Frisch's Top 5 Favorite "Main Series" Mario Games

Good afternoon, ladies and germs!  I make no secret about how much I enjoy the Mario series.  It is by far my favorite video game franchise of all time.  Mario has done it all, from platformers to racing to RPGs to everything in between.  Today I'm having a look at my top 5 favorite games from the main Mario series.  That pretty much means all the platformers that have names that start with "Super Mario."  These are the ones that sell consoles!  And here are my favorites:

5. Super Mario 3D Land

Mario's first foray on the 3DS essentially plays like a greatest hits album of Mario history.  It has the style and charm of the Galaxy games, the bright colors and level tropes from Mario 64, the structure of the New Super series, and a heaping helping of Mario 3 references.  Especially the Tanooki suit.  Raccoon tails for everyone!

3D Land is much like the New Super games in that most of its elements are drawn from previous Mario games.  Unlike the New Super series, however, 3D Land excels at taking these familiar ideas and presenting them in a new way.  The levels play more like quick obstacle courses than full blown worlds to explore, but they are still great fun to speed through.  It lack an identity of its own, but 3D Land is probably the best example of pure, straight forward Mario goodness.  Anyone who liked any other Mario game will find plenty to enjoy in this land.

4. Super Mario Bros.

The original that started it all!  Super Mario Bros. is a classic no matter how you look at it.  And while I certainly spend my fair share of time playing the NES version, the SNES All-Stars version is the one that cements this game's place on my list.  The underlying game is essentially unchanged, but the graphics and music have been given a Mario World styled makeover that really enhances the overall experience.

But in any form, Super Mario Bros. is still just as fun today as it ever was.  It wrote the book on Mario games and platformers in general.  Later Mario games have expanded and played with the formula, but the original still holds up as one of the finest examples of why Mario is the big name star he is today.

3. Super Mario World

Most people claim that Super Mario Bros. 3 is the best 2D Mario game out there.  But I'd argue that Super Mario World is the one to hold that distinction.  The levels are huge, the secrets are plentiful, and the music is some of the best in the entire series.  Super Mario World does everything that Mario 3 did, but it does it bigger and better and with much more charm and style.

In addition, World introduces two of my favorite elements in the series:  Yoshi and the Cape Feather.  Yoshi's awesomeness should be self evident.  He's so awesome he even stole Mario's spotlight for the sequel.  As for the Cape Feather, it's one of the best power ups in any Mario game.  It looks way cooler than the raccoon tail and it requires a bit more skill and cleverness to use than just mashing the jump button.  Now that Nintendo has done the tail thing to death in that last few games, I'm hoping that comeback for the Cape Feather is in the works!

2. Super Mario Galaxy

Mario's first full blown Wii adventure is also one of his best.  The original Galaxy is an absolute joy to play.  The levels are large and numerous, with lots of little nooks and crannies to explore.  The orchestral music is phenomenal and provides the game with an epic scope than not even the sequel could match.  Galaxy also boasts some of the finest visuals on the Wii.  Even over five years later, Super Mario Galaxy remains just as impressive and enjoyable as when it was first released.

Super Mario Galaxy and its sequel are often cited as the two best games in the entire Wii library, and that's definitely true.  The second game is often said to be the better of the two, but I'd argue that the original is the superior game.  Galaxy 2 did expand the amount of variety seen in the levels, but it stripped out most of the openness and atmosphere that the original Galaxy had, making it almost feel more like a prototype to 3D Land than a sequel to Galaxy.  It feels sterile compared to the original, which is why Super Mario Galaxy remains the better of the two.

1. Super Mario 64

The landmark N64 launch title has been my favorite Super Mario game for years, and though the original Galaxy gave it a run for its money, Super Mario 64 still comes out on top.  As I did not have an N64 as a kid, playing Super Mario 64 was always a rare treat.  Nothing could beat running around that castle, exploring for secrets, and enjoying the incredible music.  Super Mario 64 is the reason I'm such a big fan of the Mario series today.

These days I've played through Mario 64 numerous times and most of the nostalgic charm has worn off.  But it doesn't change the fact that the game is still just as fun to explore as ever before.  More than any other platformer I've played, Super Mario 64 rewards the player for just goofing off.  It presents big open playgrounds to explore and lets you loose to do whatever you please.  You never know what you might find in Super Mario 64, such as secret stars, warp points, and even a hidden aquarium area.  No other Mario game has presented a world that is so much fun to simply play around in and explore.  And that's why it's still my favorite!

Review: New Super Mario Bros. 2

Welcome to New Super Mario Bros. 2!  The game where everything is recycled and the coins don't matter!

