What is your list of MAINLINE Mario games?

Today during the Sonic 06 stream Dan gave his list of mainline Mario games.

Watch the stream to hear the list and also raise your blood pressure(my watch told me this happened).

I agree with Giant Bomb MVP Mikes list of mainline games:

These are mainline Mario games.

During the stream Dan claimed:

The Land games are their own sub Series to the Super Mario and 3D/64 Mario games. The 3D Land/Word and New games are also sub series and not mainline Mario game.

Bonus points for your favorite type of Soup/Stew!

Give me a good Wild Rice Soup any day.

Only the games released for original NES and Famicom. Everything else is side series.

I guess I don't get the point of the distinction, it's all semantic. I think from Nintendo's perspective they just make "the next Mario game." How Dan thinks 3D Land/World are somehow excluded, when they have infinitely more in common with the others than Yoshi's Island does, is a mystery.

Land, Land 2, and then the Wario Land games are made by a different team (R&D1 as opposed to EAD) so I could understand peeling those away from the mainline list.

Everything else is pretty mainline. The New games are pretty derivative of themselves and more dev teams are involved than usual, but they’re still pretty standard, attention-grabbing Mario games that the main Mario devs had a hand in.

Dan’s timeline where Galaxy 2 comes out, then no “mainline” Mario comes out for 7 years because the games don’t look enough like Mario 64 for his taste is truly moon logic.

I don't really care about this (not in a rude way, just, I don't have an issue with how any Mario game is categorized in my mind), but I will definitely never understand Dan claiming 3D World wasn't a core Mario game, or whatever terminology he used.

Holy hell, that list from Minotti is an extreme hot take. No Yoshi's Island and including Super Mario Land and the "New" games. Very incorrect take.

My only other input is that in spite of it being called Super Mario Bros 2 in Japan, I also think that "Lost Levels" is more of a masochistic gaiden game that shouldn't be considered part of the mainline. Maybe that's just a western-centric viewpoint and people in Japan would disagree, but that's where I'm at with it.

@chaser324: Shit i did not see he skipped Yoshi's Island. That Should be in there. I do think the New Games should be in there. They are a continuation of the 2d games.

@chaser324: Arguing that Japanese SMB2 is not a mainline game but American/European SMB2, famously not a Mario game when first released, is, is a very hot take.

I also think there's a strong case for Donkey Kong and Mario Brothers (no super) as mainline Mario games. Pauline has reappeared in mainline Mario games subsequently so that connection is there, and how do you have a Mario Brothers mainline without...Mario Brothers in it?

@propagandapanda: @chaser324: Yoshi’s Island is obviously a Mario-universe game and established the Yoshi jump movement and all that, but what is your reasoning that it’s a mainline Super Mario game? You don’t control Mario, and the mechanics, pickups, player movement, etc. don’t follow the other Mario conventions. Are Yoshi’s Story, Yoshi’s Wooly World, etc. somehow also Super Mario games?

Mario is missing

Mario golf

Mario paint

Boom, done

@bisonhero: It's called Super Mario World 2. That's the argument.

@bisonhero: So I see Yoshi's Island as a back door pilot. It still has Mario in it and some similarities with Mario games but Mario is not completely front and center but is still in the mainline.

I don't care as long as Mario 2 is considered a main Mario game despite its origin story of being a different game out of Japan, I'm fine with it. After all, some of the most iconic characters like Birdo and Shy Guys came from that game. Not to mention the meta of Luigi jumping high, Princess Peach or Toadstool flying and so on.

@av_gamer: I'm not against SMB2 being included, but I don't think the fact that iconic characters came from that is definitive. Nobody seems to want to include the original Mario Brothers, which introduced Luigi, the koopa troopas/turtles, coins etc... And Donkey Kong introduced Mario and Pauline. Other stuff has come in from more obvious side games and it's not unusual in game series for side games to influence the main series.

@sethmode: I'm the same, every game (as far as i know) is so singular it doesn't matter though i imagine Galaxy 1 and 2 are connected in some way, however i've only played 6 Golden Coins and 64.

@bigsocrates: I can only assume a marketing team gave it that name, cuz in Japan that game is just known as "Yoshi's Island"

SMB, SMB 2:Lost Levels, SMB 2, SMB3, SMW, SMW 2, 64, Sunshine, Galaxy, Galaxy 2, and Odyssey. Yoshi’s island counts because Miyamoto considers it a core Mario game.

Fuck that. Mario is just cargo in Yoshi's Island.

This is official from Nintendo

i always thought of mainline as

smb1-3 , world , world 2 , 64 , sunshine , galaxy 1, galaxy2 , 3d world , odyssey.

the land as a separate series along with the 'new' series being separate also.


favorite soup is a red chicken soup my mother made growing up.

shredded chicken breast, crushed and or stewed tomatoes , parsnip, turnip, carrot , celery or celery salt , onion , and chicken broth , served over a small noodle usually ditalini with a bit of parm on top. when i make it i usually add potatoes if i can't find turnip or parsnips on a given occasion.

@styx971: Damn that soup sounds good!

@propagandapanda: its great , i've always preferred it over a standard chicken noodle . a quick cheaty way fr the chicken is to by a precooked rotisserie chicken from the store n just peel it apart. i don't like dark meat but if you do you can just use the whole thing. when i was younger my mother would just boil a whole chicken n use the water for the broth plus the bullion cubes but since i'm picky its the pre-cooked plus a couple cartons of broth n some bullion if you need more liquid.