Throughout the years, we’ve seen anime grow and mature. From pirated
VHSes to fansubs and now the the legal simulcasting of shows, being able
to watch them right after they air in Japan, anime distribution has
truly evolved throughout the ages. As years gone by, it became much
easier watch the shows we hold dear and support them, but things are now
changing.
The western anime community has legitimized
what used to be entirely in a legal grey zone, creating an industry
behind it’s effort, but all of this has been threatened thanks to the
willpower of one of the largest corporations in the world, and the
negligence of us fans. Within a few months of this year, we’ve gone from
what I like to coin “An Era of Good Feelings”
with the biggest players in the western anime community working
together to make anime as accessible as possible, straight into the
worst anime streaming situation we’ve had in years. Anime is harder to
watch, more expensive to watch, and in lower quality than before, all
because of events that happened in the past few months.
While
not the only cause, the biggest cause is Anime Strike, which is
Amazon’s brand-new anime streaming service that only serves to make
things worse. While there’s nothing wrong with a new player in the
market, there is something wrong with the way Amazon did this: Amazon
brute-forced themselves into the market without any regard or
understanding of how the anime community works. Given that the anime
industry in the west is grown from a community that had to do
less-than-legal things to get the shows they want, it takes quite a bit
to convince the community that legal anime is worth it… Anime Strike
ignores this, making it much more likely that people may pirate.
Anime Strike makes it more inconvenient to watch anime:This
is a pro and con, as it means more competition, but you now need to
remember who acquired the show and have to switch between apps to watch
it, along with finding alternative services if you don’t have the
specific streaming service.
Anime Strike doesn’t add anything to the conversation: Anime
Strike is just another streaming service. It doesn’t add anything,
there are no fancy download settings, nothing. With Crunchyroll, you got
discounts on their store, free manga, and more… with Strike, you get
one manga from Comixology a month and anime… nothing more, nothing.
Anime Strike is expensive, and hidden between double paywalls:
This is the most egregious: It’s 5 dollars per month, and you need
Prime to get it (it doesn’t come with Prime either, it’s an additional
cost). That means it costs 160 dollars per year. In comparison to
Crunchyroll, that’s basically double the cost, as CR would cost you 7
per month, so 84 dollars. Prime is worth it because it comes with other
things, but the extra money for the channel itself is a cash grab, and
if you’re solely interested in watching anime, this is a steep price to
pay.
It’s region-locked:
When existing players like Crunchyroll acquire anime, they try to make
it available in multiple regions. Amazon is only supporting Anime Strike
in the US, making it impossible for many people (CA people in
particular get screwed in comparison to the past) to watch their shows.
There’s no way to watch Amazon Strike shows for free: CR
and Funimation, who understood that many in the community pirate,
created their services with accessibility in mind, allowing you to watch
the shows for free with ads—one week later in lower quality, but still
free. No free option for Anime Strike, basically screwing over anyone
who doesn’t have Strike.
A lack of support on specific devices: Anime
Strike is an Amazon Channel, so it’s watchable on every device you can
watch Amazon Channels on. But while they support most devices, they
don’t support all: they have a tendency of not wanting to support
competing smart TV devices. As someone who uses an Android TV box as a
streaming box, I’m totally out of luck, as there is no support for
Amazon Channels on that device. Apple TV owners are equally screwed.
They have the rights to basically every show that’s worth watching this season sans Attack on Titan & My Hero Academia: Amazon
(and their partner, Sentai Filmworks) have been very aggressive with
trying to aquire shows. So aggressive that a vast amount of anime fans
will now realize that they have no legal access to the anime that they
want. Anime Strike came out last season, but at the time they only had a
handful of titles (mostly noitaminA works, thanks to the deal they
made). This season, they managed to acquire all of the worthwhile shows
out of nowhere. We don’t know if this is going to be a trend, but it is
here now.
Thanks
to Anime Strike, it is now harder for anime fans to watch the shows
they like, and more expensive as well. To add insult to injury,
Crunchyroll hasn’t been making their service any better either: from
heavily pushing a service nobody cares about in an overly aggressive
manner, throwing atrusive ads to paying customers, and making video
quality worse.
Enter
VRV. This is Crunchyroll’s parent company’s (Ellison/AT&T)
attemptto make a unified platform, but Crunchyroll has not been subtle
in advertising this new service. Giant pop-up ads appear whenever you
watch anime on your phone when there’s a lot of demand, hinting that the
streams will be better on that service. By shifting their attention to
VRV, they are caring about the core CR experience less, and trying to
push a new service whenever something goes wrong. If this means what I
think it means, this could be even going against the ideals of net
neutrality, prioritizing VRV customers over CR customers, basically
paying for a fast lane to the anime you want. If everyone started doing
this, the internet would only get worse and worse, and there would be
even less of a reason to watch legal anime… And that’s ignoring the
bitrate issue.
Thanks to the work of Daiz,
we found out that Crunchyroll has been encoding episodes in a lower
bitrate than before, making the quality of the shows worse, all to save
money and server demand for VRV’s launch. Bitrate is the number of bits
that is processed in the unit of time, but in effect, this means the
amount of detail that is in a video. They cut the size of files in half,
and it shows, as anime look blockier, with less color detail,
essentially looking noticeably worse in general. There are a lot of
comparisons on Reddit, and the difference is significant. Thanks to an
outroar by the internet community, they said they would switch to a
better encoder, but this doesn’t fix existing shows, as those are still
much lower bitrate. Take a look if you’re interested.
