The Best 3D Super Mario Games

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The Best 3D Super Mario Games

2023’s beem a big year for everybody’s favorite Italian plumber—and his brother Mario, too. This year Mario and Luigi w their own big-budget animated movie, and are the centerpiece of the most anticipated new theme park land since Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. Let’s not forget where they came from, though. The Mario Bros. will always be two of the most important ambassadors for the medium that birthed them: the videogame. In honor of their storied contributions to this still youthful artform, and in anticipation of the theme park and movie, let’s look back at the last 25 years of their history and rank all of their 3D games. This legacy started with 1996’s Super Mario 64, and has continued up through 2021’s Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury; there might not be any new 3D Mario games that we know about in the pipeline today, but no doubt the mustachioed brothers will be hopping and stomping in multiple dimensions all over our TV screens again soon. Heck, I just might have to load one of these games up tonight.

8. Super Mario 3D Land

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Original Platform: 3DS
Release Year: 2011

Quizzically, the Super Mario games that actually have 3D in their name—Super Mario 3D Land and Super Mario 3D World—don’t partake in the new freedoms afforded by the 3D platformer as much as the other five games on this list. The levels are generally more linear than the open-world areas you’ll find in games like Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Sunshine. Consider it as almost a bridge between the traditional side-scrolling Mario games and the fully-fleshed out, 3D open world games in the vein of Super Mario 64. 3D Land was the first of these two, and remains a fun, well-designed, and impressive game. It’s just not quite as good as the rest of the list.

 


7. Super Mario 3D World

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Original Platform: Wii U
Release Year: 2013

The cat suit might be the most visible addition to Super Mario 3D World, but it’s not the only twist on an old idea. 3D World doles out inventive new wrinkles throughout the course of the game, regularly surprising you with familiar but subtly changed mechanics. It isn’t content to aimlessly rehash Mario’s past—it approaches that history with reverence but also inspiration, spinning new threads out of old cloth


6. Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury

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Original Platform: Switch
Release Year: 2021

Speaking of 3D WorldBowser’s Fury is a short 3D Mario adventure that’s bundled with the rerelease of the Wii U game, and it’s a good enough addition that it brings this Switch entry in just ahead of the original. Bowser’s Fury has one glaring game design decision that will keep it from the top of any list of best Mario games—after a certain point the recurring boss battle sequence becomes an absolute drag—but otherwise it’s a fantastically fun 3D platformer that experiments with the classic Mario formula. It almost feels like a rough draft for a future full-scale Mario game, which makes it one of the more intriguing entries in the endless series. Despite being less polished than you’d expect from the usually pristine Mario, though, it’s still a wonderfully conceived game that’s more than worth playing


5. Super Mario Sunshine

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Original Platform: GameCube
Release Year: 2002

The weirdest mainline Mario game since the American version of Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Sunshine has long suffered from an unnecessarily bad reputation. Is it unusually hard for a Mario game? Yeah. Are the setting, secondary characters, and core mechanics all unique for a Mario game, almost distractingly so? Yep. What’s wrong with that, though? When an idea’s been around as long as Super Mario has, it should be trying to explore new territory with each iteration. Sunshine has two great strengths going for it: it’s not afraid to throw new stuff against the Super Mario wall and see what sticks, and it still packs that patented Mario punch of pure joy.

 


4. Super Mario Galaxy 2

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Original Platform: Wii
Release Year: 2010

Like the first one, Galaxy 2 packed all of the charm and childlike wonder expected from a Mario game into an innovative and fitfully challenging platformer, with novel gravity effects and spherical levels creating the most fleshed out Mario universe yet. And the visuals were unusually gorgeous for the Wii, with vibrant colors and lush extraterrestrial landscapes that were stunning even if they were only in 480P.


3. Super Mario 64

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Original Platform: Nintendo 64
Release Year: 1996

It’s not an understatement to say that Super Mario 64 is one of the most important videogames of all time. In the annals of Mario, it’s at worst second in that regard, right after the original Super Mario Bros., and is potentially tied with it. Both games held titanic influence over their respective genres, with Mario 64 in particular also representing a huge technological advancement for videogames. It’s still as fantastic today as it was 24 years ago, and remains a must play for anybody interested in the history of the medium, but it comes in at number three on this list because importance alone doesn’t make it a more impressive or enjoyable game than two that have come since.

 


2. Super Mario Odyssey

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Original Platform: Switch
Release Year: 2017

Bicker about what makes up a “core” Mario game all you want. All I know is that Super Mario Odyssey is one of the two or three best games to ever have that lovable little guy’s name in the title. It is every bit as powerful as Super Mario Galaxy or Super Mario Bros. 3, the previous high-water marks for Nintendo’s mascot, and for the platformer genre in general. Odyssey is an overwhelming cornucopia of pure joy, full of the kind of freedom typically found in open world games but with a constant chain of clear objectives and attainable goals pulling you ever deeper into its roster of candy-colored kingdoms. It’s a perfect bookmark to Nintendo’s other major Switch game of 2017, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: both recraft a classic cornerstone of the entire medium into an effortlessly enjoyable and crucially contemporary masterpiece that unites all eras of gaming history.


1. Super Mario Galaxy

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Original Platform: Wii
Release Year: 2007

Odyssey is amazing, but the original Galaxy remains the apex of Mario in the third dimension. With its brilliant visuals and powerful orchestral score, this is one of the most gorgeous games ever made. It takes the core concepts of 3D Mario—the way it presents these three-dimensional spaces, and the way Mario moves through them—and unlocks them from both traditional physics and strict notions of horizontal and vertical. It introduced the best new Mario power-ups in years, with the Bee and Boo suits. It also seamlessly incorporates the Wii’s unique motion sensing control scheme, finding uses for it that don’t feel forced or tacked on. Super Mario Galaxy represents both Super Mario and the very notion of the platformer at its absolute best.


Senior editor Garrett Martin writes about videogames, comedy, music, travel, theme parks, wrestling, and anything else that gets in his way. He’s on Twitter @grmartin.

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