Mario Boutique · The ludography
All the Mario video games, from 1981 to 2026
Forty-five years of jumping, sixteen machines, and one rule Nintendo has never let go of: every main episode changes a mechanic rather than adding levels.
69games and series profiled
45 yearsfrom 1981 to 2026
16machines covered
907.7 Mcopies sold
Updated 3 September 2026
A Mario ludography is not a list: it is a tree. At the root, three arcade cabinets that invent everything between 1981 and 1985. Then two trunks — two-dimensional platforming and three-dimensional platforming — that advance in parallel without ever merging. And around them, whole branches Nintendo let grow on their own: the role-playing games, racing, sport, party games, supporting characters promoted to heroes. This page sorts the 69 games and series the shop has profiled one by one, each with its year, its machine and what it really brought.
The common thread comes down to one sentence, and it holds true episode after episode: a main Mario does not add content, it adds a verb. Jumping in 1985, flying in 1988, riding in 1990, turning the camera in 1996, spraying in 2002, walking on a sphere in 2007, capturing in 2017, deforming the level in 2023. Everything else — the worlds, the enemies, the items — follows from that verb.
Each profile leads to the full article on the blog, with its release dates region by region, its studio and its record. And if you simply want to know what to start this evening, the Where to start section decides according to your profile rather than to the chronology.
📋 Contents
The starting point🕹️The origins: three games, and everything is in place
from the rescue arcade cabinet to the game that picked an industry up off the floor
The saga does not begin with a plan, but with a stock of unsold goods. In 1980, Nintendo ships thousands of Radar Scope cabinets to the United States, a shooting game that fails to find its audience: close to two thousand machines are left on the American subsidiary's hands. To recycle them, the firm entrusts a replacement board to a young designer who joined in 1977 for want of a design post, Shigeru Miyamoto. The result comes out on 9 July 1981 and is called Donkey Kong.
Two years later, the character lands a game in his own name. Mario Bros., an arcade cabinet of 21 June 1983 designed by Miyamoto and produced by Gunpei Yokoi, takes him down into the sewers, gives him his trade as a plumber, invents a brother for him and lays down three objects the saga would never let go of: the coins, the pipes and the POW Block.
It takes two more years for the third game to convert the try. Super Mario Bros., on 13 September 1985, arrives in an industry the crash of 1983 had floored, and gives it back a complete grammar: horizontal scrolling, eight worlds, a jump sensitive to speed and controllable in mid-air, “?” blocks that reward curiosity. Nothing that follows on this page really departs from that foundation.
The founding actSuper Mario Bros.
13 September 1985 · Famicom then NES
Two years after the crash of 1983, the American video game market is in ruins: distributors no longer want to hear about consoles. Super Mario Bros. puts the industry back on its feet by showing that a home game can have the bearing of an arcade cabinet and the depth of a long journey. The title appears first on the Family Computer in Japan, then on the NES in North America at the end of 1985, and becomes the benchmark for platform games.
Its success is first of all a success of tuning. The jump is not binary: it depends on your run-up speed and can be corrected in the air, which turns a movement into an intention. The first screen of World 1-1 teaches that grammar without a word of tutorial — a Goomba arrives, a block floats, a hole appears, and the player has understood. That economy of means has remained the model for the genre.
The rest has become folklore: the Warp Zone and its three rooms that dispatch you to worlds 2, 3 and 4, the Super Mushroom and the Fire Flower, and above all the World 1-1 theme, written in C major at around 100 beats per minute by Koji Kondo under the NES's sound constraints.
What it invents
Continuous horizontal scrolling, the mental map of a world to be crossed from left to right, and a difficulty that rises without ever changing the rules.
What it inherits
The jump from Donkey Kong, the trade and the pipes from Mario Bros. The game does not start from nothing: it assembles.
Its direct descendants
All the 2D lineage, right up to Wonder in 2023. And a sporting discipline: the speedrun, whose world record is today within a hundred milliseconds of the theoretically perfect run.
1981 · ArcadeDonkey KongThe game born of a stock of unsold cabinetsMiyamoto draws on Popeye, King Kong and Beauty and the Beast to dress up a very simple mechanical idea: climbing scaffolding while avoiding what falls. The hero has no proper name — he is Jumpman, a carpenter — but he already has the cap, the dungarees and the moustache, three tricks born of the sprite's constraints. The game becomes Nintendo's first American success and saves the subsidiary. It is also the birth certificate of the oldest rivalry in video games, the one Mario vs. Donkey Kong would revive twenty-three years later.
Read the profile
1983 · ArcadeMario Bros.The missing link between two legendsWedged between Donkey Kong and Super Mario Bros., this arcade cabinet nonetheless does all the founding work. Developed by Nintendo R&D1 to a design by Miyamoto, it changes the hero's trade — he becomes a plumber — brings Luigi on stage for the second player, and installs a sewer bestiary that would still be in service thirty years later. Its real invention lies elsewhere: you no longer jump on enemies, you strike the ground beneath their feet to flip them over. The green pipe and the POW Block date from here.
Read the profile
Three games, three roles: Donkey Kong creates the character, Mario Bros. gives him his identity, Super Mario Bros. gives him his genre. Everything that follows fits into one of the branches born of that third game — except the branches that chose, deliberately, to contradict it.
The main lineage🍄2D platforming: thirty-eight years without a break
from the NES to the Switch, the branch that never changed verb
2D has never been abandoned for good. It paused for fifteen years — between Super Mario World in 1990 and New Super Mario Bros. in 2006 — then picked up exactly where it had left off, with the same rule: you add a verb, not levels. Flying with the Cape Feather, riding with Yoshi, drilling with the Drill Mushroom : each episode comes down to one new movement.
Two episodes are exceptions and deserve flagging before we start. Super Mario Bros. 2, in the West, is not a Mario: it is the recostuming of a Japanese promotional game. And Super Mario All-Stars is not an episode but a compilation — it is through it that Europe discovered the true Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2, which has stayed famous under the name “Lost Levels”.
The peak of the NESSuper Mario Bros. 3
23 October 1988 · Famicom, then NES
The third episode is the one where the series stops being a corridor. The world map puts an end to the linear route : you choose your path, you keep items in reserve, you can skip a level or come back to it. That single structural idea has done more for the saga's longevity than any power-up, and is still found unchanged in the Switch episodes.
The other find is artistic, and nobody had attempted it: the whole adventure is staged as a piece of theatre, curtain included. The title screen opens onto a stage, the sets let you see their fixings, and the enemies come on like actors. The game accepts being a show rather than a world, which allows it liberties realism would have forbidden.
It is also the episode of the suits. The Super Leaf and the Tanooki Suit, the Frog Suit, the Hammer Suit : each alters movement enough to make the same levels different. And this is where the Koopalingscome on stage, seven recurring bosses rather than one Bowser repeated eight times.
What it invents
The world map, the item inventory, the theatrical staging and the multiple boss. Four gains 2D has never lost again.
The gap between dates
Famicom in October 1988, North America in February 1990, Europe in August 1991: nearly three years apart, which explains why you read different years everywhere for the same game.
Where it leads
Directly to Super Mario World, which takes the map and adds a mount to it, then to Dark Land as a model for a final world.
1988 · NESSuper Mario Bros. 2A Mario that wasn't a MarioReleased on the NES on 9 October 1988 in the United States and 28 April 1989 in Europe, arguably the most disconcerting episode in the whole plumber saga, it is in fact the adaptation of Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic, a Japanese title designed for a Fuji Television trade show. Nintendo recostumed it in Mushroom Kingdom colours rather than export the Japanese sequel, judged too hard. Hence a game that runs against the grain: you do not squash enemies, you pull them out of the ground and throw them, and you choose between four heroes with distinct powers. It left the saga Birdo, Shy Guy, Pokey and Wart.
Read the profile
1989 · Game BoySuper Mario LandThe first pocket MarioOn 21 April 1989, the Game Boy comes out in Japan — and Mario comes out with it. A notable fact: it is not Miyamoto who signs this miniature adventure but the team of Gunpei Yokoi, at Nintendo R&D1. The game sends the plumber far from the Mushroom Kingdom, to Sarasaland, for twelve levels spread across four worlds with disorienting settings, where the alien Tatangaawaits him. It dares aeroplane and submarine sequences, introduces Princess Daisy, and passes eighteen million copies.
Read the profile
1990 · Super NintendoSuper Mario WorldEntry into the 16-bit eraA launch title for the Super Nintendo on 21 November 1990, directed by Takashi Tezuka under Miyamoto's production. Its big idea is not graphic: it is a mount. Yoshi appears here, and with him a new way of moving, of swallowing and of bouncing. The map is no longer a simple path but a territory to be opened up, with 96 exits to flush out, including the hidden Star World . Twenty million copies later, it remains the console's best-selling game.