In
the past few years, there hasn’t been a lot of arguments for watching
illegally other than you didn’t want to pay money. Anime was affordable
and the legal option was more convenient than pirating, with better
quality than the pirated equivalents. Thanks to Amazon and Crunchyroll,
neither of these are the case anymore, and thus the argument for
pirating anime is stronger than ever. Piracy is a service issue, and we
are now getting worse service at a significantly higher cost. People
have the choice of spending two to three times the money they previously
spent to watch the same amount of shows legally, dealing with less
shows in worse quality, or pirate. After all this effort in the
community to get people to watch legally, we have it all collapsed in
one season, due to the greed of companies that don’t understand or care
about the anime community. Hopefully things get better, but as of now,
this is the state of anime in 2017, the year in which legal anime
streaming went to shit.
If Turkey is not bluffing, U.S. troops in Manbij, Syria, could be under fire by week's end, and NATO engulfed in the worst crisis in its history.
Turkish President Erdogan said Friday his troops will cleanse Manbij of Kurdish fighters, alongside whom U.S. troops are embedded.
Erdogan's foreign minister demanded concrete steps by the U.S. to end its support of the Kurds, who control the Syrian border with Turkey east of the Euphrates, all the way to Iraq.
If the Turks attack Manbij, the U.S. will face a choice: Stand by our Kurdish allies and resist the Turks, or abandon the Kurds.
Should the U.S. let the Turks drive the Kurds out of Manbij and the entire Syrian border area with Turkey, as Erdogan threatens, U.S. credibility would suffer a blow from which it would not soon recover.
But to stand with the Kurds and oppose Erdogan's forces could mean a crackup of NATO and loss of U.S. bases inside Turkey, including the air base at Incirlik.
Turkey also sits astride the Dardanelles entrance to the Black Sea. NATO's loss of Turkey would thus be a triumph for Vladimir Putin, who gave Ankara the green light to cleanse the Kurds from Afrin.
Yet Syria is but one of many challenges to U.S. foreign policy.
The Winter Olympics in South Korea may have taken the threat of a North Korean ICBM that could hit the U.S. out of the news. But no one believes that threat is behind us.
Last week, China charged that the USS Hopper, a guided missile destroyer, sailed within 12 nautical miles of Scarborough Shoal, a reef in the South China Sea claimed by Beijing, though it is far closer to Luzon in the Philippines. The destroyer, says China, was chased off by one of her frigates. If we continue to contest China's territorial claims with U.S. warships, a clash is inevitable.
In a similar incident Monday, a Russian military jet came within five feet of a U.S. Navy EP-3 Orion surveillance plane in international airspace over the Black Sea, forcing the Navy plane to end its mission.
U.S. relations with Cold War ally Pakistan are at rock bottom. In his first tweet of 2018, President Trump charged Pakistan with being a duplicitous and false friend.
"The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!"
As for America's longest war, in Afghanistan, now in its 17th year, the end is nowhere on the horizon.
A week ago, the International Hotel in Kabul was attacked and held for 13 hours by Taliban gunmen who killed 40. Midweek, a Save the Children facility in Jalalabad was attacked by ISIS, creating panic among aid workers across the country.
Saturday, an ambulance exploded in Kabul, killing 103 people and wounding 235. Monday, Islamic State militants attacked Afghan soldiers guarding a military academy in Kabul. With the fighting season two months off, U.S. troops will not soon be departing.
If Pakistan is indeed providing sanctuary for the terrorists of the Haqqani network, how does this war end successfully for the United States?
Last week, in a friendly fire incident, the U.S.-led coalition killed 10 Iraqi soldiers. The Iraq war began 15 years ago.
Yet another war, where the humanitarian crisis rivals Syria, continues on the Arabian Peninsula. There, a Saudi air, sea and land blockade that threatens the Yemeni people with starvation has failed to dislodge Houthi rebels who seized the capital Sanaa three years ago.
This weekend brought news that secessionist rebels, backed by the United Arab Emirates, have seized power in Yemen's southern port of Aden, from the Saudi-backed Hadi regime fighting the Houthis.
These rebels seek to split the country, as it was before 1990.
Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE appear to be backing different horses in this tribal-civil-sectarian war into which America has been drawn.
There are other wars — Somalia, Libya, Ukraine — where the U.S. is taking sides, sending arms, training troops, flying missions.
Like the Romans, we have become an empire, committed to fight for scores of nations, with troops on every continent, and forces in combat operations of which the American people are only vaguely aware.
"I didn't know there were 1,000 troops in Niger," said Sen. Lindsey Graham when four Green Berets were killed there. "We don't know exactly where we're at in the world, militarily, and what we're doing."
No, we don't, Senator.
As in all empires, power is passing to the generals.
And what causes the greatest angst today in the imperial city?
Fear that a four-page memo worked up in the House Judiciary Committee may discredit Robert Mueller's investigation of Russia-gate.
