s all it needs to be!

9. Mario Tennis (Nintendo 64)

I was conflicted with this one too… I’d have also been happy to have Mario Tennis Aces on Switch anywhere around here as well, but while I was okay with however many sports games it takes (don’t worry, this is it), I didn’t want to go too mad on any particular sport, especially when I’d already ruled out my absolute favourite for this one! We’ll come back to that at the end but in the meantime, this N64 game from 2000 was love at first sight when I finally got to it a few years later, and everything I’d been looking for in a tennis game of any kind, let alone a Mario one, for a long time. It’s similar in concept to the last game, offering an arcade-like, character-filled, exaggerated take on tennis. The control scheme is just the right side of complex, with combinations of A and B buttons giving you top spin, slices, lobs, drop shots, flat shots and smashes, as well as holding them down for a charge shot. On top of that, the gameplay itself is frantic but also just forgiving enough, which is generally the downfall of most tennis games I’ve tried when you’re trying to get into them. There’s loads of modes too, and loads more to unlock if you’ve got endless time to beat everything with all sixteen Mario favourites, though I’m generally happy settling into the middle difficulty tournament and seeing where it goes from there.

8. Super Mario Sunshine (GameCube)

As you’ll soon notice, I’m really not into 3D platformers, and Super Mario Sunshine from 2002 pretty much encapsulates all the reasons why! There’s the dreadful camera controls that struggle to keep up with the action. There’s the pixel-perfect movement demands on sloppy associated controls. There’s the dodgy physics and unpredictable jump mechanics… And it’s all at once and all the time, and then you’re also wrestling with the stupid water-powered jet-pack that sprays everywhere except where you need it to, and then the water’s run out and you have to start again… And those stupid impossible boss fights, and lily pad rides, and pachinko machine levels… Okay, I know Mario Galaxy fixed all this stuff but despite everything, it still didn’t grab me like this one did when it first came out, and still does to this day! It’s just so tropical and sunny and happy and gorgeous, taking that pioneering sense of adventure from Mario 64 to a whole new level across big and varied and oh so colourful environments that just beg to be explored for every last blue coin they hide! And when it works, it feels great, driven along by a surprisingly engaging story about clearing your name after being accused of polluting this idyllic island, and is filled with the best-looking renditions of all your favourite characters (and some new ones) that we’d ever seen until now. They’re voiced for the first time too, backed by a fantastic summery soundtrack, wacky effects and really atmospheric ambient sounds. No escaping there’s bits that really stink but I reckon once you tame it, that big water spray thing on your back can get rid of most of it!

7. Super Mario Bros. (NES)

Whenever I think of Mario, the original side-scrolling 2D platformer I first played almost exactly four decades ago as I write is the one that comes to mind! And such a contrast to the last game, where it’s all so effortlessly precise and so meticulously built for nothing but fun! Not for the last time, Princess Peach has been captured by the evil Bowser, and you need to cross thirty-two stages spread over four worlds to rescue her. The level designs are exquisite, initially challenging and sometimes even puzzling, but before long you’re confidently hurtling through the initial ones (which are an ideal gateway to speed-running stuff too), and discovering all kinds of hidden areas, special blocks, warp gates and power-ups! Really groundbreaking stuff, and iconic too – those sound effects alone transcend gaming to this day, and I can’t think of many more recognisable tunes. I’ve always thought Mario looks a little washed-out here, especially in his big form, but the rest is a masterclass in vibrant minimalism, with so much character where it matters, matched by scrolling that’s almost as smooth as your own sprite’s motion. There’s already so much personality in all the enemies we’re meeting here that we’d become so intimate with over the years too, and even now, as I jumped into a game to grab the screenshot here, I stopped to admire how cool just the eyes are on the very first mushroom enemies you meet in the very opening seconds. It might not have been the first (in several respects) but it’s the one that nailed it!

6. Super Mario Land (Game Boy)

At this rate, I’m going to be all sorts of unpopular by the time we’re done here… I have many fond memories of reading game inlays on the way home from buying them but this was the first time I ever got to play the game itself! That would have been around the time of launch in September 1990, coming back from what I think was ECES, the European Computer Entertainment Show at Earl’s Court in London, where I’d also just bought the more or less day one Game Boy console itself. Absolute miracle that thing was too, worlds apart from even the very best of Nintendo’s own Game & Watch handhelds, as well as anything else from the likes of Tomy and Grandstand that had come along since. Anyway, this Mario actually arrived in the UK about a year after its original Japanese release, and while it does fundamentally have a lot in common with its predecessor we just looked at, it’s definitely its own thing too, as we leave the Mushroom Kingdom behind to rescue Princess Daisy this time, who’s been whisked off by some alien called Tatanga. While it’s no doubt been scaled-back to play nicely portable, with just twelve relatively bitesize levels set across four worlds (including a wonderfully miniature Ancient Egyptian-themed one), I think the challenge has been upped a notch here compared to Bros, and we also have a couple of vehicle-based, shoot ‘em up-infused levels, with Mario flying a plane and piloting a submarine. No mistaking how any of it plays though, and everything is beautifully realised in tiny detail, and impressively brought to life in just a few shades of green! Fantastic sign of things to come from the Game Boy’s sound chip too, and truly Super Mario in your hand!

