Every Mario Game on the SNES, Ranked

Mario is central to Nintendo’s identity and success. He’s the face of the company, featured in many of their most popular games, and played a key role in making the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) a hit.

Despite strong competition from Sonic the Hedgehog, Mario delivered some truly exceptional games for the Super Nintendo. While all of the main Mario games on the SNES are enjoyable, a few are particularly outstanding.

Unlike the typical Mario games, Mario Paint was a creative art program, and it was a surprisingly successful departure for the series. Despite being on the older SNES console, it offered impressive art tools and even let players create their own music.

Even now, players can have fun with Mario Paint on Nintendo Switch Online through the Switch 2. The game lets you easily make pictures using a mouse, and it’s still a unique experience among modern titles.

As a huge Mario fan, I still get excited thinking about Super Mario All-Stars! It took four of the original NES Super Mario Bros. games – the first one, Super Mario Bros. 2, the amazing Super Mario Bros. 3, and even the tricky Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels – and completely remastered them with a beautiful 16-bit look. It’s incredible how fresh those classic games still feel with a new art style!

Besides improving the graphics, All-Stars introduced the ability to save your progress – a huge innovation for its time. Nintendo later created another collection called Super Mario 3D All-Stars, but the original SNES Super Mario All-Stars remains the best of its kind.

The hugely popular Mario Kart series – with over 189 million copies sold – started with the original Super Mario Kart. While the idea of Mario characters racing is straightforward, the game’s perfect design is what made it a hit.

Even now, the original Mario Kart remains enjoyable. It offers a unique feel compared to newer games, and it works surprisingly well. While it might not be the strongest title in the series, Super Mario Kart definitely deserves recognition for establishing many of the features we know and love today.

When Super Mario RPG came out in 1996, it was a surprising departure for Mario games. However, it proved how adaptable the character could be, and it actually helped inspire games like Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi. What made it unique was the collaboration between Nintendo and Square, bringing the style of Final Fantasy to the Mario universe.

I first played Super Mario RPG way back when it originally came out, and everyone loved it! But it got a whole new life when Nintendo remade it for the Switch in 2023, which is awesome because it introduced it to a bunch of new players. Honestly, both the original and the remake are still super fun to play even now.

Whether Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island is a core Mario title or a side adventure is up for discussion, but it’s undeniably one of the greatest games of all time. Its storybook-style graphics were a brilliant idea, giving it a unique look and feel that no other Mario or Yoshi game has matched since.

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island really brings Yoshi to life with a lot of personality, and it introduced now-classic moves like throwing eggs and the flutter jump. It’s a truly exceptional game, and focusing on Yoshi as the main character was a brilliant decision.

When people talk about the Super Nintendo, Super Mario World is almost always the first game they mention, and it’s easy to see why. Released alongside the console in Japan, it really defined what the SNES was capable of and hinted at the amazing games to come. Even today, the game looks fantastic, the music is instantly recognizable, and it’s just plain fun to play thanks to its clever level design and helpful power-ups.

Super Mario World was a landmark game for the series, most notably introducing the character Yoshi. Many gamers consider it to be one of the greatest games of all time. It’s often seen as Mario’s definitive adventure on the Super Nintendo, and the game is strongly associated with the console itself.

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2026-03-10 20:44