Near the end of President Donald Trump’s State of the Union message, the third-longest in American history at one hour and 20 minutes, he proclaimed, in what neatly summed up the theme of his speech, “It’s the people who are making America great again!”
Fox News commentator Mollie Hemingway remarked moments after the conclusion of Tuesday’s speech that it was conservative — much more conservative than the two previous Republican presidents (the two Bush presidents) ever delivered.
Indeed, most of Trump’s conservative base no doubt loved most of the speech. In a speech interrupted 115 times by applause, he did not shy away from the message of his campaign, but he made it clear that his desire was to “make America great again for all Americans.”
As has been mandatory for American presidents since Ronald Reagan began the practice during his two terms, Trump introduced a string of Americans in the gallery, sitting near First Lady Melania Trump — a firefighter in the recent California fires; parents of little girls murdered by MS-13, illustrating the dangers of illegal alien gangs; a businessman and one of his employees benefitting from the recent tax cuts; and the parents of Otto Wambier, who was brutally tortured by the North Korean communist dictatorship for allegedly trying to steal a political sign.
A new policy introduced during the speech was an executive order he issued “just before coming into” the House chamber, which keeps the facilities open at Guantanamo Bay.
Trump began his speech touting the great economic successes of his first year in office, including the addition of 2.4 million new jobs, with 200,000 jobs added in manufacturing alone. “After years of stagnant wages,” Trump noted, Americans are finally experiencing rising real wages, and unemployment claims have reached a 45-year low.
The stock market has gained $8 trillion in value, Trump said, explaining that this translates into the growing of retirement pensions and college savings accounts.
Turning to the tax reform bill, Trump said that the first $24,000 of income for a married couple is now “tax free,” while the business tax rate has been cut from 35 to 21 percent, enabling “American companies to compete and win.” It was also credited with three million workers receiving bonuses. Apple has hired 200,000 more workers, and Exxon Mobil has announced a $50 billion investment in the United States.
Yet, when Trump announced that the unemployment rate for African Americans and Hispanic Americans was at the lowest rate “ever recorded,” the TV cameras showed African American members of Congress sitting — stone-faced.
Pointing out a 12-year-old boy in the gallery who had led an effort to get flags placed on the graves of 40,000 American veterans, Trump said it reminds us of why we proudly stand for the National Anthem. He added that, in America, faith and family — not the government — are the center of American life.
Mentioning his recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Trump lamented that dozens of countries in the United Nations had chosen to react by voting against America’s decision, including nations that had received billions of dollars in American aid. Trump vowed that he had taken names, and in the future, foreign assistance would go to “friends of America, not enemies of America.”
Trump introduced the contentious topic of immigration by reminding the members of Congress, “Americans are dreamers, too.” He asked members of both parties to fulfill their oaths to protect Americans, telling them that it was the duty of every person in the chamber to defend Americans first. After introducing C.J. Martinez, and ICE officers, whose team had arrested hundreds of illegal alien gang members, Trump promised to send him “reinforcements.”
Covering his bipartisan plan to give amnesty (although he did not call it that) to nearly two million illegal immigrants — the “Dreamers” — which he boasted was three times as much as the previous administration covered, he promised to give these illegal aliens citizenship over a 12-year period. In exchange, he called for a fully-secured border, with a “great wall,” and the end of “catch and release,” along with the end of the visa lottery system. He received some groans from the Democratic side of the aisle when he mentioned the end of “chain migration,” promising to limit sponsorship to spouses and minor children. Finally, he promised that the final immigration legislation would be an “iron-clad bill that puts America first.”
Probably the closest to boos from the Democrats came when he proudly proclaimed that the “individual mandate,” which Trump called the “core” of ObamaCare, is now dead, as a result of the tax bill.
While conservatives would be reassured with most of his speech, peppered with remarks about “judges who will interpret the Constitution as written,” and “totally defending the Second Amendment and religious liberty,” along with the proclamation that “we have ended the war against American energy and the war on beautiful clean coal,” there were a few parts of the speech that were troubling.
Trump promised to build “great vocational schools” (even though education is not one of the few and defined powers of the federal government), and he called for “paid family leave” (another policy that has no constitutional support in the enumerated powers listed in the Constitution). However, for the most part, it was a conservative speech. As Hemingway said, none of the State of the Union messages of the 12 years of Bush presidencies came close to matching this one.
And with that many Mario games around, it inevitably leads to endless
debates over which one is best. So, we at USgamer decided to take a
democratic approach and put it to a vote. Seven different USgamer
contributors have weighed in to decide once and for all which Mario
games are best, and which are worst, by putting the entire series to a
vote.
And how did we go about making these decisions? We used a weighted
voting system, where all 35 games were assigned a score based on each
person's ranking. Each game's overall score was then tallied and ranked.
As for which games were eligible, we included only Super Mario games
and spinoffs — platformers beginning with Super Mario Bros. No sports
games, no puzzlers, no RPGs, no racing games... and no pre-Super Mario
games, e.g. Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong or Donkey Kong sequels, either
(including DK94, Donkey Kong Country, and all those Mini games). And
finally, ports and remakes were counted as the original game... so while
we didn't include Super Mario Bros. DX on the list, it definitely
factored into our opinions about Super Mario Bros. There have been so
many Mario games we had to draw the line somewhere or else we'd never be
done with this feature.
