BEST Super Mario Game of ALL-TIME?

[Horsehead]

Definitely Definitely Mario RPG! I'm a but biased torwards rpgs in the first place though...

[Rickstilwell1]

Ah, but the developers decided to sneak a neat little trick in the game to make things easier: Grab the two warp whistles from the first world, play one to be taken to the Warp Zone, then immediately play the other before entering any warp pipes. You'll be warped to World 8. You can beat the game in about 15 minutes this way.

Personally I never liked warping due to missing out on all the cool stuff the game has to offer in between. I can see doing it to get back to where you left off quicker, but how can you say you ever mastered a game by cheating and skipping almost all of the challenging levels? That's why if you clear every level you are rewarded with max P-Wings in item stock if you start a new game without turning off the console. The developers wanted you to feel like you did something special if you cleared them all.

That's why I like Super Mario World's progress indicator on the save file. When you get all 96 it puts a star next to the number.

My main reason for choosing Mario World over Mario 3 has more to do with how much smoother the cape feels to use over the raccoon tail, Yoshi and the upgraded sound and graphics though - while still keeping the core 2D gameplay that still feels like the NES games. It doesn't have a major physics change like the New series.

[BricatSegaFan]

Mario is missing. Or hotel Mario.... Seriously....

[SuperEliteGamer]

Can't pick...
Don't make me!!!

[DiEsmitty]

Can Luigi get alittle love how about New super Luigi Bros U. Being the younger brother I was always relegated to being Luigi.

[BlastProcessing402]

3 is great and all, but World had better sound, better graphics, and to me anyway the controls just felt better, more responsive, so it gets the nod.

They're both must play games, though.

RPG is one of the best, but I just don't consider it part of the series any more than I would consider Donkey Kong. Yes, they're connected and related, but they're not in direct contention for me.

[Mad-Mike]

Super Mario Bros. 3, I feel the challenge started to drain off the Mario games by SMW. Don't get me wrong, SMW was a great game, and made some amazing improvements, but I feel about 75% of it built on top of what Mario 3 did before, except now we have capes instead of raccoons, we have Yoshi instead of flying buzzy beetles for one level, and parallax scrolling was actually possible on the 16-bit CPU.

Also, it seems more often than not, when I talk gaming in the non-gamers around me, it seems ALL of them remember SMB 3 and had it and/or played it a lot with fond memories at some point. If they followed the Nirvana Albums - one was the Bleach, two (japan) was some live bootleg to us over here, two (USA) was Incesticide, and three was Nevermind, and SMW was In Utero....and RPG was Unplugged.

RPG I love, but it always felt like a "special" Mario game and not like Mario that I grew up knowing (2-D Side-Scrolling Action game)

[Gandhara]

original arcade Mario Bros. 1983 ;)

seriously...

[Afrokid]

Super Mario Bros 3 is the best...

[stealthrush]

Smb3>smw

[celerystalker]

Super Mario World.

From there,
Super Mario Bros
Super Mario Bros 3
Super Mario 64
Super Mario Bros 2
I stop caring after this point.

[Bozle]

My own personal favorites are Sunshine and 64. I'd say "best" is between 64 and Mario Bros 3. The SNES remastered version on the All Stars pack, that is.

[sfchakan]

Ha-how is Super Mario World not winning this? That game is fucking perfect.

[celerystalker]

Ha-how is Super Mario World not winning this? That game is fucking perfect.

I agree whole-heartedly. 2D Mario perfected, and Mario has always been best in 2D.

[o.pwuaioc]

I'm a bit surprised that Mario Bros isn't available to be chosen. Anyway, as of 2004 (when the question was asked), the best Mario game was Super Mario Bros 3. Eleven years later, though, it's still Super Mario Bros 3. Seriously, the game is the tits.