Ranking of Marios

A few friends and I recently got in our heads that it would be fun to get together and rank our favorite (and least favorite) video games within a single franchise. And by rank I mean argue and jockey and ultimately "agree" upon some rough consensus ordering of said video games. Our first franchise to rank? Super Mario.

Thus we compiled a list of Super Mario platformers to rank, found a time to get together, and proceeded to hash it out for nearly 3 hours. To top it off, we recorded the whole thing. I don't know that anyone has it in them to listen to an almost 3 hour podcast of random people debating Super Mario games, but just in case, I thought it would be fun to post the results here :)

Some logistics: We compiled the list of games beforehand, and I read them off at the beginning of the podcast. It's 17 games in total, and it's virtually every platformer with "Super Mario" in the title (and no remakes). The only notable exclusions are Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, and Super Mario Maker. The first 2 of those feel like spinoffs that became their own series, and Mario Maker is a very different thing by virtue of being primarily a level creator. That was our reasoning at least. We maintained this list via a shared Google doc that we edited as we went, so if you hear us referencing a list during the podcast, we're probably messing with that.

Our panel includes 4 people: Justin (that's me, @majormitch), Nathan (my brother and @wess on the site), Ryan (@turgar on the site), and Paul (@paulusvictor on the site).

Anyway, click here for the mp3 that I have saved in my Dropbox. As far as I know, anyone with that link can view and download it (top right of the page). Let me know if there are any technical difficulties, and it's worth noting that's the raw recording. I'm lazy and did no editing. I'll also go ahead and paste our final list here as well, under a spoiler tag. Completely understandable to not want to listen to a podcast that long (in fact, it's probably crazier if you do), though the list might make more sense after listening to the arguments :)

1. Super Mario 64
2. Super Mario World
3. Super Mario Galaxy
4. Super Mario Bros. 3
5. Super Mario Galaxy 2
6. Super Mario Bros.
7. Super Mario 3D Land
8. New Super Mario Bros.
9. Super Mario Bros. 2
10. Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins
11. Super Mario Land
12. New Super Mario Bros. Wii
13. Super Mario Sunshine
14. Super Mario 3D World
15. New Super Mario Bros. 2
16. New Super Mario Bros. U
17. Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels

I think that about covers it! We had a lot of fun with this, and even when things get "heated" it was all lighthearted and in good fun. Maybe someone else will find this entertaining, and someday we'll be ranking other things too. For science!