Read the profile
1992 · Game BoySuper Mario Land 2Wario's birth certificateReleased in Japan on 21 October 1992, directed by Hiroji Kiyotake under Yokoi's production, this second pocket Mario invents a character who would long outlive it: Wario, who has taken advantage of the plumber's absence to steal his castle. The game abandons the corridor in favour of six freely explorable zones, spread over 32 levels and six secret exits, adds Bunny Mario and closes the affair with a three-round confrontation. It opens two branches on its own: Wario Land and, later, WarioWare.
Read the profile
1993 · Super NintendoSuper Mario All-StarsFour NES games remade in 16-bitPublished in Japan on 14 July 1993 under the name Super Mario Collection, then in Europe on 16 December, this cartridge gathers the major NES episodes entirely rebuilt for the 16-bit generation: new graphics, reworked sound, saving added. Its historical interest goes beyond the facelift: it is through it that the West was finally able to play the true Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2, renamed “The Lost Levels”, the very one that had been judged too difficult in 1988. The box set has become a collector's item in its own right.
Read the profile
2006 · Nintendo DSNew Super Mario Bros.Fifteen years of absence, then this hitSince Super Mario World in 1990, no original scrolling 2D Mario had come out: Nintendo had shifted its mascot into three dimensions. On 15 May 2006 in North America, 30 June in Europe, the Nintendo DS resurrects the formula in 2.5D — characters with volume on a two-dimensional plane. The game introduces the Mega Mushroom, the Mini Mushroom and the Blue Shell, brings in Bowser Jr. and Dry Bowser, and becomes the console's best seller with 30.8 million copies.
Read the profile
2019 · SwitchNew Super Mario Bros. U DeluxeThe “New” sub-series, Switch versionFour episodes in ten years — DS in 2006, Wii in 2009, 3DS in 2012, Wii U the same year — fixed the grammar of the modern 2D Mario before the Deluxe version carried the last of them to Switch in 2019. This guide focuses on what really structures its progression: the mini-bosses who guard every tower and every fortress, Boom Boom and Pom Pom foremost, with their attack patterns and the mistakes that cost the most lives.
Read the profile
2023 · SwitchSuper Mario Bros. WonderThe return of the madness, eleven years onReleased on 20 October 2023, developed by Nintendo EPD under the direction of Shiro Mouri and the production of Takashi Tezuka. Wonder leaves the Mushroom Kingdom for the Flower Kingdom of Prince Florian and breaks 2D's tacit rule: with the Wonder Flower, the level itself deforms mid-play. Add to that a system of badges to equip, the Elephant Fruit and talkative flowers that comment on the game. More than sixteen million copies, and the fastest launch a Mario has ever had.
Read the profile
Eight entries, one single trajectory: 2D has never needed to reinvent itself, only to find a new movement to teach. That is what makes it legible forty years on — and what makes the fork of 1996 all the more spectacular.
That leaves the question every buyer in 2025 asks: should you take the well-oiled formula of the New Super Mario Bros. series or the inventiveness of Wonder? The comparison New Super Mario Bros. versus Mario Wonder settles it point by point — gameplay, art direction, content, playing time, comfort in multiplayer — and the verdict depends above all on who is holding the controller: a child, someone coming back after years away, or someone who has already finished everything.
The other trunk🌌3D platforming: seven games, seven camera ideas
1996-2017, the branch where each episode redefines space
In 1996, the series does not go “into 3D”: it changes objective. You no longer head right, you collect — stars, shines, moons — in spaces you first have to learn to read. The difficulty shifts from the jump towards perception, and that is why each episode in this branch is distinguished by a camera or movement idea rather than by a power-up.
The lineage owes a great deal to one man trained in cinema. Yoshiaki Koizumi, a graduate of Osaka University of Arts, arrives on Sunshine then directs Galaxy before producing Odyssey: the camera, the targeting and the staging of the three-dimensional Marios bear his mark. On the sound side, Mahito Yokota tips the music from the electronic beep to the orchestra — fifty musicians for Galaxy.
A word on what this branch removed. In 2017, Odyssey erased the life counter and the Game Over screen, a pair born with Donkey Kong in 1981 and formalised by Super Mario Bros. Director Kenta Motokura justified it plainly: it was not an absolutely necessary element. The lives nonetheless reappeared in Wonder six years later, on the 2D side.
The switchSuper Mario 64
23 June 1996 · Nintendo 64
You have to remember what a platform game was before June 1996 to measure the gap. Super Mario 64 invents at once the free camera and the analogue control of the character : the stick no longer gives a direction but an intensity, which allows walking, trotting or running, and the camera becomes an object the player manipulates via the C buttons. Two conventions the entire industry adopted without rediscussing them.
The level design follows the same logic of opening up. Peach's castle serves as a crossroads towards courses you visit several times, each hiding several stars reachable in any order. You no longer finish a level: you come back to it with a different intention. It is the model of the collectathon, which Banjo-Kazooie would carry two years later to a higher degree of refinement.
The game is also a visible stage in the making of the character: after the constrained Jumpman of 1981 and the 2D overhaul of 1985, this is where Mario receives his first model with volume. Nearly twelve million copies, 94 out of 100 on Metacritic for a first attempt, and the title of most speedrun game in history.
What it invents
The steered camera, the analogue control, the central hub and non-linear collecting. Four bricks Sunshine, Galaxy and Odyssey would merely rearrange.
What it cost
An entire generation without an original 2D Mario: the scrolling lineage stops here and only sets off again in 2006 with New Super Mario Bros.
The high pointSuper Mario Odyssey
27 October 2017 · Nintendo Switch
Released on 27 October 2017, developed by Nintendo EPD with 1-Up Studio under Koizumi's production, Odyssey was designed by the team that had made Galaxy and 3D World, with a clear brief: recover the freedom of Super Mario 64. Hence open kingdoms rather than corridors, and a currency — the Power Moons — abundant enough for curiosity to be rewarded constantly.
The big idea rests in a hat. Cappy is thrown, and Mario takes control of what it touches : a Goomba, a Banzai Bill, a T-Rex, a pipe. Capture is not a gadget but a multiplier of verbs — each captured creature brings its own way of moving, so that the game teaches several dozen movements without ever changing the controller.
The journey crosses seventeen strongly characterised kingdoms, from the misty Cap Kingdom to the Sand Kingdom, the largest, by way of New Donk City and its metropolis populated by humans — a direct nod to Donkey Kong 1981, where Pauline has become mayor. There she performs Jump Up, Super Star!, the game's big jazz number.
What it removes
The life counter and the Game Over screen. A fall costs a few coins, nothing more: exploration comes before punishment.
What it hides
The Darker Side, one of the most demanding passages in the saga, and Dark Moons that only appear once the game is finished.
Its technical curiosity
It is the episode to which Nintendo added, by free update in 2019, an official virtual reality mode playable with the Nintendo Labo VR kit : three exclusive mini-levels, and nothing equivalent anywhere else in the ludography.
2002 · GameCubeSuper Mario SunshineThe GameCube's solo 3D MarioReleased on 19 July 2002 in Japan, under Miyamoto's production with Tezuka and Koizumi. Wrongly accused of having fouled Isle Delfino, Mario has to clean it — and it is F.L.U.D.D., a water backpack, that replaces part of his movement vocabulary: you hover, you propel yourself, you scrub. A hundred and twenty Shines, blue coins scattered about and the return of Yoshi structure the hunt. It is also the episode that introduced Bowser Jr. and set up the whole archipelago of Delfino.
Read the profile
2007 · WiiSuper Mario GalaxyWhen the ground becomes a sphereDeveloped by Nintendo EAD Tokyo under Koizumi's direction, released on 1 November 2007 in Japan and 16 November in Europe. Its idea has never been redone with as much nerve: gravity changes centre with every planet, so that a floor can be a sphere, a cube or an apple, and you run upside down without thinking about it. The concept comes from a GameCube prototype where Mario circled a planetoid. Mahito Yokota's orchestral soundtrack, supervised by Koji Kondo, completes the tone — the Gusty Garden theme is its most widely covered piece.
Read the profile
2010 · WiiSuper Mario Galaxy 297 out of 100 on MetacriticReleased on Wii on 11 June 2010 in Europe, three years after the first episode, with a wager Miyamoto had announced: close to 90% new content. The big novelty is Yoshi finally playable, with his three transformations, but the sequel also adds powers absent from the first instalment such as the Cloud Flower, replaces the Observatory with Starship Mario and hides behind the ending a colossal post-game of 120 Green Stars closed by “The Perfect Run”.
