Super Mario’s 40 year history is a testament to all the different ways you can make a little guy run from left to right across a screen. Nintendo’s line of 2D Mario platformers has gone through three distinct eras since 1985 – the original game revived the video game industry and, for a while, the series was a pioneer in side-scrolling platforming. After laying dormant for a few years, the series returned in the 2000s with the New Super Mario Bros. series, games that were steady and safe but soon turned stale. Thankfully the triumphant age of the Switch brought with it Mario Wonder, where Nintendo reinvented what these games could be. Once again, side-scrolling Mario feels genuinely magical.
2D Mario games, when executed well, perfectly balance the limitations of Mario's moveset with building your confidence to make increasingly ambitious jumps. They also introduce power-ups that are difficult to master while still being fun to play around with. The very best ones are those that can completely change your approach to platforming without trivialising the challenge. But the most important aspect of a Mario platformer is the process of dying and trying again – the strongest games perfect this loop, ensuring you develop lifelong muscle memory and, by that final flag, feel like a true platforming god.
With the original Super Mario Bros. game turning 40 this year, it’s time to look back on which games nail those core tenants and which struggle to make it past the first goomba. Here’s every 2D Super Mario Bros. game, ranked.
13. Super Mario Bros. : The Lost Levels
Platformers are at their best when they strike a perfect balance between challenge and fun. With The Lost Levels, Nintendo frustratingly forgot about that second part. The sequel to Super Mario Bros. is straight up mean – so mean, in fact, that it was not released in the West until Super Mario All Stars on the SNES seven years later. Its poison mushrooms and spitefully placed enemies only serve to build frustration, never giving you the satisfying relief of finally beating a level, and making you want to lock your controller in a safe and throw it to the bottom of the ocean.
Video games from the NES era are known for their difficulty, as increasing the challenge somewhat artificially extracted hours and hours of play from games that were inherently limited in scope because of the technology of the time. And there is merit to the idea of a Mario sequel that picks up the difficulty of the first game’s final levels and only ramps up from there, especially compared to today’s relatively easy Mario projects. If you squint hard enough, this is a fun novelty in the Mario library… but one that nobody ever wants to play, unless you really want to be ragebaited by Miyamoto.
12. New Super Mario Bros. 2
If the main gimmick in each Mario game is supposed to aid or increase the difficulty of the platforming, then New Super Mario Bros. 2 is one of the series’ biggest failures. The oddly named third entry in the New Super Mario Bros. franchise marks the moment when the series became dull. Lacking ideas and unwilling to take any big risks, Nintendo landed upon coins as the big gimmick for this one. The coins themselves are no different from the coins we’ve had in Mario since 1985, there’s just a lot of them this time. And that’s it.
Putting so many coins into a level trivialises their single use. If you collect 100 coins, you get a life, and losing all your lives means you get kicked back to the start of a level and your checkpoints disappear. By making 100 coins so easy to collect, New Super Mario Bros. 2 removes that vital bit of jeopardy and adds little else to make up for it, with the only new power-up being the coin-farming Golden Flower. Then there’s the overall goal to collect a million coins, which is just tedious. Mario controls beautifully, as is standard for these games, but the feel of the platforming is no different to any other game in the series. So why chase that frustrating goal when you could get what New Super Mario Bros. 2 is good at in any of the game’s better siblings?
11. Super Mario Land
If this was a list of the ugliest Mario games, Super Mario Land would be first with a bullet. The characters, the items, the backgrounds... they’re all so unpleasant. Even modern emulation technology that can elevate the scruffy visuals of the GameBoy can’t quite rescue Mario Land from its ugliness. And this isn’t just a retro tech thing – just compare Mario Land to its sequel on the same console, a game where mushrooms look like mushrooms, Koopas look like Koopas, and Mario doesn’t look like a weird little alien.
Despite those visual blemishes, the gameplay is still pretty solid and fairly recognisable as what a Mario game should feel like. You don’t get the same sense of speed you can achieve when you master the levels of stronger Mario games, but there’s still a good sense of flow when you hit the highest gear the GameBoy is capable of. Mario Land is a serviceable platformer if you’re really in a pinch, but everything it does is done better elsewhere.
10. New Super Luigi U
The Year of Luigi ended up being a financial disaster for Nintendo, but at least we got a fun little Luigi game out of it. This is a stripped down version of New Super Mario Bros. U starring Luigi, complete with his trademark slippier running style and higher jumping abilities. It’s super cool to experience the game through a character with a slightly different moveset, and redesigned levels that provide a bigger challenge.
