Poll: What’s The Best 2D Mario Game?

Back in September 2020 Nintendo kicked off a season of celebration in honour of Super Mario Bros.‘ 35th anniversary, and around release of Super Mario 3D All-Stars we asked Nintendo Life readers to rank every mainline 3D Mario game. With the release of Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury on the horizon, and the Nintendo-mandated anniversary period drawing to a close at the end of March, we thought now would be as good a time as any to find out which of the 2D Mario games is best, too. You know, to complete the set.

Below you’ll find a shortlist of every 2D Mario platformer. Registered Nintendo Life users can click on the stars and rate any or all of the games out of ten. Much like our Top 50 platform polls and other reader-ranked lists, our User Ratings govern the resulting ranked list in real time and the order is therefore subject to change even after publication.

If you’ve previously rated these games in our database — and there’s a good chance that you have — thank you! If not, why not scroll down and give the ones you’ve played a score out of ten? You know, for Science!

© Nintendo

Note: For this ranking we’ve omitted certain handheld ports and re-releases; this includes the impressive Super Mario Bros. Deluxe for Game Boy Color, the various confusingly-named GBA ports, and Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS

. We’ve also chosen the Deluxe version of New Super Mario Bros. IN on Switch to represent that game and we’ve given Yoshi’s Island and Wario Land the boot — they might have ‘Super Mario’ in their titles, but those spin-offs spawned new branches of platformers with their own distinct flavour. Limited-time thirty-five-player battle royale Super Mario Bros. 35 was also shown the door. And finally, we have included auto-runner Super Mario Run because, hey, it’s a platformer! Complaints to the usual address.

Rate each 2D Super Mario game:

Click the stars below to rate each Super Mario game you’ve played out of ten:

Thanks for rating! We’ll publish the results in due course, but remember that the resulting list will be fluid, so even if you miss out on ‘voting’ before the ranking is revealed, you can still influence the ranking after publication.