So how did the games stack up? Some of the results may surprise you! [Update Monday 9/7: Part two, with games 22-11, is up!]
The Bottom Tier
The lowest of the low... just kidding. With just a few exceptions, a
poor Mario game is still a pretty great game. These unloved games range
from genuinely terrible to genuinely good... and the Game Boy Color
Wario Land games almost certainly only showed up in this portion because
so few people have played them and couldn't vote on them. Don't worry,
though — we'll be bringing back USgamer Club soon with a mandatory Wario
Land II & III session in order to right this wrong!
39. Super Mario Bros. Special
[Sharp X1/NEC PC-8801, 1986]
Not to be chauvinistic, but it's probably telling that the
lowest-ranking entry on our list is the one Super Mario game never to
appear on a Nintendo platform. Hudson adapted Super Mario Bros. (under
license!) for Japanese home computers, and the results are... kind of
terrible, but in a fascinating way. Between the weird level remixes, the
inclusion of enemies from the original Mario Bros., and the awkward
flipscreen scrolling, this is one of those games you have to experience
to believe it.
38. Yoshi Topsy Turvy
[Game Boy Advance, 2005]
As we'll see in the course of this list, great Yoshi's Island sequels
have been few and far between over the years (we hear good things about
Woolly World, though!). The worst follow-up by far was this
Artoon-developed project that centered entirely around a special
accelerometer feature. Points for innovation, but given that WarioWare
Twisted! came along at around the same time and showed how truly great accelerometer-based play could be, this ugly, clumsy effort fell far short.
37. Wario: Master of Disguise
[Nintendo DS, 2007]
This absolute abomination of a game lacked refinement and completely
failed to take advantage of its costume-centric premise. As a follow-up
to the Wario Land games, it completely failed. Frankly, we'd rather
watch the Dana Carvey movie "Master of Disguise," and that has a 1%
"freshness" rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
36. Wario World
[GameCube, 2003]
The Wario games have always been a little off, but this one is the most
bizarre of them all. A 3D platformer/brawler centered around acquiring
wealth, Wario World unfortunately was put together by legendary
developer Treasure during their awkward transition into 3D game design
and as such feels half-baked — incomplete, even. A good idea that needed
more time in the proverbial oven.
35. Yoshi Touch 'N Go
[Nintendo DS, 2005]
A charming and fun action game, Yoshi Touch 'N Go's failing comes not
from poor design but rather from the fact that it feels more like a
minigame concept that Nintendo decided to sell for full price. As a
demonstration of the potential of touch screen-based play on the shiny
new Nintendo DS, it was pretty cool; as a value proposition in a world
where full-sized ports of Super Mario 64 and Ape Escape featured on
portable systems, it failed to make a case for itself.
34. Wario Land: Shake It!
[Wii, 2008]
Drop-dead gorgeous graphics alone couldn't atone for the fact that this
platformer felt completely recycled. It looked stunning, yes, but in
action it proved to be a muted, less anarchic take on the superior Wario
Land 4.
3
33. Wario Land
[Virtual Boy, 1995]
This platformer may well have been the single best game ever produced
for the Virtual Boy system. But, unfortunately, that means you have to
play it on Virtual Boy. Even if you can find a working system, you still
have to deal with the literal headaches that come hand-in-hand with
Nintendo's most disastrous console ever. If there were any justice in
the world, Nintendo would remake this for 3DS and liberate it from the
tyranny of an aging, uncomfortable machine.
32. Yoshi's Story
[N64, 1997]
This gentle platformer offers an unique premise; it's hilariously simple
and almost completely lacking in challenge, but your real goal is to
approach each stage as if it were a puzzle of sorts, finding the optimal
route to consume each Yoshi's favorite fruits. It's like a felt-board
take on Mighty Bomb Jack, if that makes any sense. Unfortunately, coming
directly on the heels of the superlative Yoshi's Island, most fans
wanted something more than that.
31. Wario Land 3
[Game Boy Color, 2000]
What's this game doing down here so low in the rankings? Ah, right... no
one's played it. Well, that too is a statement on the game itself — but
those who have taken the time to explore the third Wario Land have
found a sprawling, non-linear adventure that uses Wario's
indestructibility to create elaborate puzzles and challenges unlike any
other Mario-style game. Well, except the rest of the Wario Land series.
1
30. Super Mario Run
[2016, Mobile]
Super Mario Run marks Mario's first mobile game. There you go, investors. Nintendo finally put Mario on mobile. Are you happy?
PODCAST | Valkyria Chronicles 4, Dragon Quest XI, Pillars of Eternity, and much more!
Probably not. Super Mario Run
failed to get people very excited, primarily because it opts for a
"free to download" monetization system in lieu of the free to play
system most mobile games use. Nintendo asks for $9.99 after you've
tucked away a few levels, and players' answer to that request has been a
resounding "Nope."
It's
a shame, because Super Mario Run is a well-built mobile game. Its
levels are cleverly built and fine-tuned to suit Mario's auto-run. The
3.0 update indicates Nintendo still plans to add content to the game; I
suppose there's a chance they'll just overhaul its monetization system,
and / or drop the price of entry. People clearly still love Mario. Just
not enough to pay $9.99 in a market where "Free" is the norm.