Read the profile
2011 · Nintendo 3DSSuper Mario 3D Land3D finally fits in a pocketLaunched on the Nintendo 3DS on 3 November 2011 in Japan and 18 November in Europe, developed by Nintendo EAD Tokyo. The wager: fitting a real Mario with volume into a portable console, by cutting the adventure into short levels rather than large open terrains. It is the acknowledged hybrid between the two lineages on this page. Above all it brings back a power that had been gone since 1988, the Tanooki tail, adds the Boomerang Flowerto it, makes genuine use of stereoscopic 3D to judge distances, and hides formidable Special worlds behind the ending.
Read the profile
2013 · Wii USuper Mario 3D WorldTwo games on a single cartridgeOn 12 February 2021, for the 35th anniversary of Super Mario Bros., the Switch receives an enriched port of the Wii U's Super Mario 3D World (2013) — a feline world playable by up to four, where the Super Bell turns the heroes into climbing cats — and an entirely new piece of content, Bowser's Fury. The latter is the 3D Marios' first foray into a genuine open world: Lake Lapcat, a giant Bowser who rises intermittently, the Giga Bell to answer him, and Plessie to get about.
Read the profile
Seven episodes, seven ways of occupying space: a castle-crossroads, an archipelago to clean, planets, a pocket, a feline world, an open city. The 3D branch has no formula — that is precisely its formula.
The branch that talks📜The RPGs: when Mario starts telling stories
three families born of an alliance nobody expected
This whole branch rests on one decision from 1995: entrusting Mario to Square, the Final Fantasy studio. The idea seemed impossible — the master of platforming and the master of turn-based combat on the same cartridge — and it produced a game from which the two role-playing series that followed descend directly. Without Super Mario RPG, neither Paper Mario nor Mario & Luigi would exist.
The three families are clearly distinct. Paper Mario, at Intelligent Systems since 2000, turns the kingdom into paper cut-outs and alternates two eras: the classic RPG with partners up to The Thousand-Year Door, then the experiments with stickers and origami. Mario & Luigi, at AlphaDream until the studio's closure in 2019 and then at Acquire, has you steer both brothers at once and demands timing accurate to the frame. Between the two, a literal crossover: Paper Jam.
One point the profiles below each recall in their own way: in these games, combat is not passive. The timed hits invented by Super Mario RPG call for pressing at the right moment to amplify an attack or cushion a blow received, and that idea runs through the whole branch to Brothership in 2024. The music too has a signature: Yoko Shimomura, who passed through Capcom before Square, writes the first episode then almost the whole Mario & Luigi saga.
The peak of the branchPaper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
2004 on GameCube · Switch remake on 23 May 2024
Long a prisoner of a console few people owned, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is considered by a large part of the player base as the peak of the series. Twenty years after its release, Nintendo brought it back in high definition on Switch on 23 May 2024, which made the strongest argument of the whole RPG branch accessible.
The story turns on seven Crystal Stars and a legendary door buried beneath Rogueport, a harbour hub town that serves as base camp between chapters. But what made the game's reputation is its staging of battles as a piece of theatre, audience included : the spectators applaud, boo, throw objects, and a successful attack fills the house while a botched one empties it.
The troop of companions is the other argument, and it counts seven partners, one per chapter : Goombella the archaeologist, Koops the shy Koopa, Flurrie the wind spirit, Yoshi Kid — the only one in the series whose name and colour you choose — Vivian the repentant shadow, Bobbery, an old sailor Bob-omb recruited in Rogueport in chapter 5, and Carmina, the only optional one, running the Lovely Howz.
One confusion is worth clearing up along the way, because it turns up everywhere: the Bob-omb of this episode is indeed Bobbery, not Bombette, who belongs to the first Paper Mario on Nintendo 64 and its eight partners. Both blow open cracked walls, which explains the mix-up. Facing the troop, the Shadow Queen and Doopliss, the identity-stealing ghost.
The badge system
Equipment works through badges with a points cost, a system detailed in the dedicated guide. The Jumpman badge is reputed to be one of the hardest items to obtain in the whole saga.
What the remake changes
A complete visual overhaul, a re-recorded soundtrack and comfort tweaks — but the structure, the chapters and the tone remain those of 2004.
1996 · Super NintendoSuper Mario RPGThe Nintendo × Square alliance of 1996Released in Japan on 9 March 1996 under the full title Legend of the Seven Stars, it dares an original plot in which Bowser becomes a playable ally, a giant sword named Exor planted in the castle, a great villain called Smithy and seven stars to find. Square creates two in-house heroes there, Geno and Mallow, whom fans have been demanding ever since. Long impossible to find in Europe, the game had a second life with its Switch remake of November 2023, which sold more than three million copies in a few weeks.
Read the profile
Since 2000 · seriesThe Paper Mario seriesSix episodes, two eras, one splitBorn on the Nintendo 64 in 2000 at Intelligent Systems as a spiritual successor to Super Mario RPG, the series turns the Mushroom Kingdom into paper cut-outs — a graphic choice that is also a mechanic, since folding and thickness become combat tools. The first era rests on the partners : eight on N64, seven on GameCube, each with one power in battle and another in exploration. The second tries stickers then origami. This guide explains where to start according to what you expect from an RPG.
Read the profile
2020 · SwitchPaper Mario: The Origami KingA folded kingdom, five streamersThe sixth episode in the series, released on 17 July 2020 everywhere on the same day, exclusively on Switch. King Olly has folded the Mushroom Kingdom and belted it with five streamers to be cut; his own sister Olivia joins Mario against him. The big idea is the ring battle : before striking, you rotate concentric circles to line up the enemies, which turns every turn into a small puzzle. Add to that the 1,000-Fold Arms and a very spectacular staging.
Read the profile
2009 · Nintendo DSBowser's Inside StoryPlaying inside the Koopa KingThe third instalment of Mario & Luigi, developed by AlphaDream and released in Europe on 9 October 2009 on Nintendo DS. Its wager: two adventures run in parallel. The brothers explore the inside of Bowser's body while he acts on the outside, also under the player's control — so that an obstacle swallowed outside becomes scenery inside. The giant battles have you rotate the console, the Blorbs serve as the common thread, and Fawful makes his return. The French title is an acknowledged nod to Jules Verne.
Read the profile
2015 · Nintendo 3DSMario & Luigi: Paper JamTwo series, three heroes, two BowsersThe fifth episode of Mario & Luigi, developed by AlphaDream and released in Europe on 4 December 2015 on 3DS under the title Paper Jam Bros. Its starting point is literal: Paper Mario springs out of a magic book and lands in the two brothers' world with volume. The result is a playable trio, new Trio attacks, two Bowsers and two Peaches on screen, Papercraft to assemble and paper Toads to rescue. The amiibo cards play a reinforcement role in battle.
Read the profile
2024 · SwitchMario & Luigi: BrothershipThe brothers' return, nine years onReleased on 7 November 2024, it is the first episode in the series designed directly for a home console — and the first signed by Acquire rather than AlphaDream, which closed in 2019. Destination Concordia, an archipelago of floating islands that have to be reconnected to one another, which gives the game its structure and its theme. The battles keep the series' millimetric tempo and add Luigi Logic and the Snoutlet; the good-natured humour has not budged. Critical reception was broadly positive.
Read the profile
An alliance from 1996, two series that came out of it, and one constant: here the characters talk, argue and shout at one another. It is in this branch, and nowhere else with this density, that the Mushroom Kingdom earned its lore — most of the figures profiled on the enemies page come from an RPG.
The others' turn👻When the supporting cast takes the controller
seven games in which Mario is not the hero — sometimes even the victim
Nintendo has taken up a habit that sets Mario apart from most franchises: regularly handing the lead role to someone else, and taking the opportunity to change genre completely. Luigi does not inherit a platform game but a ghost hunt; Peach does not inherit a Mario in a dress but a game of emotions and then a game of stage roles; Captain Toad inherits a game in which you do not jump.
The clearest reversal dates from 2005. Since 1985, the plot had not moved — Bowser kidnaps Peach, Mario crosses the kingdom. Super Princess Peach inverts the formula : Bowser captures Mario, Luigi and several Toads, and it is the princess who sets off alone to the rescue. It would take until 2024 and Showtime! for her to find a lead role again.
These games have one thing in common in their writing: they start from a character constraint and make a mechanic of it. Luigi is afraid, so he trembles and the vacuum becomes the weapon. Captain Toad carries too heavy a pack, so he never jumps and the level has to rotate in his place. The limitation is not a handicap to be worked around, it is the subject of the game.
2001 · GameCubeLuigi's MansionLuigi the hero, Mario to be savedA GameCube launch game in 2001, signed by Nintendo EAD, it inverts the roles at a stroke: it is Mario who has disappeared, and Luigi who has to find him in a haunted mansion, torch and vacuum in hand. The mixture of exploration, puzzles and macabre humour has no equivalent in the saga, and the gothic cartoon atmosphere was enough to found a series of three episodes. Next Level Games would take up the torch for the next two. It is the game that brought Luigi out of the shadows.