5. Donkey Kong (Arcade)

As said at the start, back in 1981, there was no escaping Nintendo’s Donkey Kong, which also pretty much prevented them from going under, after Shigeru Miyamoto was told to come up with something to repurpose a load of unsold Radar Scope cabinets in the absence of the Popeye license they really wanted! While my memories of the fold-up Game & Watch and those ports and clones from the next few years are probably stronger nowadays (mainly down to Crazy Kong on the VIC-20, the second game I ever bought), I’ll never forget the magic of seeing that invincibility hammer in action at the time! It’s weird to think that given pretty much everything was new back then, that was what stuck, but it really was magical! Since then, there haven’t been many times over the past forty-plus years when I haven’t had some version of Donkey Kong or the other on the go, but since 2018, it’s been the original and best, albeit in various forms on the Arcade Archives release, as indicated by their typically boring “wallpaper” in the image above, which includes “early” (maybe slightly easier) and “later” (bug-fixed) versions, as well as the international one, with its possibly better-balanced stage order. Whichever you go for though, while it wasn’t quite the first platform game, it was the first to let you jump, which you do a lot over the game’s four stages, as you guide pre-Mario Mario up a construction site of girders and ladders and rolling barrels, then (in whatever order) around a danger-filled multi-level conveyor belt, up and down elevators and over tricky gaps avoiding bouncing springs, and finally avoiding dancing flames to remove the eight rivets securing the structure Donkey Kong is perched on top of to bring it crashing down so you can be reunited with your girlfriend Pauline, before doing it all over again. It’s simple, it’s fiendish and it’s perfectly balanced, with timeless presentation to match its timelessly addictive scoring mechanics. And whacking a barrel with your wildly swinging hammer for the brief time it lasts will never get old!

4. Dr. Mario (NES)

Although I’d had a taste of the NES when it first arrived, it took the arrival of the NES Classic Mini in 2016 to really open up its games library to me, and over the next couple of years, way beyond the thirty games included on it. This game was on it though, and being a huge fan of Tetris and the whole falling block-matching puzzler in general already, just immediately jumped out at me and has stuck ever since! It originally came out in 1990, and was the creation of Gunpei Yokoi, the man behind both the Game Boy and its Game & Watch predecessors we’ve already talked about. The idea is you need to destroy all the viruses infesting (or infecting) the medicine bottle-shaped play area by matching them with the same coloured vitamin capsules being tossed in by Dr. Mario. Each capsule is made up of two colours, which you can rotate either way, and landing them so you’ve got four or more of identical colours stacked together will make them all disappear from the field. Get rid of all the nasty “blocks” in each level and you move to a harder one, or if you let everything stack up to the top of the bottle then it’s game over. There are twenty levels to get through, with three difficulty levels, and if you’re playing the medium or hard ones, you get a cool cutscene after every five levels with the viruses sat in a tree, plotting their next dastardly move! You can also choose your starting level, which will dictate how many viruses are on the screen to begin with, and there’s a versus mode too, where you’re racing to clear your bottle while chaining colours or viruses to throw capsules over to the other player’s. The look is understandably simple but as you’d expect, full of character, and the music is an absolute delight, and the gameplay is just so well balanced and utterly addictive that I’m now wondering how it didn’t get into my top three…

3. Mario’s Picross (Game Boy)

Not just a top three game in this list but probably one of my top three games on the system too! It’s a number-logic puzzler from 1995, with Mario swapping his spanner for whatever archaeologists use to chip away at stone tablets to reveal a picture, which vary from Mario-themed to animals to everyday items and symbols. This all happens on increasingly complex grids, with a suitably perplexed-looking Mario at the top being guided by the numerical clues alongside each row and column. It’s like Sudoku meets a crossword puzzle, with each ‘pixel’ making up the overall picture correctly chipped away then potentially revealing clues about the location of others, which start out on a 5×5 play area that gradually increases to 15×15, spread over 256 separate puzzles. It’s all against the clock too, with the initially generous thirty minutes for each puzzle soon being whittled down by a big penalty every time you chisel away an incorrect area! Both graphics and sound serve their purpose in a very functional and unobtrusive way, keeping you focussed on puzzle-solving without distraction, and after a while you’ll need focus too because although the answer is unswervingly always utterly logical, that doesn’t mean finding it won’t have you staring at it for minutes at a time, looking for the one thing you’re missing that will allow you to progress. And there’s a real tension when that clock starts running down too, which honestly I could do without when things get very complex later on because these are all about the act of deduction for me, but it doesn’t really bother me either, especially if it means prolonging the entire experience just a little bit longer! Not sure that many other folk were as into that experience as me though, given that neither the Game Boy sequel nor the SNES one ever made it out of Japan (or out of Japanese), but I love a decent nonogram puzzle, and this one is a lot more than decent!