29. Super Mario Bros. 2: The Lost Levels (JP)
[Famicom Disk System, 1986]
The original Super Mario Bros. 2 demonstrates the arcade mentality
behind the Mario series of the era: Rather than existing as a fresh,
new, inventive sequel, this is more of a remix designed for players who
mastered the original Super Mario Bros. Forget the gentle learning curve
of SMB's World 1-1; this drops you right into the deep end and only
gets nastier from there. Unfortunately, it often forsakes Nintendo's own
design principles, feeling less like classic Mario at times and more
like the kind of troll stages you'll be experiencing in Super Mario
Maker.
28. Wario Land II
[Game Boy/Color, 1998]
Like Wario Land III, this game would be a lot further up the list if
more people had played it (unlike, say, Yoshi's Story or The Lost
Levels, which everyone voted on). This was the game that truly
established Wario as a unique character rather than just a chubbier,
angrier Mario. By taking away his vulnerability to enemies and
penalizing players with weird status effects instead of death, Wario
Land II's designers created an entirely new form of platform game
design. As its place in the rankings can attest, it's not the most
popular of Mario spin-offs, but it might just be the most inventive.
2
27. Yoshi's Island DS
[Nintendo DS, 2006]
Unlike Yoshi's Story, Yoshi's Island DS took aim at being a true Yoshi
sequel, with the same visual style and egg-chucking mechanics as the
Super NES classic. But at least Yoshi's Story distinguished itself with
entirely new gameplay concepts; Yoshi's Island DS just feels like a
retread. The addition of different babies to tote around besides Mario
bogged down the action with needless complexity, and the weird gap
between the two DS screens could hide hazards at crucial moments. So it
was basically the Super NES game, but less good.
1
26. Super Princess Peach
[Nintendo DS, 2006]
Almost a mighty blow for girl power... if not for the fact that it was
built around the worst sexist stereotypes about women. Peach has got it!
If by "it" you mean wild emotional swings. Still, despite its decidedly
un-progressive nature, Super Princess Peach deserves credit for finally
letting the damsel in distress take the leading role, and for featuring
a wide array of imaginative puzzles in the Wario Land vein around the
heroine's emotional distress.
25. Wario Land 4
[Game Boy Advance, 2001]
Although Wario Land 4 dialed back the most unique mechanics of Wario
Land II and III by making its antihero vulnerable to enemies again, it
made up for the change with an unusual level structure that saw Wario
venturing into each stage to activate a bomb, then escaping as quickly
as possible before it detonated — sometimes by finding a totally
separate path than he had taken on the way in. With its trippy visuals
and audio, Wario Land 4 was a real showcase for the capabilities of the
GBA... and proof positive that the Wario series could be super strange
no matter what mechanics it adopted.
24. Yoshi's Woolly World (+ Poochy & Yoshi's Woolly World)
[2015, Wii U / Nintendo 3DS]
Yoshi's Woolly World doesn't touch the excellence of the original
Yoshi's Island, but it comes much closer than every other Yoshi-centric
platformer from Nintendo. The game doesn't just ride on its sweater-soft
graphics, either (though Woolly World is certainly one of the most
visually-charming games Nintendo's ever made); I had a genuinely good
time going through each level, uncovering secrets, and observing each
clever visual gag.
Poochy
& Yoshi's Woolly World takes Yoshi's yarny adventure to the 3DS
(with a few extras), and it's a very decent transition. Unsurprisingly,
the game's unique, vivid graphics are best experienced on a New Nintendo
2DS or 3DS.
23. New Super Mario Bros.
[Nintendo DS, 2006]
A return to the series' roots, New Super Mario Bros. saw Nintendo
creating a brand new 2D adventure for Mario for the first time in 15
years... and you could tell they were a bit rusty. New Super Mario Bros.
played it safe, with fairly straightforward levels and fewer power-ups
than any game since Super Mario Bros. 2. Yet while it may have seemed
rote for hardcore Mario devotees, but for the rest of the world it was
either a reminder to how great the old ideas could be, or an
introduction to a classic genre. It certainly paved the way for bigger
and better sequels along with the revival of old-school 2D games as a
mainstream concept, and that makes it pretty OK in our book.
1
22. New Super Luigi Bros. U
[Wii U, 2013]
The idea of Luigi as something more than just a palette swap of Mario
goes all the way back to 1986's Super Mario Bros. 2, where he acquired a
wobbly high-jump that opened some new play paths while creating
entirely new challenges. That spirit definitely informed New Super Luigi
Bros. U, which saw the green dude revisiting Mario's debut Wii U title
via remixed levels, altered physics, and a strict 100-second time limit
for every stage. Though barely qualified to be its own game, New Super
Luigi Bros. U offered a fresh and exciting take on the previous year's
hit.
21. New Yoshi's Island
[3DS, 2014]
New Yoshi's Island took quite a drubbing in the press for being a
warmed-over take on the Super NES classic, but that was kind of the
point: As a portable game with a simple visual style, it was meant less
as a sequel than as a introduction to the Yoshi's Island concept for
kids who hadn't even been born when the original debuted. Taken in that
light, it's a smartly designed game full of thoughtful secrets and a
pleasant difficulty level.