Read the profile
2013 · Nintendo 3DSLuigi's Mansion 2Five mansions instead of oneTwelve years separate the first mansion from this sequel, released in Europe on 28 March 2013 on 3DS under the title Dark Moon in North America. Next Level Games completely rethinks its structure: rather than a single place to be explored in one go, five mansions cut into missions in the misty Evershade Valley. The vacuum becomes the Poltergust 5000, and the ScareScraper introduces the series' first multiplayer mode. An HD version came back on Switch in 2024.
Read the profile
2019 · SwitchLuigi's Mansion 3Seventeen booby-trapped floorsReleased on 31 October 2019 everywhere on the same day, developed by Next Level Games, the third episode swaps the mansion for a luxury hotel: the Last Resort and its seventeen floors, each with its own theme and its own ghost. The Poltergust G-00 becomes a Swiss army knife — suction cup, burst, light shock — and the real novelty is Gooigi, a gelatinous double who gets through where Luigi cannot, which opens up a whole grammar of two-body puzzles. A generous multiplayer mode rounds it off.
Read the profile
2005 · Nintendo DSSuper Princess PeachThe princess sets off to save the plumberDeveloped by TOSE, released on 20 October 2005 in Japan and 26 May 2006 in Europe on Nintendo DS. Bowser has kidnapped Mario, Luigi and several Toads thanks to a stolen sceptre, and Peach crosses Vibe Island to free them. Its mechanic is unique in the saga: four moods — joy, sadness, anger, calm — each give a power, sadness watering the plants and anger setting obstacles alight. She is accompanied by Perry, a talking umbrella who was once human.
Read the profile
2024 · SwitchPrincess Peach: Showtime!A dozen roles, as many gamesDeveloped by Good-Feel, the studio behind the woollen Yoshis, and released worldwide on 22 March 2024 on Switch. Peach takes the Sparkle Theater back from the villains, and puts on, room after room, stage costumes that radically change the way you play: swordfighter, detective, pastry chef, ninja. Each role becomes a small self-contained adventure, which makes the game an ideal way in for a beginner. It is her first leading role since Super Princess Peach, nineteen years earlier.
Read the profile
2014 · Wii UCaptain Toad: Treasure TrackerDioramas you rotateBorn from the bonus levels of Super Mario 3D World, this spin-off from Nintendo EAD Tokyo with 1-UP Studio came out on Wii U on 13 November 2014 in Japan. Its golden rule: the Captain never jumps, too weighed down by his pack. The level therefore becomes a miniature tableau you turn around to discover a passage, a staircase, a hidden room — a puzzle game disguised as a platformer. The Captain and Toadette hunt treasure there against the bird Wingo, before a rebirth on Switch and 3DS.
Read the profile
2004 · Game Boy AdvanceMario vs. Donkey KongPuzzle-platforming and Mini-MariosReleased in 2004 on Game Boy Advance, developed by Nintendo Software Technology — one of Nintendo's rare American studios, which gives it a tone of its own. The game sets itself up as the direct heir of the 1994 Donkey Kong on Game Boy: each level is a two-stage puzzle, reaching the key then the door, then recovering the Mini-Mario toy. The gorilla has cleaned out a toy factory, and the oldest rivalry in video games is off again. A whole sub-series was born from it, and a Switch remake came out in 2024.
Read the profile
Seven games, seven different genres — ghost hunting, a game of moods, theatre, brain-teaser, puzzle-platforming. It is the most heterogeneous branch in the ludography, and that is no accident: when the hero changes, the question “what can he do?” is posed all over again.
The neighbouring sagas🧶Wario and Yoshi: two series that left home
seven entries born in a Mario, become franchises in their own right
Two characters introduced as gameplay elements ended up carrying off their own catalogue. Yoshi appears in 1990 as a mount in Super Mario World; five years later, he inherits a series that today counts nine episodes. Wario appears in 1992 as the antagonist of Super Mario Land 2; two years later, he opens Wario Land, then WarioWare in 2003.
Their interest, here, is that they advance by contradicting the parent house. Wario Land inverts platforming's basic rule: you cannot die, you only lose time and gold, and the damage you take becomes useful transformations. WarioWare pushes the contradiction further still by reducing a game to three seconds. Yoshi, for his part, replaces the nervous jump with eggs, the flutter jump and an art direction that changes with every episode — chalk, pop-up book, knitted wool, cut card.
These series remain linked to the main ludography by their creators as much as by their characters: Takashi Tezuka, Miyamoto's right hand since 1985, is also the father of Yoshi, and Hideki Konno worked on Yoshi's Island before steering Mario Kart.
Since 1994 · seriesThe Wario Land sagaAn indestructible hero, a saga in reverseBorn in 1994 on Game Boy as a direct spin-off of Super Mario Land, the series made Wario far more than a rival: a hero with rules of his own. Here, there is no princess to save but mountains of gold to pocket, and above all a character who is practically indestructible — a blow taken does not kill, it transforms, flattens, sets alight or inflates, and each state opens a different passage. This guide retraces every instalment, from the Virtual Boy Wario Land of 1995 to Wario Land 4 on Game Boy Advance, and the role of Captain Syrup.
Read the profile
2003 · GameCubeWario WorldThe only Wario in 3D platformingReleased in Europe on 20 June 2003 on GameCube, developed not by Nintendo but by Treasure, the studio behind Gunstar Heroes and Ikaruga, known for its sense of impact. The result is a brutal Wario, who does not jump on his enemies but grabs them and smashes them: brute force literally becomes the game's engine. The plot turns on a black jewel that corrupts the fellow's treasure, and the adventure unfolds across four contrasting worlds, with forty Spritelings to free. Japan only received it on 27 May 2004.
Read the profile
2008 · WiiWario Land: The Shake DimensionThe last two-dimensional Wario LandDeveloped by Good-Feel and released in Europe on 26 September 2008 on Wii, it closes the series' 2D lineage in style. Its signature mechanic exploits the controller: you shake the Wii Remote to empty a sack, break an obstacle or trigger an earthquake. Every level follows the same arc — free a Merfle at the far end of the setting, then flee against the clock back the way you came. Its animation is entirely hand-drawn by Production I.G, and its ending has stayed famous for its funny cruelty. Wario's objective: the bottomless Coin Sack.
Read the profile
Since 2003 · seriesWarioWareThe art of the three-second gameLaunched in 2003 with Mega Microgames on Game Boy Advance and its two hundred microgames, the series rests on an idea nobody else has pushed as far: each challenge lasts three to five seconds and comes down to a single action — press, dodge, catch, blow, squeeze. You string them together at an increasing pace until you crack. Twelve games later, the series has married every console gadget: a rotation-sensor cartridge for Twisted!, a touch screen for Touched!. The action takes place in Diamond City, where Mona and Ashley work for Wario's studio.
Read the profile
Since 1995 · seriesThe Yoshi sagaThirty years, from pastel to knittingIt all starts on 5 August 1995 with Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, whose title still betrays the parentage. The dinosaur replaces Mario's vocabulary with his own there: swallowing, laying eggs, throwing them, and cushioning his fall with the flutter jump. The series then crossed machines and materials — Touch & Go, Island DS signed by Artoon, New Island, then the handmade era with Woolly World and Crafted World. The ninth instalment, Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, came out on Switch 2 in 2026. This guide runs through the whole lineage, instalment by instalment.
Read the profile
1997 · Nintendo 64Yoshi's StoryEating thirty fruits, and nothing elseDeveloped by Nintendo EAD, released in Japan on 21 December 1997 then in Europe on 10 May 1998, it is the only main Yoshi episode on the Nintendo 64. Its visual choice turns the island into an animated picture book you leaf through page by page. And its rule changes everything: the objective of a level is not to reach the end, but to eat exactly thirty fruits — six baby Yoshis, each with their favourite fruit, and a Smile Meter that rises according to satisfaction. Six pages, a single path per playthrough, and Baby Bowser for having stolen the Super Happy Tree.
Read the profile
2015 · Wii UYoshi's Woolly WorldEvery pixel replaced by woolSigned by Good-Feel and released in Europe on 26 June 2015 on Wii U, it is the direct spiritual successor to the same studio's yarn Kirby. The concept comes down to one word: textile. Wool, felt and fabric replace everything on screen, from cotton clouds to knitted platforms, and the eggs become balls of yarn you throw to knit platforms or unravel obstacles. Kamek and Baby Bowser have unravelled the herd; it has to be sewn back together. Co-operation, amiibo and a 3DS remake with Poochy round it off.
Read the profile
Two characters born as accessories, seven entries in this ludography, and dozens of games in all. It is the best proof of the Nintendo method: a gameplay idea strong enough ends up deserving its own catalogue.
