1. Super Mario World (SNES)

This is it. Super Mario World. The best 2D Mario game Nintendo ever made is thus the best Mario game overall. Elegant and simple yet challenging and complex, the 1990 pack-in launch game for the SNES has aged like a fine Bordeaux: silky smooth and exquisitely harmonized. It controls like a dream. The pixel art still looks great. And each of its 73 levels offers something unique, with puzzles that evolve as new block types are unlocked and even a visual overhaul once you reach a certain point.

It’s not as daring as Super Mario Bros. 3 or as ambitious as Super Mario Galaxy 2, but it’s undoubtedly the most balanced and well-rounded package in the series. Feathers transform Mario into a gravity-defying superhero. Different-colored Yoshi harness various magical abilities from fire balls to mini-earthquakes. And ingenious hidden exists culminate in Star Road, an immaculate series of secret levels whose level of challenge is exceeded only by the amount of imagination on display.

Each zone on the map tells a story, and each one connects to the next, weaving an adventure that’s minimalistic but evocative, taking Mario over hills, underground, through foggy forests, and across prehistoric mountains. An underappreciated aspect of Super Mario World is how each new level, and new zone, slowly builds upon the last, not just mechanically but thematically as well. There’s no real backstory and hardly any dialogue, and yet each new step and every enemy jumped on carries you along a bit further through the most polished and quintessential Mario adventure ever made.

At least, for now. — Ethan Gach

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