20. Super Mario Land
[Game Boy, 1989]
Mario's first-ever outing on a portable console looks pretty primitive
now, it's true, but at the time this was state of the art. There had
never been a true Super Mario-calibre portable action game back in 1989,
yet here was an attempt to create precisely that. And Super Mario
Land's creators weren't content to simply recycle concepts from the NES;
they took the hero to an all-new kingdom filled with never-before-seen
enemies. There were even a few shoot-em-up stages just to mix things up.
A real landmark for portable gaming.
19. Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3
[Game Boy, 1994]
It says "Mario" on the box, but it's all a lie! This game stars the
villain of Super Mario Land 2 in his own standalone adventure. This is
by far the most traditional of Wario's games, carrying over the
hat-based power-up system of the previous game, but the new anti-hero's
brute force approach and ability to lift and toss stunned enemies
(similar to America's Super Mario Bros. 2!) still made for a decidedly
different experience than the earlier Mario Land games — the inflection
point from which Wario's weird star vehicles emerged.
2
18. New Super Mario Bros. 2
[3DS, 2012]
While somewhat underwhelming compared to its console-based counterparts,
the second numbered New Super Mario Bros. game added an interesting
meta-game over top of its classic portable action. Now the goal wasn't
simply to beat the game, but to make Mario extraordinarily rich. While
that may seem more a Wario-centric play concept, it also encouraged
players to approach the game differently, taking more risks for coins
and exploring all the challenge stages that most people would probably
ignore.
17. Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker
[Wii U, 2014]
Sure, it's only barely a platformer, but Treasure Tracker emerged from
the bonus stages in Super Mario 3D World — and while Captain Toad jumps
like white men (i.e., he can't), he still has to contend with
differences in height. The result is an absolutely charming little game
filled with clever puzzles and surprises galore — a Mario odyssey for
all ages and interests.
16. Super Mario Sunshine
[GameCube, 2002]
Mario's most benighted 3D adventure had its share of problems, sure; the
action revolved a little too heavily around a decidedly un-Mario-like
water-blasting backpack, and the coin-gathering missions took all the
wrong lessons from N64-era collectahons. Nevertheless! Super Mario
Sunshine was the last "sandbox" 3D entry in the series, an open,
leisurely journey along sun-soaked beaches, and it remains perhaps
Mario's most unconventional outing.
2
15. Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins
[Game Boy, 1992]
After the tiny, conservative Super Mario Land, Nintendo R&D1 decided
to take a more dramatic approach with the sequel. They scaled up the
size of Mario and his foes, introduced a new power-up system, and
created a new foil (Wario) to justify a wild journey through the
weirdest set of stage themes ever to grace a Mario platformer.
14. New Super Mario Bros. Wii
[Wii, 2009]
This game's title led many to assume it was just a port of New Super
Mario Bros. for DS, but nothing could be further from the truth. (Sadly,
Nintendo didn't learn their lesson when it came time to name the 3DS
and Wii U.) An entirely new set of challenges, this Wii platformer
benefitted both from the larger canvas afforded by a proper console and
from the inclusion of chaotic four-person multiplayer.
Talking about a cozy game on a cozy system and its continued appeal for a worried generation.
[Wii U, 2012]
Similar to New Super Mario Bros. Wii, many people took the title of this
game as a sign that Nintendo had simply converting an existing game to a
different console. Nothing could be further from the truth. Featuring
the best visuals and most creative designs and challenges of the New
Super Mario line, Mario's HD debut stands as the high point of his
modern 2D adventures — less ambitious than the Galaxy games and less
groundbreaking than his 8- and 16-bit adventures, perhaps, but a
top-tier platformer by any definition of the word.
12. Super Mario 3D Land
[Nintendo 3DS, 2012]
The Super Mario Galaxy games remain intensely popular among more avid
game enthusiasts — they both appear in the top 10 here — but haven't
really managed to make much headway beyond the Mario fan illuminati.
Meanwhile, the New Super Mario games (which are easier and less
expensive to develop) rock the charts. So Nintendo, as Shigeru Miyamoto recently told Eurogamer,
has a tough time making a case for developing further Galaxy titles (as
much as they'd like to, and we'd like for them to). Super Mario 3D
Land, then, represents the best possible compromise: The inventive
spirit of Nintendo EAD Tokyo, and the freedom to break from strict 2D
side-scrolling, but contextualized within a more fixed isometric
perspective that incorporates 3D platforming mechanics without the
intimidating free camera movement that frightens casual players away. To
top it all off, 3D Land drew heavily on the style and spirit of Super
Mario Bros. 3, with tons of compact, highly varied stages to master and
an entire "second quest" to deal with once the credits rolled.
11. Super Mario Galaxy 2
[Wii, 2010]
As if to prove the notion that the Galaxy games don't get their due,
here's Super Mario Galaxy way down at #9. Anyone who's played Galaxy 2
to completion agrees that this is one of the absolute best Mario games
ever... the problem, alas, is that not all that many people actually
played it. Arriving on the wrong side of the Wii's slide from dominance,
few people cared to slum it long enough to discover the fact that the
second 3D Mario for Wii managed to be even more imaginative than its
predecessor, incorporating more creative power-ups, more diverse level
concepts, and an even more devastating difficulty level.