The best-selling branch🏁Mario Kart: thirty-three years of drifting
six entries for the best-selling racing series in history
It all starts with Super Mario Kart, on 27 August 1992 on the Super Nintendo, and a concept that fits on one line: racing characters from the Mario universe on tracks riddled with traps, with items to attack and defend. The idea is not the race, it is the gap between the places. The items you receive depend on your rank, so that the last can hope and the first never sleeps easy — the famous blue shell is the most brutal expression of that principle.
The discreet architect of this branch is Hideki Konno, who joined Nintendo in April 1986: co-director of the first episode, sole director of Mario Kart 64, then the saga's long-standing producer. The sound owes a great deal to Kenta Nagata, who arrived at Nintendo EAD in 1996 and single-handedly wrote the whole Mario Kart 64 soundtrack — with a rule he had set himself of on no account making “racing game music”.
This page does not go track by track: that is the job of the Mario Kartpillar, which takes over with the items, the playable characters and the layouts. Here, we place the episodes within the ludography and say what each one changed.
The best-selling Mario gameMario Kart 8 Deluxe
28 April 2017 · Nintendo Switch
The case is unique in the ludography: the best-selling Mario game in history is not a new episode. Released on 28 April 2017, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the port of a title that appeared on Wii U in 2014, a console that had sold in confidential numbers. On Switch, the same game found a colossal audience — the machine's success carried the software's, to the point of making it a commercial textbook case.
The port was not lazy for all that: from day one it delivered the entire content of the original version, expansions included, where Wii U buyers had had to acquire it piece by piece. The Booster Course Pass then took the offering from 48 to 96 layouts, doubling the game six years after its release — a longevity few titles achieve.
On the figures, you have to know how to read two sources. The Guinness ranking certifies 67.35 million copies as of 31 December 2024 ; the counters have since passed seventy million. Both numbers are correct, they simply are not from the same day.
Why it does not age
Assisted steering makes the game playable from the age of five or six, while the mini-turbos and item management leave room to improve for years.
What it owes to 1996
Four-player split-screen, inherited from Mario Kart 64, remains its main argument for an evening with friends.
Its successor
Mario Kart World on Switch 2, which abandons the track menu for an open world and doubles the number of competitors.
Since 1992 · seriesThe Mario Kart seriesThe series, from Mode 7 to the open worldThe overall panorama: the origin of the series in 1992, the main episodes, the emblematic items, the playable characters and the most iconic tracks — including Rainbow Road, present in one form or another in almost every instalment. The guide also explains why the formula has held for three decades: accessible in thirty seconds, but deep enough for drifting, mini-turbos and item management to make a real difference between two players. It ends on the turning point Mario Kart World represented.
Read the profile
Since 1992 · seriesThirty years of Mario KartThe retrospective, episode by episodeWhere the previous profile gives the principles, this one runs through the complete chronology: Super Mario Kart and its Mode 7 in 1992, Mario Kart 64 in 1996, Super Circuit on Game Boy Advance in 2001, Double Dash!! and its two drivers per kart in 2003, the DS version in 2005, Mario Kart Wii in 2008, Mario Kart 7 on 3DS in 2011, Mario Kart 8 on Wii U in 2014, the Deluxe version in 2017, then Mario Kart World in 2025. It is the document to open to find out which machine holds which episode.
Read the profile
1996 · Nintendo 64Mario Kart 64Four players on one screenReleased in Japan on 14 December 1996, in North America in February 1997 and in Europe on 24 June 1997 — hence the two dates you come across everywhere for the same game. The second episode and arguably the most foundational: it moves the tracks into three dimensions and, above all, brings four players together on one television set, which turns a good Super Nintendo idea into a living-room ritual. Sixteen layouts spread over four cups, an expanded cast, and items that become legendary. The series' modern formula dates from here.
Read the profile
2019 · MobileMario Kart TourLaunched in 2019, unplugged in 2026Developed by Nintendo EPD with DeNA and released on 25 September 2019 on iOS and Android, it marks the fastest mobile launch in Nintendo's history. Its originality: tracks built on real cities — Paris, Tokyo, New York — content renewed every two weeks through themed Tours, and mechanics peculiar to the format such as Frenzy and the draw pipes. The free-to-play model and its Gold Pass caused a great deal of ink to flow. Nintendo has scheduled the closure of the online services for September 30, 2026.
Read the profile
2025 · Switch 2Mario Kart WorldThe track menu disappearsReleased on 5 June 2025 exclusively on Switch 2, the same day as the console. It is the clearest break since 1996: the track selection menu disappears in favour of an open world whose biomes are linked with no loading screen, so that you can drive from one race to the next. Up to twenty-four players race simultaneously, and the Knockout Tour mode eliminates the last-placed at every stage. The selection of layouts mixes nostalgia and new creations, and customisation is pushed further than in the previous episodes.
Read the profile
Only six entries for a branch that on its own accounts for the best-selling game in the whole ludography. The detail of the tracks, the items and the drivers is on the Mario Kart.
The Kingdom in shorts⚽The sports games: eight entries, two studios
tennis, golf, football, basketball and the Olympic Games, without ever respecting a single rule
The Mario sports games have one rule in common, and it is a rule of removal: they take out the referee. No fouls in football, no offside, shells on the court and items on the green. What remains of the sport is its gesture — striking, shooting, aiming — augmented by everything the Mushroom Kingdom can throw at it.
Two studios share most of the field. Camelot Software Planning, also the author of the Golden Sun RPGs, has held tennis since 1995 and golf since 1999 — and that double culture explains a peculiarity: the portable episodes of Mario Golf offer an adventure mode in the style of a role-playing game, in which you create your golfer and make them progress. Next Level Games, the Luigi's Mansion studio, holds football.
The branch finally counts one case apart, which is not only sporting: Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, the first official alliance between the two mascots who had symbolised the console war. It was played under licence from the International Olympic Committee, with Sega developing — and it stopped before Paris 2024.
Since 1995 · seriesThe Mario Tennis seriesThirty years on court, signed by CamelotThe series starts discreetly on 21 July 1995 with Mario's Tennis on Virtual Boy, a title in red and black relief that mainly served as a showcase for Nintendo's short-lived console. The real kick-off comes in 2000 on Nintendo 64. Then follow Mario Power Tennis and its Power Shots, the high-definition era with Open and Ultra Smash and their Chance Shots, then the return of the adventure mode with Aces. This guide covers the whole lineage through to Mario Tennis Fever on Switch 2, and points out that the series has created characters who became cult favourites.
Read the profile
2018 · SwitchMario Tennis AcesTennis that turns into a role-playing gameReleased on 22 June 2018 on Switch, developed by Camelot. Its peculiarity: the first real Adventure mode since 2005, built around an evil racket named Lucien, able to possess whoever grasps it, starting with Luigi. You have to cross the Kingdom of Bask to recover five Power Stones. On court, the Zone Shot and the Special Shot add a real tactical layer: managing your gauge becomes as important as placing your ball. The roster was expanded free of charge after launch.
Read the profile
Since 1999 · seriesThe Mario Golf seriesThe green colonised since 1999Also entrusted to Camelot, the series has accompanied almost every Nintendo machine since the Nintendo 64 episode of 1999: Toadstool Tour on GameCube, Advance Tour on Game Boy Advance, World Tour and its move to online play, then Super Rush on Switch. Its originality lies in the adventure mode of the portable versions, which has you create a golfer and level them up to the top — a real role-playing game disguised as a sports game. The guide also details the gradual expansion of the roster and the courses.
Read the profile
2021 · SwitchMario Golf: Super RushYou strike, then you run to your ballAnnounced at the Nintendo Direct of 17 February 2021 and launched worldwide on 25 June 2021, Camelot's Switch episode turns the calmest sport in the world into a speed event : instead of waiting your turn, you strike then physically run to your ball, everybody at the same time. Battle Golf pushes the idea to a free-for-all, and Golf Adventure takes up the series' RPG formula. Three newcomers make their debut on the green here: Pauline, Bill Dozer and King Bob-omb.
Read the profile
2005 · GameCubeSuper Mario StrikersFootball with no referee and no offsideReleased in 2005 on GameCube — Super Mario Strikers in North America — developed by Next Level Games. The game is not after simulation: five-a-side matches, tackles allowed, items on the pitch, no fouls given. The first goal comes quickly, and the chaos with it. Each captain has his or her profile — Mario all-round, Donkey Kong on strength, Peach and Daisy on technique — and his or her Super Strike. It is the starting point of a series that would then stay silent for nearly fifteen years.
Read the profile
2022 · SwitchMario Strikers: Battle LeagueThe return of brutal football, fifteen years onOn 10 June 2022, Next Level Games and Nintendo EPD relaunch the series on Switch with Mario Strikers: Battle League Football. The principle stays the same — five-a-side, no referee, an electrified fence that sends players back into play — but the episode adds two structuring novelties: Hyper Strikes, which are worth two goals at once and can turn a match around in the final seconds, and equipment to be fitted in order to shape each player's statistics. An online Club mode extends the affair.