New Super Mario Bros. 2 for the 3DS marks the third release for the "New" series of Mario titles.  First, we had New Super Mario Bros. for the DS, a very fun if not overly simplified revival of classic Mario sidescrolling gameplay.  Then came New Super Mario Bros. Wii, which did little to change the formula but did increase the scope of the game dramatically and added the hilariously chaotic 4-person multiplayer mode.  It felt a little stale if you had already played the DS original since it reused the same level themes and most of the same gimmicks, but it felt like a more full-featured fleshed out version of the concept.

New Super Mario Bros. 2, so named because evidently the Wii game doesn't count, continues to do very little to update the formula from the previous two games, but with a new gimmick thrown in here and there.  The primary new gimmick this time?  COINS!  COINS EVERYWHERE!  This game throws more coins at you than you know what to do with.  They spew out of pipes.  They drift around on parachutes.  They trail behind enemies.  Sometimes they just rain from the sky!  The goal is to grab as much money as possible to eventually reach the game's overarching goal:  collecting 1,000,000 coins.  The game keeps a running total of all the coins you've ever earned in the game so you can track your progress.

The result of this coin-grabbin' gimmick is pretty simple:  coins and lives are worthless now.  The game throws them at you so fast and furiously that you'll rack up hundreds of lives without even trying.  Plus, the game really doesn't reward you in any way for going out of your way to collect coins other than occasionally popping up a message to let you know that you've collected lots of coins.  The coins don't even unlock secret levels or anything, since series staple Star Coins remain hidden about the levels and are still used as the currency for unlocking secrets, like always.  The only goal to strive for is that 1,000,000 coin mark.  After playing through the main story and a few of the secret levels, I observed that I was at about 15,000 coins.

Only 985,000 to go...

So yeah, the coin grabbing mechanic is ultimately shallow and pointless.  But what about the rest of the game?  Underneath the gold-tinted facade is still a game of classic Mario platforming, correct?  And that is true.  But the result is sort of a mixed bag.  On one hand, I would be willing to say that NSMB2 probably has the best levels in the "New" series thus far.  While previous games in the series mostly presented Super Mario Bros. 3 inspired levels that provided short sprints to the flagpole, the levels in NSMB2 are much larger and open.  There are lots of secret little nooks and crannies to stumble upon in the levels, and while many of these do simply hold more useless coins, some contain the ever elusive Star Coins and some also house secret exits that lead to alternate paths.

The Raccoon Tail from Mario 3 makes it's return here.  But while the Tanooki suit in Super Mario 3D Land mostly felt like Nintendo forcing some heavy handed nostalgia into the game by sticking tails everywhere,  New Super Mario Bros. 2 is much more subtle.  Grabbing a tail simply serves to better allow Mario to explore the levels, as there are often hidden areas way up high.  Beyond the use of the tail, it definitely feels like the development team was actually looking at Super Mario World for most of their inspiration this time around.  Some levels even feature World's trademark slanted geometric hills in the background, and long-missing mid-boss character Reznor makes his triumphant return here.  That the game does not lean too heavily on Mario 3 for inspiration is quite refreshing!  It's nice to see that Nintendo remembered that there are other good games in the Mario series to draw influence from.

On the other hand...

As much as I enjoy the Super Mario World influences, that's part of the problem with New Super Mario Bros. 2.  Everything about it is pulled from previous Mario games.  Most notably, almost everything about this game's presentation is pulled directly from New Super Mario Bros. Wii.  The graphics, the voice clips, the level gimmicks, the enemies, and most notably, the music.  There's barely a new composition to be heard this time around.  Which is not to say that the soundtrack is poor.  It's quite good.  And I don't have a problem with reusing a few specific tracks in situations where it makes sense for old themes to return.  But lifting the entire soundtrack from a previous game and using it again with only a tiny number of new compositions and alterations comes across as extraordinarily cheap, even if the songs themselves are still decent.

Likewise, it's hard to appreciate the handful of new elements NSMB2 does bring to the table when visually it looks exactly like the previous two games in the series.  We've seen this exact same set of grassland, desert, beach, forest, volcano and other worlds in two games already, plus the fact that Nintendo seems to insist on using these same themes in all other Mario games now too, such as Mario Party 9.  The result is that this game looks tired and stale.  You've seen everything in this game already, so even when it does try to do something legitimately different, it's still impossible the shake the feeling that you've played this game before.  At least twice.  The only slightly clever thing I observed was combining the beach and forest themes into one world this time.  But that mostly just seems to be because there are fewer normal worlds in NSMB2.  (Six instead of the standard eight, though there are several secret worlds to make up for it.)