The fact that the game is more streamlined also has appeal, balancing out the higher difficulty and giving you the satisfaction of making quick progress through the levels. There’s not much else to Luigi U, though. There’s little spectacular about it, nor is there anything it does gravely wrong. It’s a fun addition to an era of Mario platformers that were growing stale and a bit dull, and this doesn’t do quite enough to differentiate itself from that unfortunate trend.
9. Super Mario Bros. 2
Even if you come to it with no knowledge of its background, Mario 2 feels like an odd sequel to the original game. Deeming the actual Mario 2 too difficult for Western audiences, Nintendo basically reskinned the game Doki Doki Panic with Mushroom Kingdom paraphernalia, and the North American and European version of Super Mario Bros. 2 was born. While Mario 1 focuses on sidescrolling platforming, Mario 2 introduces more verticality – a great idea that doesn’t always hold up in execution. Having to find a way to climb and fall through levels means you don’t develop that smooth, flowing muscle memory which makes the best Mario games so great.
Another mechanic introduced in this odd sequel is being able to pull plants out of the ground and throw them at enemies. Some enemies can even be picked up and thrown themselves, rather than the classic Mario move of squishing them. This works really well to make the world feel less like a flat background you’re running through and more like a living ecosystem, but again it just doesn’t feel very Mario. There are great ideas here, but they work against the core of what the first game established. It is, however, a preferable experience to the original, super-difficult version of Mario 2, which finally arrived in the West as the aforementioned Lost Levels.
8. New Super Mario Bros. Wii
You can look at the second entry in the New Super Mario Bros. series in two ways. On one hand, it was a solid evolution of what the first game did, introducing multiplayer and a couple of neat power-ups. On the other hand, later games in the series would do that exact thing better, leaving this one without a unique flavour among the 2D Mario catalogue.
To its credit, there was no better console to introduce four-person multiplayer to the franchise than the Wii, a system that captured the imagination of the whole family. NSMB Wii also introduced the Propeller Mushroom power-up that added some more strategy to the platforming, as well as the Penguin Suit whose sliding ability made the timing of jumps even more important. There’s more here to appreciate today than with New Super Mario Bros. 2, but the latest release in the series (more on that later) overwrites a lot of what the previous entries contributed with better ideas.
7. Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins
Compared to its predecessor, Super Mario Land 2 feels like a miracle. Graphically, it’s way beyond anything you’d expect the original GameBoy to muster, with character sprites that appear enjoyably cartoonish and expressive despite very minimal animations. The structure of the game also gives it a sense of scope that handheld titles typically lacked at the time. Instead of travelling from one world to the next, all levels are located on the overworld, which feels like a single town. Whether you’re at the Tree Zone, the Space Zone or the Pumpkin Zone, their individual themes are expressed so well by the limited graphics available to them. On top of that, the fact that you can tackle these zones in any order just makes the world feel a bit more of a genuine place that you can explore.
In terms of the actual platforming, it's a definite improvement on its predecessor in terms of flow and speed, with far more interesting level design to boot, but it just doesn’t feel quite as good as the main console games of the time, or future handheld titles. The new Carrot power up is fun, but is really just an alternate Tanuki suit from Mario 3. Still, the spirit of what makes Mario great is definitely present here, and it more than justifies itself as a unique entry in the series.
6. Super Mario Bros.
The original game in Nintendo’s most important series still holds up after 40 years for one simple reason: because every Super Mario Bros. game since has been built off its back. The series hasn’t deviated from this basic structure because it still feels incredible to play. Mario is so dynamic as a character right from the off, even with the limited skillset of running, jumping and throwing the odd fireball. His ability to build momentum opens up the game beyond just being about getting from one end of a level to the other. A lot of joy can be found in discovering all the secret passages through the Mushroom Kingdom that can both lead you to the Princess in seconds, or make you prove your skills by dropping you head first into the toughest levels without a steady build up.
Over time, Mario’s movement has gotten significantly smoother and his arsenal of platforming tools has expanded, making it hard to place the original higher on this list. Also, being one of the first NES games ever made means it's not the prettiest thing you’ll ever lay your eyes on. However, Super Mario Bros. stands up as more than just a museum exhibit. It's a fun game that will always be worth booting up.