Read the profile
2010 · WiiMario Sports MixA Mario game developed by Square EnixReleased in Japan on 25 November 2010 and in Europe on 28 January 2011, this Wii title is a curiosity on two counts. First it refuses the single discipline and gathers four sports on a single disc : basketball, volleyball, hockey and dodgeball. Second it is developed not by Nintendo but by Square Enix, which takes the opportunity to slip six guests from Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest in among the heroes of the Mushroom Kingdom. Their deliberately extreme statistics and their special moves make them characters apart.
Read the profile
Since 2007 · seriesMario & Sonic at the Olympic GamesThe two enemy mascots, reunitedFor nearly fifteen years, Mario and Sonic embodied the console war between Nintendo and Sega. Their on-screen reconciliation, under licence from the International Olympic Committee, is therefore something of a historic event: it is the first officially authorised meeting between the two camps. Developed by Sega with Nintendo, the series counts six instalments between 2007 and 2019, across five Nintendo consoles since the Wii, and mixes real events with dream events. It stopped there: there was no edition for Paris 2024.
Read the profile
Eight entries, and one observation that holds for the whole branch: these are sports games written by role-playing and action studios. Hence Camelot's adventure modes, Next Level Games's Hyper Strikes, and the total absence of a referee.
The living room as a battlefield🎲Mario Party: the board that breaks friendships
two entries for the best-selling party series in the world
Mario Party is born on 18 December 1998 on Nintendo 64, under Nintendo's supervision but at an outside studio, Hudson Soft, supported by CAProduction. The recipe has not budged since: a virtual board, dice, stars to buy or steal, and a mini-game between each turn to hand out the coins. The series moved to NDcube, a Nintendo subsidiary, and today passes 84 million copies — Nintendo's figure from March 2025.
What distinguishes this branch from the rest of the ludography is that it does not reward mastery. A player who is excellent at the mini-games can lose the match on a final turn, because the bonus stars fall at random. That is a design choice, not a flaw : it keeps four players of very different levels in the same game right to the end, which is exactly what you ask of a party game.
The Switch era counts three episodes — Super Mario Party in 2018, Superstars in 2021, then Super Mario Party Jamboree — and the blog's guide helps you choose which one according to the audience, the desire to play online and each person's tolerance of injustice.
Since 1998 · seriesThe Mario Party seriesTwenty-five years of boards and diceThe reference guide to the series: its birth at Hudson Soft in 1998, the handover to NDcube, the evolution of the recipe — board, stars, mini-games — and the Switch era with Super Mario Party, Superstars and Jamboree. Above all it settles a practical question: which episode to buy for a given evening, according to the players' ages and the wish to play online. You will also find the house anecdotes there, including the protective gloves Nintendo handed out after the blisters caused by the stick-rotation mini-games.
Read the profile
2021 · SwitchMario Party SuperstarsFive N64 boards and a hundred mini-gamesDeveloped by NDcube and released worldwide on 29 October 2021, the second Switch episode after Super Mario Party. Its promise comes down to one word: nostalgia. Five restored Nintendo 64 boards and about a hundred mini-games drawn from the whole history of the series. Above all, it corrects the main criticism made of the previous episode by abandoning the shared car and going back to classic turn-by-turn play, each player advancing on their own. The entire game is playable online from beginning to end, which was not a given in this series.
Read the profile
Only two entries, for a series that has spent twenty-five years doing exactly the same thing — and is right to do so. A party does not reinvent itself: it gets fine-tuned.
Away from home🤝Crossovers: Mario at other people's houses
three entries where the Mushroom Kingdom meets other universes
Mario is central enough at Nintendo to serve as a bargaining chip. He does not merely appear as a guest: in Super Smash Bros., he has had top billing since the first episode, and the Mushroom Kingdom on its own supplies a whole contingent of fighters. Elsewhere, the meeting changes genre outright — turn-based tactics with Ubisoft, athletics under Olympic licence with Sega.
The interesting point about these games, from the ludography's point of view, is what they quote. Mario's moves in Smash are taken directly from the episodes profiled above: the Fireball comes from the Fire Flower, the Cape from Super Mario World, the water jet from Sunshine's F.L.U.D.D. . His Final Smashes read like postcards from the lore.
That leaves one category this page does not profile but which should be flagged: the hiddencrossovers, the ones that live inside a Mario game. The most famous is Culex, a secret boss with the look of Final Fantasy concealed in Super Mario RPG — a direct trace of Square's stay in the Mushroom Kingdom.
Since 1999 · seriesMario in Smash Bros.The Kingdom's clan in the ringCreated by Masahiro Sakurai in 1999, the Super Smash Bros. series makes Mario its headline act from the very first episode on Nintendo 64, and he has not missed an instalment since. This analysis does not ask who would win the fight: it lists the Mushroom Kingdom's contingent present in the ring, breaks down the moves borrowed from the games profiled on this page, and reads the Final Smashes — including Mario Finale — as condensed pieces of lore. It is the best angle from which to measure what the saga has left in Nintendo's culture.
Read the profile
2017 · SwitchMario + RabbidsTactics arrive in the KingdomIn 2017, nobody believed in it: marrying the most respected plumber in video games to Ubisoft's Rabbids looked like heresy. Kingdom Battle nonetheless became one of the Switch's great successes, by bringing an entirely new genre to the Mushroom Kingdom — turn-based tactics, on a grid, with three actions per turn and a spirit close to XCOM. The sequel Sparks of Hope, in 2022, abandons the grid for free movement. The idea was born at Ubisoft Milan, and it produced hybrid heroes such as Rabbid Peach.
Read the profile
Cross-seriesThe official collaborationsThe panorama of official meetingsThis dossier lists the crossovers validated by Nintendo, with their dates: the Zelda nod as early as 1999 in Smash, then Link playable in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe; the bridges with Animal Crossing in 2014 and 2021, from decoration to karting; the shared history with Donkey Kong, the oldest of them all; Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games; Mario + Rabbids in 2017; and the arrival of LEGO Super Mario in 2020. A chronological table closes the dossier.
Read the profile
Three entries, and a lesson in position: Mario is not invited to other people's houses, it is the others who come to his. Even the Olympic licence and Ubisoft had to play with shells.
Crossing to the other side🛠️The games where you build instead of playing
three entries on the strangest branch of the ludography
There is a family of Mario games in which the objective is not to finish a level but to make one. It begins in 1992 with an object that is hard to classify: Mario Paint is not a platform game, it is a creative studio — drawing, animation, music — sold with a mouse for the Super Nintendo. Twenty-three years later, Super Mario Maker draws the logical conclusion and gives players the level designer's tools.
The shift is more important than it looks. Since 1985, a Mario taught its grammar through level design; from 2015 onwards, millions of players write in that grammar. The community has produced categories Nintendo had not foreseen: Kaizo, in which every movement must be millimetric, narrative stages, purely artistic levels, and mechanical innovations later reused by other creators.
The branch has also left an unexpected trace outside the game: the built-in composer of Mario Paint became an internet phenomenon, used to recreate whole pieces of music long after the console's life had ended. The title came back in 2025 in the Nintendo Classics catalogue.
1992 · Super NintendoMario PaintA studio sold with a mouseReleased in Japan on 14 July 1992, then in North America in August and in Europe on 10 December. It is not a platform game but a creative software suite : you draw in it, you animate in it, you compose in it. Its hardware interest is real, since it served as a showcase for the Super NES Mouse, sold in the same package. It nonetheless slips a game into the middle of the software, Gnat Attack, a fly hunt with the mouse. Its music composer had a second life on the web, and the title came back in Nintendo Classics in 2025.
Read the profile
2019 · SwitchSuper Mario Maker 2Five styles, a complete editorReleased on 28 June 2019 exclusively on Switch, it is the direct sequel to the Super Mario Maker that appeared on Wii U in 2015 and considerably widens the field of the possible. Five game styles are available, including one new to the series: Super Mario 3D World, which brings its own pieces and its Super Bell. The game also adds a solo Story mode, devoted to rebuilding Peach's castle, which serves as a demonstration of what the editor allows. Free updates fleshed out the toolbox after launch.
Read the profile
Cross-seriesThe community's levelsWhat players have made of itSince 2015, millions of levels have been shared, and this panorama sorts them into categories. Traditionalstages, which respect classic design. Kaizolevels, whose difficulty rests on movements accurate to the pixel and the frame. Narrative or artisticlevels, in which you barely play any more but watch — right up to playable pixel art. And mechanical innovations, those assembly tricks that divert objects from their intended use. The dossier also presents the creators who have become emblematic and the effect of that community on the series.
Read the profile
Three entries, one same gesture: crossing to the other side of the controller. It is the only branch of the ludography where the content keeps growing without Nintendo touching it.
