I forgot my cartridge of NSMB in a dorm room in NYC and I’ve never felt so little about losing a game
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I have only played the first three marios.
Shit.
I think I preferred DKCR and the new Raymans to NSMB. If they changed up the aesthetic, shortened the levels, removed player-on-player collisions, maybe took out the collection stuff, and made a few other changes, I might dig it.
The hottest of takes: certain Mario things, like jumping up and hitting an invisible block, are actually detrimental to the experience of 2D platforming. Yet they work alright in 3D, where you’d expect them to feel outdated.
the real question is where would you rank yoshii’s island if people remembered that nintendo considered that a For Real mario game
Me too! I guess in that case we are technically waiting for Super Mario 5. I like how Nintendo’s anxiety about sequelitis has produced this unwieldy octopus of a mega-franchise. Like how Wario Land is actually Super Mario Land 3, but then we get Wario Lands 2-… Shake It!
Each a little miniature dynasty founded by some distant nephew of the previous emperor
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I have not played all the modern Mario stuff but to me it’s…
- 64
- 3
- World
- 2
- 1
Man I really liked Yoshi’s Island at the time and I think the aethetics/art design still hold up, but all the levels are kind of overlong slongs. It would be a great game if it were tightened up a bit, I think.
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The thing with YI is it has some REAL stinker levels, like uh, most of the undeground ones imo. And yeah, because they’re so long, AND because you can’t SKIP levels, every time I get to a stinker I wanna stop playing the damn game, even if the other levels are fantastic.
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Yoshi’s Island is the #1 Mario game to play while home sick from school and taking high powered cough syrup.
It’s time for some game theory.
At first I attempted to make a simple, rudimentary ranking, but I eventually determined that the process was too linear and one-dimensional to provide much insight. Thus, I opted to make a scatterplot of the Mario games (and selected Mario-likes) instead, rating them on the dimensions of aesthetic quality (original releases only) and mechanical game design nuts and bolts and stuffs.
Behold!
Note 1: The games’ positions are indicated by the centers of their textboxes. Also, the ratings were finagled so as to avoid overlapping boxes (though this wasn’t too big of a deal).
Note 2: The SMRPG included here is the version that is purely an isometric platformer, with no RPGing at all. It exists only in the hearts and minds of the Mario faithful (it isn’t very good).
Note 3: SMS is missing because I don’t have clear enough memories to properly appraise it. The other games are missing because I haven’t played them.
Actual commentary:
While the design quality is spread across the board, there is a significant gap in the aesthetic dimension between SML2 and it’s closest competitor. If I had opted to include some Sonic games, they would have handily filled up that space.
Also, using this chart, we can clearly ascertain that my the ideal Mario game would be The Lost Levels with the aesthetics/theming of Six Golden Coins. If somebody added simultaneous co-op and the princesses to that mix, I’m not sure I would need another 2D Mario game.
Now, by working my way from the top-right corner of the chart (and fudging things a little), I can much more easily come up with the canonical Top 10 Mario Games List than I would have been able to otherwise.
- Super Mario Bros 3
- Super Mario Bros 2 (The Lost Levels)
- Super Mario Odyssey
- Super Mario Bros. (1)
- Super Mario 3D World
- Super Turrican
- Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island
- Kid Chameleon
- Super Mario Galaxy 2
- Super Mario Land 2
Q.E.D.
Consolation prize for Super Mario Land:
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Can anyone point me in the direction of some kind of deep dive analysis of the design of SMB1 that has something to say about the game post-World 3 or so? I’m pretty sure I’ve played the whole thing, and even though I can remember in later levels there are some that look like it’s night time or snowy outside or some junk, I can’t really remember anything about what the game is like at that point. And it seems like whenever people talk about the brilliance of that game it has more to do with the early stages where you are kind of gradually introduced to the rules and whatnot.
Anyway, I assume there are smart things going on throughout the entire game, but, I guess I just don’t really know what they are?
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As I recall a lot of the later stages from the first game are basically repeats of earlier stages but with increased difficulty in the form of shorter platforms or different enemy types (e.g. Buzzy Beetles in the place of Goombas) and they’ll take place at night instead of day.
Jeremy Parish, history’s greatest monster himself, has a breakdown of the full game at https://www.anatomyofgames.com/anatomy-of-a-game/
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SMB1 worlds 2 through 7 are largely filler yeah. They’re all samey block patterns and the difficulty doesn’t change until it suddenly spikes hard in world 8. There’s a reason why everybody takes warps constantly, there’s not much to savor in them. I understand SMB VS (arcade version of SMB1) redesigned many of those middle stages to be more unique.
that’s… not true
edit: well the smb vs part is true. i take issue with the rest of those assertions though!
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I think just the novelty of having a platformer with good controls was enough for 85.
Water levels sucked.
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a platformer period was novel for 1985. a platformer with great (not good) controls is novel for 2017
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This is awesome, exactly what I was looking for, thanks!
I skimmed through Parish’s page you linked to refresh my memory on it. I can agree saying “filler” and “samey block patterns” are not right. Still, the stages are not individually memorable and seem to blend together in one gamelong mush – to a lesser extent this applies to all the Marios until SMB3 really. Taken along with its mix and matching of elements in any possible combination, it gives it a character akin to procedural generation.
I think there are basically two reasons for it. The first is that there’s no overworld to provide an anchor for stages in memory. There’s only a linear axis – by default then world 1 and 8 are the most memorable thanks to being at both ends. The second reason is that SMB1 never holds back any particular element as being an iconic world-specific one. Once an element appears, it continues to appear many more times. By SMB3 Mario had switched to having “core” mechanics that recur throughout and also “world/stage” ones that appear predominantly or at all in a single place.
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