Top 7 Mario Games of All Time

1. Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Wii)

In what was the toughest decision that I have ever faced, I was asked to choose between putting either Super Mario Galaxy, or Super Mario Galaxy 2 at the top spot in the list. It was impossible to choose one. I decided to list both.

First, let’s recap- after reading this list, you, as the reader, are probably aware that the Mario series has had some of the most influential and greatest games of all time (if you weren’t familiar with this already for some reason). Mario games have been landmark events, and almost all of them qualify as all time classics. For any developer to make any one such game would be an incredible feat.

Now, trust me when I say this, but the Super Mario Galaxy games are better than every single other game on this list. They are probably the greatest games of all time. They represent gaming in its purest, most unadulterated, most distilled form, and they shine all the more for that.

The original Super Mario Galaxy was released in 2007. It had a job to do, proving that Mario was still relevant after the somewhat disastrous Gamecube adventure, Super Mario Sunshine. The concept trailer had garnered a lot of praise when it had been shown off, but it was up to Nintendo to prove that the concept- gravity manipulation- could actually be fleshed out into a full fledged game.

When the game was actually released then, there was a collective intake- Nintendo had managed it. Super Mario Galaxy was pitch perfect platforming achieved in a 3D space, and it was a game that actually fully utilized all the three dimensions. The camera was one that actually fully worked, another first for a 3D game (one that didn’t use a fixed camera, that is), and the level design was staggering. This, coupled with the orchestral soundscore, the amazing graphics, the tight controls, everything… Super Mario Galaxy was met by rave reviews, scoring 10’s almost everywhere, and only narrowly missing those 10’s elsewhere. It was at that point destined to go down in history as one of the greatest games of all time.

And then Nintendo announced the sequel.

At that point, it was felt to be a cheap cash in, a rehash from a company that was becoming all to well known for its rehashes. The debut trailer showed nothing that we hadn’t already seen in the first Galaxy game, and hype for this game was kept to a minimum. It was expected that Galaxy 2 would be an excellent platformer, but one that would lack the sense of freshness and wonder that Galaxy 1 had held.

Hey, everybody was wrong. Again.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 took the gaming world by storm. It was a perfect game, and it had no pretensions about being anything else. In a world where games increasingly strive to be interactive movies, Mario Galaxy 2 took what little plot Mario has traditionally had, rolled it up into ball, and threw it out thee window. Then, it began streamlining the shit out of all the concepts that Mario Galaxy had so wonderfully utilized, but which had all been so unweildly and unrefined (at least in hindsight). After having done all this, it stood head and shoulders above every other game, on the basis of solely its level design, controls, platforming, camera control… stuff that makes a game a game. It was inarguably the most fun game released in the last decade, maybe ever. It was absolutely incredible.

Both of these games deserve to be played. No game in the series is as good as these two are. It can be argued that no game released this generation, perhaps ever, can match up to these two. The Wii’s library has often been called disappointing, and it is, but these two games alone can justify the purchase of the console. The Mario Galaxy games are games that transcend classification- so it doesn’t matter if you like Nintendo and its games or not, it doesn’t matter if you like Mario or not, it doesn’t matter if you like the Wii or not, it doesn’t matter if you like platformers or not- as long as you play games and like them, you will like the Mario Galaxy games.

It’s hard to imagine Mario ever topping these two games. But then, that’s what we’ve always said, and we’ve always been wrong. Here’s hoping.