The other half of the catalogue👽The games apart, forgotten and never released
seven entries for what an honest ludography cannot pass over in silence
A ludography that lists only the successes is a brochure. This section gathers what the rest of the page would leave aside: the puzzle game that made Mario a doctor, the educational game few people finished, the title released on another manufacturer's console, the two mobile forays, and the games that never left Japan — or never existed at all.
Three of these entries on their own explain why the total count of Mario games is impossible to settle. The Japanese exclusives list unidentified objects such as All Night Nippon Super Mario Bros., sponsored by a radio station, or I am a Teacher: Super Mario no Sweater, a knitting-pattern design program released in 1986. The cancelled projects add a layer of ghost titles. And virtual reality describes official experiences that were never sold as games.
The case of Hotel Mario deserves a mention of its own, because it was not developed under Nintendo's supervision. It comes from a failed industrial agreement: a CD drive project for the Super Nintendo fell through, but Philips kept the right to use certain characters on its own console. Hence a Mario game developed without Nintendo — and cut scenes that became one of the most persistent memes on the internet.
1990 · NESDr. MarioThe plumber in a white coatReleased in Japan on 27 July 1990, first on Famicom then on Game Boy, produced by Gunpei Yokoi. The principle is a falling-block puzzle: you line up two-colour capsules in a jar to eliminate viruses of three colours, named Fever, Chill and Weird. The split-screen duel quickly became its trademark, and its two pieces of music — one of which carries the name of its virus — went far beyond the game. A whole small medical saga was born from it, through to Dr. Mario 64 and Dr. Mario World.
Read the profile
1993 · PC and Super NintendoMario's Time MachineAn educational game about human historyPublished by The Software Toolworks and released in 1993 on PC and Super Nintendo, then on NES in 1994. The plot is an acknowledged pretext: Bowser has built a time machine called the Timulator and stolen objects across the ages; Mario has to return them to their period of origin. It is therefore an educational game disguised as an adventure, in which you learn by putting artefacts back. The versions differ appreciably from one another, which makes it an object of curiosity for anyone interested in the margins of the ludography.
Read the profile
1994 · Philips CD-iHotel MarioThe Mario born of a failed agreementReleased in 1994 on the Philips CD-i, it is the product of an aborted partnership: Nintendo and Philips were to create a CD drive for the Super Nintendo, the project failed, and Philips kept the right to use certain characters. The game, developed without Nintendo's supervision, consists in closing all the doors on each floor of a hotel — gameplay that still divides opinion. What made it famous is its animated cut scenes, which became one of the most indestructible memes on the internet, far beyond the video game audience.
Read the profile
2016 · MobileSuper Mario RunThe first Mario designed for the thumbMiyamoto presented it in person on the stage of an Apple keynote in September 2016, which says enough about the importance of the turn. Released on iOS on 15 December 2016 then on Android in March 2017, it is the first original platform game in the series designed for the touch screen : Mario runs by himself, you touch the screen to jump. Three modes were available at launch, and the business model — a single purchase to unlock the whole game, rather than micro-payments — caused a great deal of ink to flow. The downloads, for their part, were massive.
Read the profile
Cross-seriesThe Japanese exclusivesThose that never left the archipelagoThis list gathers the titles that stayed in Japan, and they are stranger than you might imagine. Super Mario Bros. Special and All Night Nippon Super Mario Bros., both from 1986, the second sponsored by a radio show. I am a Teacher: Super Mario no Sweater, a program for designing knitted jumper patterns for the Famicom Disk System. The BS Super Mario Collection, broadcast by satellite in 1997. Or indeed Excitebike: Bun Bun Mario Battle Stadium. So many reasons why no total count of Mario games commands agreement.
Read the profile
Cross-seriesThe cancelled gamesThe saga's ghost titlesAn investigation into what never came out, and into what is actually known about it. Super Mario's Wacky Worlds, designed in 1993 as a spiritual successor to Super Mario World on CD-i, with a playable prototype. Mario Takes America, on the same machine. A Super Mario RPG 2 on Nintendo 64. Super Mario 128 on GameCube, whose work ended up feeding other games rather than being lost. Then Mario Motors on DS, Super Mario Spikers on Wii, Donkey Kong Racing on GameCube and Mario Artist: Game Maker on 64DD.
Read the profile
Cross-seriesMario in virtual realityWhat really exists under a headsetThe dossier sorts the official from the homemade, which is useful because the subject attracts a great deal of approximation. On the official side, two things only: the virtual reality mode added to Super Mario Odyssey by free update, playable with the Nintendo Labo VR kit and its three exclusive mini-levels, and Mario Kart VR, an immersive arcade attraction. The rest is a matter of emulation and community projects. The guide also details the technical limits and what Nintendo has hinted at for the future.
Read the profile
Seven entries that feature in no ranking, and without which the ludography would be false. A catalogue spanning forty-five years necessarily contains industrial accidents, educational experiments and games that did not outlive their console.
The two tables📅The chronology, and each machine with its games
where each episode sits, and what it came out on
The two tables below are generated from the same data as the profiles on this page: a date that changes in a card changes in the table, and vice versa. The first runs through the main line — the origins, 2D and 3D — in order of first release. The second sorts all the dated games on the page by original machine.
One clarification is essential for reading these dates without going wrong: the year given is that of the first release, generally the Japanese one. The gap with Europe can be considerable. Super Mario Bros. 3 appears on Famicom in October 1988 and only reaches us in August 1991, nearly three years later; Mario Kart 64 comes out in Japan in December 1996 and in Europe in June 1997, which explains why you read both years for the same game.
A second, subtler clarification: the original machine is not necessarily the one you play it on today. Super Mario 3D World was born on Wii U in 2013 and has lived on Switch since 2021; Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door was born on GameCube in 2004 and was remade in 2024; Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is a port of a Wii U game. The table gives the birth, the profiles give the re-releases.
What these two tables make visible is the rhythm and its breaks. Four platform games in five years on NES and Game Boy at the turn of the 1980s, then a big gap: between Super Mario World in 1990 and New Super Mario Bros. in 2006, the main 2D line disappears for fifteen years, absorbed by the move into the third dimension. Two consoles have hosted two major 3D episodes: the Wii with the two Galaxy games, and the Switch with Odyssey then the port of 3D World.
The practical question🎯Where to start, and in what order
here we stop telling the saga and choose what to play this evening
One worry has to be cleared up before anything else: the saga imposes no narrative continuity. Each episode tells its own story, with the same characters and demanding nothing of what came before. You can start with a game from 2023 without having touched the one from 1985, and you lose nothing.
The order that genuinely helps is therefore not chronological but by branch. The play-order guide puts it like this: first choose a family — 2D, 3D, the RPGs, the spin-offs — then go down it in release order. Within a branch, chronology becomes useful, because it makes legible what each episode adds to the one before.
That leaves a more down-to-earth question, which is often the real one: who are you going to play with, and for how long? A game that is excellent solo can be mediocre with four, and the reverse is true too. The table below decides by profile rather than by ranking.
Three traps to avoid when starting out
Starting with the 1985 game. Super Mario Bros. is a great game, but it is a poor way in: its difficulty forgives nothing, it had no save function originally, and it assumes an arcade culture forty years have erased. It is better savoured in third or fourth position.
Confusing Super Mario Bros. 2 with a Mario. The one the West received in 1988 is the recostuming of a Japanese promotional game, and it works differently from all the others — you pull enemies up instead of jumping on them. That is fascinating when you know, disconcerting when you do not.
Taking a spin-off to discover the series. Mario Kart and Mario Party are excellent games, but they teach nothing of what makes a Mario: the jump, reading a level, the relationship to space. To be kept for the evening with friends, not for the discovery.
Which Mario game to start according to the situation
| Your situation |
The game |
Why that one |
| You have never played a Mario |
Super Mario Odyssey |
No punishment — the life counter has gone — open kingdoms you leave when you like, and a mechanic that teaches several dozen movements without ever changing the controller. |
| You want classic platforming |
Super Mario Bros. Wonder |
2D in its most accomplished state, with assist badges to equip if a level puts up a fight, and up to four characters on screen. |
| You are playing with a five- or six-year-old |
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe |
Assisted steering stops you leaving the track: the child finishes their races from the very first session, and that is what counts at that age. |
| You are playing four-player on the same sofa |
Mario Party Superstars |
The mini-games are understood in three seconds, chance keeps everyone in the game, and this episode has gone back to classic turn-by-turn play. |
| You want a story and dialogue |
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door |
The summit of the RPG branch, accessible at last thanks to the May 2024 remake. Battles staged like a piece of theatre, audience included. |
| You want to play co-operatively, the two of you |
Luigi's Mansion 3 |
The second player controls Gooigi, the gooey double: the puzzles are designed for two bodies, not for the same one twice. |
| You are after a real challenge |
Super Mario Galaxy 2 |
A hundred and twenty Green Stars after the end of the story, and “The Perfect Run” at the end of it — a level with no checkpoint that has broken seasoned players. |
| You want to build your own levels |
Super Mario Maker 2 |
Five game styles, a Story mode that serves as a demonstration, and millions of shared creations to try without building anything yourself. |
| You mostly play on public transport |
Super Mario 3D Land |
The first 3D Mario designed for playing on the move, cut into short levels you finish between two stops rather than into large open grounds. |
| You want to understand where all the rest comes from |
Super Mario Bros. 3 |
The world map, the inventory, the costumes and the multiple bosses: four inventions from 1988 still present in the Switch episodes. |
One last landmark, for the curious rather than for beginners: the saga's hidden face is far harder than its reputation. Champion's Road in Super Mario 3D World, The Perfect Run and Grandmaster Galaxy in Galaxy 2, Odyssey's Darker Side, Lakitu's Wall in Yoshi's Island — the full list has plenty to keep you busy for a long time.