New Super Mario Bros. 2 is not completely devoid of new ideas.  The problem is that most of them are simply slight extensions or variations of what previous Mario games have done repeatedly.  So even when playing a level with a "new" feature it still feels incredibly familiar because you've probably seen something like it in a previous game before.  The result is a Mario game that is definitely fun to play, has everything that makes Mario games fun, but ultimately feels shallow and redundant.  In a series known for reinventing itself with each sequel, NSMB2 feels uncharacteristically safe.  Never before has a game with the word "New" in the title felt so stale.

I'm almost willing to give Nintendo a free pass here, because they have gone on record to say that they plan to make only one Mario sidescroller per console.  So once the equally stale looking New Super Mario Bros. U comes out later this year, it could be at least five or six years until we see another sequel in the series.  Hopefully that will provide Nintendo enough time to come up with some legitimately fresh new ideas for the series because as it stands, New Super Mario Bros. 2 is an overly-cautious retread on what has already been done repeatedly in its two predecessors.  It's still fun, but there's nothing really "new" about it.

Review: Mario Party 9

The Mario Party series has been Nintendo's staple multiplayer party franchise for well over a decade.  Over the course of fourteen years, twelve different games in the series have been churned out.  Save for a brief diversion from the formula in Mario Party Advance, all the games in the series played largely the same, simply receiving a few tweaks and a new coat of paint each year.  After Mario Party 8 and Mario Party DS were both released in 2007, the series disappeared.  Now, five years later, Mario Party returns in a refreshed and updated new form.  The result is Mario Party 9, a faster and sleeker installment that addresses many of the recurring issues that have plagued previous games but still hangs on to a few issues that have been present for the entire run of the series.

First off, the long time collectables of the series, stars and coins, are out.  Mini Stars and Mini Ztars are in, effectively combining both collectables into one.  Rather than saving up coins to purchase power stars, you continuously rack up a total of Mini Stars throughout the game.  Collecting Mini Ztars will, logically enough, remove Mini Stars from your total.  The person with the most Mini Stars at the end of the game wins.

The board game component of the series has also been giving a significant update.  Players now all move together on a linear path, rather than exploring a board one at a time.  Each turn sees a different player become the "captain" allowing them to roll the dice and continue along the path as well as sometimes receiving special bonuses for being the player in charge.  The spaces on the board have all kinds of effects, from shuffling the turn order, activating a mini game, and even triggering boss battles, all while working toward the end goal.  As minigames no longer follow every four turns and are instead encountered more sporadically, the pacing of Mario Party 9 is much faster than other games in the series.  Gone are the days of circling the board for hours playing out turns and playing minigames over and over.  Here you are making a beeline for the finish with only the occasional minigame sprinkled in to keep things interesting.  It's a great new formula that really keeps things moving.

Also gone are the days of having to put up with annoying computer controlled opponents.  Mario Party 9 no longer forces you to use four characters when playing with two or three players.  The game plays out the same way with any number.  You still have the option to include CPU opponents if you want, though.

The minigames are one part of the game that remain essentially untouched from previous installments.  If you've played any previous Mario Party game you know just what to expect from these bite sized games.  Some have you doing basic platforming, some require pressing buttons with special timing, and some just require shaking the Wii remote like an idiot.  The minigame offering is, as a whole, a lot stronger than what was seen in Mario Party 8.  The games that rely on motion control are still kind of dodgy, but for the most part the minigames remain a fun and enjoyable component of the game, as always.

Unfortunately, Mario Party 9, perhaps more so than any other entry in the series, places a large emphasis on luck.  The Mario Party series has always been known for game changing events where players can go from first to last solely based on the roll of the dice.  Mario Party 9, however, seems to go out of its way to emphasize this more than ever.  Every board contains events that can cause players to lose half of their Mini Stars, and these events pop up far more often than one may expect.  It's pretty harsh.  There are also still the requisite minigames that are purely luck based as well.  Luck has always been a major component in the series, but it can feel particularly cheap in this installment, especially on the occasions that the game seems to turn against you and throw everything it can at you to keep you behind.

As always, Mario Party 9 becomes extremely tedious to play when playing in single player.  The faster pace of the boards does at least mean that you spend less time watching CPU players take their turns.  They still have a nasty habit of ganging up on the single player, though.  Mario Party 9 really demands more than one player to fully be enjoyed.  It still retains the frustrating luck-based elements of the previous games in the series, but the new style of play provides a welcome breath of fresh air.  After a half-decade absence, Mario Party 9 brings the series back in fine form.  If you've got some friends to party with, I recommend picking it up.  If nothing else, you can at least get a laugh out of all the terrible puns used throughout the adventure!