10. Super Mario Bros.
[NES, 1985]
In terms of importance, the original Super Mario Bros. deserves to be at
the top of this or any list. In terms of depth... well, it's a
30-year-old game that fit into 32K of memory. It's small and limited in
comparison to everything it inspired, with a great deal of repetition in
the later stages. But, you know, look at all it inspired: Everything
else on this list, plus countless thousands of other games. And despite
its vintage, it remains eminently playable, with brilliant level designs
that perfectly take advantage of Mario's sophisticated movement, fluid
jump physics, and limited but well-tuned power-up schemes. There wasn't a
single wasted element in this cartridge, as the fact that every
creature and skill and object to appear in this 1985 classic has
appeared in countless sequels. One of the few times in medium's history
where a team of creators put together a game in which every element sang
in harmony (literally, in the case of the sound design), Super Mario
Bros. remains a timeless classic. Be sure to check out the DX remake for
Game Boy Color, which adds small, modern niceties (like a save feature)
and throws in The Lost Levels as an unlockable bonus!
9. Super Mario 3D World
[Wii U, 2013]
More than a mere sequel to Super Mario 3D Land, 3D World represents the
exact sort of upgrade implied by the naming scheme: If Land was a
country, World is a planet. Its stages are even bigger, its level
concepts even more imaginative. Its star power-ups, the excellent Cat
Mario ability, changes the nature of how you play to a greater degree
than any series power-up since Super Mario World's cape — and much like
the cape, mastering the cat suit allows you to take an entirely
different approach to the challenges that lay before Mario. Or rather,
Mario and friends: For the first time in 25 years, 3D World brings
together the crew of Super Mario Bros. 2 (including Princess Peach,
finally a heroine again rather than a victim), then goes a step beyond
by allowing four players to control them simultaneously. While the New
Super Mario console titles had already explored the concept of
four-player mayhem, it works brilliantly in a 3D play space. EAD Tokyo
may not be working on Super Mario Galaxy 3 any time soon, but games like
this will do nicely in the meantime.
8. Super Mario 64
[Nintendo 64, 1996]
Second in importance only to Super Mario Bros., the series' first outing
in three-dimensional space helped codify action games of the polygonal
era as SMB did for 8-bit gaming. Where so many other developers tried
and failed to transform their beloved 2D franchises into 3D, Nintendo
did it right by turning the Mushroom Kingdom into a sort of sandbox
playground in which players could grow comfortable before moving onto
the serious challenges of the second half of the game. Its hub-based
world design helped inspire a great many games of the 32/64-era and
beyond, and Miyamoto and co. weren't afraid to change Mario's skills and
techniques where appropriate, e.g. deprecating jump-based attacks while
giving Mario new hand-to-hand combat skills. While the surprise of the
Mario 64 experience has long since faded with the commoditization of 3D
game spaces, the loving detail and subtlety of design invested into this
groundbreaking work have allowed it to stand the test of time.
1
7. Super Mario Bros. 2: Mario Madness (USA)
[NES, 1988]
The fact that this massive NES hit for Mario didn't begin as a Mario
game is probably the most common (and tired) piece of video game trivia
ever. But really, who cares? Whatever its original provenance, Super
Mario Bros. 2 worked perfectly as a follow-up to the first game; its
character physics translated neatly to Mario with very little cosmetic
surgery required to create a convincing illusion. More importantly, it
expanded on the Japanese SMB2's unique mechanics for Luigi by also
incorporating Toad and Princess Peach as playable characters, instantly
turning the royal retinue into key players in the franchise rather than
simply a bit of scenery to be forgotten in sequels. The ability to grab
and throw objects and enemies became a key element of Mario 3 and World,
and the surreal inhabitants of Subcon have long since established
themselves as mainstays of spinoff titles like Yoshi's Island. But
ultimately, it simply boils down to the fact that Super Mario Bros. 2
was ridiculously fun to play, with huge levels to explore and all the
secrets and shortcuts you'd expect from a Mario game. Whatever its name,
the spirit of Mario was strong with this one.
6. Super Mario Maker (+ Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS)
[2015, Wii U / Nintendo 3DS]
When it launched, Nintendo fans gave Super Mario Maker a suitable joke
name: "Make It Yourself if You're So Damn Smart." Of course, there's
nothing snarky or sarcastic about Super Mario Maker. The game is very
much Nintendo's way of saying to you, "Hey! Mario games are fun, right?
Let's have fun together."
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And Super Mario Maker is
fun. It's also what every Mario fan has wanted since they started
designing their own video game levels on graph paper. Mario Maker's
touch-based builder is extremely intuitive; anyone, no matter how old
they are, can potentially build a wonderful Mario level. The key word
here is "potentially," as good level design is far harder than people
realize. Thankfully, Mario Maker's level-sharing feature makes it easy
to find the diamonds in the rough.
I
get the feeling Nintendo wanted people to walk away from Mario Maker
with a little more respect for game developers. Mission accomplished, I
hope.