Who signed what🎼Who makes the Mario games
the names behind the episodes on this page, and what each of them actually signed
A ludography without its authors remains a list of boxes. Yet the breaks identified above almost all carry a signature: the 1996 camera and Galaxy's targeting come down to a director trained in cinema, the portable 2D of the 1980s to an engineer who never drew Mario, racing to a producer whose name nobody knows.
One fact this table makes visible better than any text could: the saga is not the work of a single man. Shigeru Miyamoto joined Nintendo in 1977 as a plain artist, for want of a designer's post, and signed Donkey Kong four years later; but from 1985 onwards he worked as a duo with Takashi Tezuka, and the portable branch as much as the 3D branch largely escapes him.
One received idea to correct along the way, because it is a stubborn one: the music of Super Mario RPG is not by Nobuo Uematsu. It is by Yoko Shimomura, who passed through Capcom — including Street Fighter II — before joining Square, and who then signed almost the whole Mario & Luigi saga.
The craftspeople behind the games profiled on this page
| Name |
Role |
What he or she signed here |
| Shigeru Miyamoto |
Creator, director, then producer |
Donkey Kong (1981), Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario 64. Then producer of the rest. |
| Gunpei Yokoi |
Engineer, head of the R&D1 studio |
Producer of Mario Bros. (1983), of Super Mario Land (1989) and of Dr. Mario. Miyamoto's mentor, and father of the Game Boy. |
| Takashi Tezuka |
Game designer, director, producer |
Miyamoto's right-hand man from Super Mario Bros. onwards. Director of Super Mario World, co-creator of Yoshi, producer of Super Mario Bros. Wonder. |
| Yoshiaki Koizumi |
Director, then producer |
Super Mario Sunshine, director of Super Mario Galaxy, producer of Super Mario Odyssey. The camera and the targeting of the 3D games are largely his doing. |
| Hideki Konno |
Director, then producer |
Co-director of Super Mario Kart (1992), alone at the controls of Mario Kart 64, then the historic producer of the whole racing series. |
| Satoru Iwata |
Programmer, fourth president of Nintendo |
No one game on this page in particular, but the era that made New Super Mario Bros. and the Wii episodes possible: the DS and the Wii, from May 2002 onwards. |
| Koji Kondo |
Nintendo's first in-house composer |
The World 1-1 theme of Super Mario Bros. and the saga's sound palette — aquatic, underground, castle. Music supervisor on the 3D episodes. |
| Mahito Yokota |
Composer and orchestrator |
The shift to the orchestra: everything rewritten for fifty musicians on Super Mario Galaxy, then Galaxy 2, 3D World and the sound of Odyssey. |
| Yoko Shimomura |
Composer |
Super Mario RPG in 1996, then almost the whole Mario & Luigi saga. No, the 1996 soundtrack is not by Nobuo Uematsu. |
| Kenta Nagata |
Composer and sound director |
The whole soundtrack of Mario Kart 64, written alone as soon as he arrived at Nintendo EAD in 1996, with the instruction not to make “racing game music”. |
| Intelligent Systems |
Studio |
The whole Paper Mario series since 2000, including The Thousand-Year Door and The Origami King. |
| AlphaDream then Acquire |
Studios |
The Mario & Luigi series: AlphaDream up to Paper Jam and its closure in 2019, Acquire for Brothership in 2024. |
| Camelot Software Planning |
Studio |
Mario Tennis since 1995 and Mario Golf since 1999, role-playing-style adventure modes included. |
| Next Level Games |
Studio |
Super Mario Strikers and Mario Strikers: Battle League, plus Luigi's Mansion 2 and 3. |
| Good-Feel |
Studio |
Wario Land: The Shake Dimension, Yoshi's Woolly World and Princess Peach: Showtime!. |
Fifteen names for sixty-nine entries, and a distribution that explains a great deal: the outside studios — Intelligent Systems, Camelot, AlphaDream, Next Level Games, Good-Feel — hold most of the side branches, while Nintendo keeps platforming in-house. It is that division which allows the ludography to be so varied without ever contradicting itself.
Frequently asked questions❓We answer your questions
what players look for most often before choosing a Mario game
How many Mario games have been released since 1981?
There is no official count, and for a simple reason: nobody agrees on what counts. Should the sports spin-offs be included, the re-releases, the compilations, the mobile games, the Japanese exclusives that never left the archipelago? Sticking to titles in which Mario or one of his close circle holds a playable role, you go well beyond two hundred. This page profiles 69 : the main games, whole series treated as a single entity, and cross-cutting dossiers such as the cancelled projects.
Which Mario game should you start with when you have never played one?
With Super Mario Odyssey if you want 3D, with Super Mario Bros. Wonder if you prefer 2D. Both are on Switch, can be finished without demanding specialist reflexes, and lend themselves to two-player play. Odyssey has even removed the life counter, which takes away the genre's last punishment. The first Super Mario Bros., from 1985, is an excellent game, but it is a poor way in: its difficulty forgives nothing.
Do you have to follow the release order to play the Mario games?
No. The saga imposes no narrative continuity: each episode tells its own story and is sufficient in itself. The play-order guide recommends instead grouping by sub-series — 2D on one side, 3D on the other, the RPGs apart — then going down each branch in release order. Chronology is useful at that point, and at that point only: it makes visible what each episode adds to the one before.
Does Donkey Kong count as the first Mario game?
Yes, even if the name is not there yet. Donkey Kong, released on 9 July 1981, features a carpenter called Jumpman — it is the same character. He becomes a plumber two years later in Mario Bros., the arcade cabinet that gives him his name, his brother Luigi, the pipes and the POW block. The mushroom platform games only begin in 1985.
Why do you read two different sales figures for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe?
Because they do not date from the same day. The Guinness ranking certifies 67.35 million copies as of 31 December 2024 ; the counters have since gone past seventy million. Both numbers are correct. What does not move, on the other hand, is the ranking: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe dominates the ludography, even though it is not even a new episode — it is the port of a game released on Wii U in 2014 in relative indifference.
Which Mario game should you choose for a six-year-old?
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe with assisted steering, which stops you leaving the track, or Mario Party Superstars whose mini-games are understood in three seconds. In platforming, Wonder lets you choose an assist badge and play five-player. The blog's family selection also details the titles to avoid with the youngest players.
What is the difference between a 2D Mario and a 3D Mario?
It is not a question of era: the two lines have been advancing in parallel since 1996. In 2D, the level is read at a glance and the difficulty comes from the precision of the jump. In 3D, the difficulty comes from reading space and placing the camera, and the objective changes: you no longer head right, you collect stars or moons. The comparison New Super Mario Bros. versus Wonder sheds light on the same gap inside 2D.
What are the Mario RPGs and which one should you start with?
There are three families. Super Mario RPG (1996) is the ancestor, born of an alliance between Nintendo and Square. Paper Mario turns the kingdom into paper cut-outs and has six main episodes. Mario & Luigi has you steer both brothers at the same time, with battles on a millimetric tempo. To start with, take The Thousand-Year Door : its 2024 Switch remake makes the branch's most adored episode accessible at last.
Are there Mario games you can no longer buy?
Yes, and the cases are of three kinds. The games that get unplugged : Mario Kart Tour closes its online services on 30 September 2026. The games never released here, such as All Night Nippon Super Mario Bros. or the BS Super Mario Collection broadcast by satellite in 1997, listed in the dossier on the Japanese exclusives. And the games never released at all : Super Mario 128, Mario Takes America, Super Mario RPG 2, all detailed in the investigation into the cancelled projects.
What is the hardest passage in the whole saga?
The blog's ranking puts Champion's Road at the top, the final level of Super Mario 3D World : no checkpoint, conveyor belts, lasers and synchronised platforms. Next come The Perfect Run and Grandmaster Galaxy in Galaxy 2, then the Darker Side ofOdyssey. The detail is in the list of the hardest levels.
