Collect Power Moons across kingdoms
The real Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2: the same engine, poison mushrooms and wind, and far harder.
The 1989 Game Boy launch platformer: twelve levels, two shoot-em-up stages and a princess who is not Peach.
Pull vegetables and throw them; the reskinned Doki Doki Panic that became a Mario game.
Yoshi carries baby Mario through a crayon world; the SNES platformer at its most inventive.
120 stars, the castle and the first analogue 3D playground.
Yoshi, the cape and 96 exits on the SNES; the launch title that still plays perfectly.
Jumpman climbs girders to save Pauline; Mario's first appearance, 1981.
The raccoon suit, the world map and the airships; the best NES game.
Four players, the blue shell and Rainbow Road; the kart racer of every dorm.
Seventeen of them: the 2D line from 1985, the handheld ones, and every 3D Mario from 64 to Odyssey.
The 2006 DS game that brought back 2D Mario after fifteen years, and sold thirty million copies doing it.
Build the levels instead: five art styles, a story mode of a hundred courses and endless uploads from everyone else.
The first 3D Mario built around linear levels and a goal pole, in stereoscopic depth on the 3DS.
From the Mode 7 original to the open world on Switch 2, blue shells throughout.
Square and Nintendo together in 1996, with Geno and a timed-hit system.
Mode 7 tracks, a feather to hop the wall and a ghost of your own best lap; the kart racer that started it.
Cat suits and four-player co-op; the 3D Mario built for a sofa.
Turn-based battles with an audience to please; the best-written Mario.
Isle Delfino, a water jetpack and the hardest secret levels in the series.
Snaking, a mission mode and the first Mario Kart people played against strangers online.
Luigi with a vacuum cleaner in a haunted house; the GameCube launch oddity.
Golf with mushrooms and shortcuts; Camelot's GameCube gem.
Anti-gravity tracks and 48 courses; the best-selling Switch game.
An open-world Mario Kart with 24 racers; the Switch 2 launch title.
Talking flowers and Wonder effects that turn levels inside out; the 2D Mario reinvented.
A haunted hotel floor by floor with a vacuum cleaner; Next Level Games.
Yoshi, more galaxies and the Green Stars; the sequel that equals it.
Twelve racers, bikes and the wheel; the best-selling racing game ever.
Planetoids with their own gravity and an orchestra; the best 3D Mario.
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