2. Super Mario World (SNES)

We’ve covered a couple already, but apart from some of what’s on the latest consoles, I think I’ve now been all the way through every other 2D Mario platformer (and all the spin-offs) too. None of them, though, ever had quite the impact that 1990’s Super Mario World eventually did! Much like with the NES, it took the arrival of the SNES Classic Mini in 2018 for me to properly start discovering its library, and then a bit longer to return to this on there, but I certainly made up for lost time when I did… Once again, we find Bowser up to no good with Princess Peach, and we need to travel through seventy-two levels located all over the seven worlds of Dinosaur Land to rescue her, which you navigate using an overworld map. It all appears pretty straightforward too, as you run and jump, grow, dash, swim, spin, fly and float through platform-filled tropical islands, forests, haunted houses, castles, caverns and all sorts more, often with a bit of extra help from your new dinosaur friend Yoshi, before confronting the end of world boss, then finally Bowser himself. The variety and inventiveness of what you’ll both get up to is outrageous, with every level full of new mechanics, wacky enemies and delightful surprises, accompanied by chiptune joy you’ll be humming forever, and visuals that are the very definition of the “art” in pixel art! There’s life and movement and eye-popping colour everywhere you go and everywhere you look, and every single character is so detailed and expressive, and it all controls so fluidly! And that’s just for starters… I don’t really go in for finding all the secrets and collectibles and stuff in games – I’m okay just having my fill and moving on to something else – but this was something else entirely! Finding keys leads to hidden doors and secret exits, leading to alternate routes and more new worlds, and suddenly puzzling them out finding them all, then completing the actual total of ninety-six levels becomes all-consuming for dozens of hours, and to this day I’ve never experienced anything else like it!

1. Mario Kart: Super Circuit (Game Boy Advance)

I could easily have included any Mario Kart game in this countdown, and actually, I’d also have been happy to have any of them featuring at the top of it too! Over the years, I’ve not only played them all but properly obsessed over a lot of them, from the SNES original all the way to the Switch… And maybe, by the time you read this, I’ll have caved on the Switch 2 as well! That said, if I’m only picking one, then there’s not much debate it’s the Game Boy Advance version, which I got when it first came out in 2001, and have had on the go for most of the time since, both on the original model, the GBA SP, and, more recently, on the Switch too. It’s like the best of everything that came before it, and the amount of stuff they crammed into it is nuts, with the Grand Prix mode alone featuring five cups spread across twenty all-new tracks to beat, all in 50cc, 100cc, and 150cc difficulties, then once you’ve done those, switching your attention to collecting coins in them will them open up another cup based on all twenty tracks from the SNES Super Mario Kart! Then there’s quick races and time trials, also for the solo player, but for two to four players connected by a Game Boy Link Cable, there’s versus and battle modes too. The races themselves feature eight contestants, with all the Mario regulars selectable, each with their own weight classes for a different driving style, but it’s arcade all the way regardless, with a bit of drift, plenty of trademark rubber-banding (although that does also result in some fantastic back and forth races), those coins to collect to also boost your speed, and all chaos of the usual bananas, shells and other power-ups to grab. The tracks might be new but they’re mostly familiar, from Bowser Castle and Yoshi Desert to Shy Guy Beach and Rainbow Road, and the rainbows don’t stop there either – they’re all full of colour and detail, which goes for all the little drivers and their little cars as well. I also noticed a real sharpness about how it looks when I was taking the rubbish photo above! The soundtrack is fine if not the best in the series, but there’s plenty of flourish about the rest of the sound design, and overall it’s a remarkable package that seems like it will keep on giving forever!

And that’s that, but before we go, a few more things that didn’t make the cut… I’ve already said I’m not really into 3D platformers, so no further excuses about not including Galaxy, Odyssey, 3D Land and so on, but let me also quickly mention that I have zero interest in cutesy RPGs, party games or multiplayer platform-fighters! And while I know some of the games I did include aren’t necessarily “Mario” games, I should say I also avoided any spin-offs like WarioWare, Yoshi’s Story, Luigi’s Mansion and so on, however much I do actually enjoy some of those! Which brings me to a couple more honourable mentions… I really want to give Tennis on the original Game Boy its own shoutout because had I allowed it, it would have featured very highly here, but Mario sitting in the umpire’s chair just didn’t seem like quite enough! Similar for Baseball on there too, where he’s even better hidden away! I’ve covered a load of other Mario sports titles I could easily have included already but I’ve also got to mention Mario & Sonic at the Winter Olympic Games on the Wii, which we had such a good time with when my son was younger. Then, in no particular order, the Atari 2600 version of Mario Bros, Mario vs. Donkey Kong on the Game Boy Advance and its Game Boy predecessor were all under serious consideration too. And finally, that Donkey Kong Game & Watch from earlier (pictured above) also needs its own special shoutout, because after almost forty-five years, I recently got hold of one of my own at last! With that, I hope you’ve enjoyed looking through this top ten, even if my favourites aren’t necessarily your own!

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