5. New Super Mario Bros.
New Super Mario Bros. had the task of reintroducing the world to 2D Mario after over a decade of focus on the 3D games. And despite kicking off an era of the franchise that's not always looked fondly upon, it does a great job of maintaining the core of what Mario was while making modernising additions. Mario can now triple jump, a move ripped from the 3D games that works so well even with one less dimension. It's the kind of evolution that brings out the best of what made Mario great to begin with, giving you a new tool to make more ambitious jumps and allowing the developers to make more well-hidden secrets and more expansive level designs.
New Super Mario Bros. also introduces the Blue Shell power up, which is sneakily one of the series’ best. It serves as both a tool for destroying blocks and enemies and is the only way to access secret passages which test your ability to control a very erratic power up. The other new additions, like the Mega Mushroom and the Mini Mushroom, aren’t so effective, even if the former made for some iconic box art. They both feel like gimmicks rather than offering a new skill to master.
4. New Super Mario Bros. U
New Super Mario Bros. U is sort of the inverse of New Super Mario Bros. Wii – a game that was harder to appreciate at the time of its release than it is now. The final game in the New Super Mario Bros. franchise carried the baggage of the three previous entries looking and playing almost identically, something that made Nintendo fans exhausted by anything with the word “New” attached to it. New Super Mario Bros. U doesn’t reinvent the formula, but exemplifies the best version of it.
Taken in isolation, it’s much easier to appreciate the game’s polish and its moments of genius level design. Its most famous level, Painted Swampland, inspired by Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night, is the exact kind of form-breaking inventiveness fans were crying out for (and eventually got more of through Mario Wonder.) With some really lovely visuals, smooth gameplay, and a couple of fun power ups, this is the definitive New Super Mario Bros. title.
3. Super Mario Bros. 3
Super Mario Bros. 3 is a miracle of a game. It has no right looking as good as it does, especially when compared to the first Mario on the NES. Mario 3 is a textbook example of squeezing a console for every ounce of power it has, and is one of the great achievements of sprite art in gaming history. It also helps that it's heaps of fun to play, despite being really hard.
There are so many moments in Mario 3 where you’ll run into an enemy placed specifically to make you mad, but instead of throwing your controller at the wall, you’re only motivated to go again – to run through the level faster, to make that jump even cleaner, to get more air time in the Tanuki suit and sail right over that Boomerang Bro who killed you 20 times before. It's the true successor to Mario 1 on the NES, finding that perfect balance between frustration and satisfaction.
2. Super Mario Bros. Wonder
Everything about Mario Wonder is so darn joyful. The animation of Mario forgetting his hat as he jumps through a warp pipe is just one example of how much this game pops with personality. The exclamation of “wowie zowie!” when you transform into an elephant, the singing chorus of Piranha Plants... everything is so silly and so cartoonish, perfectly representing the inherent absurdity of Mario’s existence as a plumber beefing with a giant turtle. It’s impossible to play this without a smile on your face.
But it’s not just personality that Wonder boasts. There is a treasure trove of mechanics that are constantly thrown at you. Through the Wonder Flowers, the level design takes on a dynamism no existing Mario game can match, feeding you increasingly insane 2D platforming challenges built around a unique theme every time. The Badge system means Wonder has the biggest library of power-ups in a Mario game ever, allowing you to platform in a way that suits you, or equip something that purposefully hinders your abilities for that extra bit of challenge. Mario Wonder is a sugar rush of a platformer, and one of Nintendo’s crowning 2D achievements.
1. Super Mario World
Super Mario World is the best 2D Mario has ever felt to play. It inherits some of Mario 3’s difficulty, but instead of making it near impossible to beat a level on the first go, it eases up slightly, giving you enough room to fly through a level at top speed while still having the chance to dodge that final enemy. That’s why Mario World is the most satisfying game in the series – you’ll die again and again and again, until you hit that one level you nail on the first go and think to yourself “Wow, I’m really good at Mario.” The Cape power up is so difficult to master but stands as the best power up the series has ever had because the reward for getting it right is such a high. It’s something the modern games have yet to capture, thanks to the difficulty of these games having decreased over time.
Another thing World captures beautifully is the vibrancy and personality of Dinosaur Land, squeezing the SNES’ sprite-rendering abilities for everything it's got to produce astoundingly expressive characters. There’s still a strong case for World being the best looking Mario, as the game feels like running through a Saturday morning cartoon. Super Mario World is the peak of the Mario formula – challenge, fun, platforming flow, and personality all in perfect harmony.
What do you think of our ranking of 2D Mario platformers? Did your favourite rank highly? Let us know in the comments. And for more, check out our ranking of Nintendo's 3D platformers.