Super
Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS has some additional features ideal for a
single-player experience (100 new courses built by actual Nintendo
designers, for example), but the inability to upload levels puts a major
damper on the portable Mario Maker experience, which is a shame.
Hopefully we'll soon be blessed with a fully-realized iteration of the
game-builder on the Nintendo Switch.
5. Super Mario Galaxy
[Wii, 2007]
In some ways, Super Mario Galaxy presents a more modest and toned-down
take on 3D Mario... but that's no bad thing. After Mario Sunshine nearly
went off the rails with its collectathon elements and sometimes aimless
sandbox-style level design, Super Mario Galaxy pared the 3D Mario
concept down to its core elements, guiding players expertly through
challenges and scenarios that rapidly change scale to create the
illusion of bigger, more grandiose adventures than technically existed
here. Presentation counts for a lot, and Galaxy gave us by far the most
glorious and impressive window we've ever seen into the Mario universe.
It also played with the concept of 3D platforming by throwing tiny
spheroid stages into the mix, adding a new kind of action (and some
fantastic boss battles) to the platforming challenges we'd grown to
expect from the series. Really, just a smartly designed game from top to
bottom, neatly rectifying its predecessor's shortcomings while
demonstrating the foresight to bluff its way past its own potential
failings.
4. Super Mario Odyssey
[Nintendo Switch, 2017]
For a long time, Super Mario Sunshine was regarded as the direct successor to Super Mario 64. I think you only need to play Super Mario Odyssey for a few hours before you start to understand Odyssey is the real
successor to Mario 64. Think of it as a prodigal prince coming home to
take the throne from his well-meaning but under-qualified younger
brother.
Though
Super Mario Odyssey lacks a hub world, it apes Mario 64's attempt to
throw everything at the wall. Thankfully, almost everything sticks. Each
Kingdom you visit is a large open area that's teeming with secrets to
find and items to root out. No two kingdom is quite alike in Super Mario
Odyssey: You might find yourself trudging through blizzards in the Snow
Kingdom, then frolicking through (and under) the surf in the Ocean
Kingdom minutes later. Mario's new trick, capturing and controlling
enemies, lets you look at each Kingdom with a fresh set of eyes. A Power
Moon that's not easily grabbed by human-Mario might be an easy task for
a stack of Goombas, and vice-versa.
Interestingly,
Mario Odyssey's loose, varied gameplay is what causes it to come in
just under Super Mario Galaxy in some people's hearts. The latter is
admittedly more structured and has a clearer vision about Mario's
mission, but as for which gameplay style is better? That's a matter of opinion. Just be assured Super Mario Odyssey is 3D platforming excellence.
3. Super Mario Bros. 3
[NES, 1990]
The great Mario tradition: Endless arguments over which was better,
Super Mario Bros. 3 or Super Mario World. USgamer's staff vote gave
World the edge, but only barely — it's not as though anyone said, "Boy,
that Mario 3, what a load of garbage." If Super Mario Bros. was meant to
be the ultimate cartridge-based game before the move to the Famicom
Disk System expansion, this sequel was meant as the ultimate 8-bit
adventure. And it delivered on that mandate nicely, introducing Mario's
greatest-ever suite of power-ups and dozens of stages, each of which
revolved around a different theme. The appeal of Super Mario Bros. 3
came largely from the fact that it rarely repeats a concept enough for
it to grow stale; aside from the militant mechanism of World 8 and the
various airship stages throughout the world, SMB3's stages delighted in
throwing weird new ideas at players, then dashing to the next idea
before the gimmick wore out its welcome. And the idea worked: Consider
how beloved the ultra-rare Hammer Suit is. Or the legend that's grown up
around Kuribo's Shoe, which appears only twice in a single level. Or
the panic that sets in when you see that angry sun who dive-bombs Mario
in exactly two stage of the game. Mario 3 felt like the work of people
who had so many great ideas they could barely squeeze them all in to a
single cart — but there was more than mere novelty to this adventure,
which also gave Mario new skills and established permanent new rules for
the franchise. We didn't need some stupid movie to get us excited about
Super Mario Bros. 3; the game itself did the job nicely.
2. Yoshi's Island1
[Super NES, 1995]
The dark horse surprise of our list, Yoshi's Island barely edged out
Super Mario Bros. 3 to take the second slot. And why not? It, too,
represents the culmination of a generation's game design as well.
Yoshi's Island marched to a different beat, beautifully embodying
Nintendo's ethos of finding unexpected applications for technology in
service of making even better games. Here, Yoshi's Island employed a
special add-on chip normally used for simple 3D applications in order to
create the most dynamic, visually surprising 2D platformer ever.
Between its brash, hand-drawn art style — the antithesis of the cold,
CG-rendered look ushered in by Donkey Kong Country and next-gen systems
like Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation — and wild, unexpected visual
tricks that included foes who could spin-jump, subtle 3D effects,
rubbery and distorted creatures, and even a pre-Galaxy battle spanning
the circumference of a tiny planetoid, Yoshi's Island wasn't afraid to
mix things up. But nowhere did it shake up Mario tradition as it did in
its play mechanics, which transformed Yoshi from a cute ride to a proper
protagonist, complete with transformative new skills: A floating
double-jump, a mighty butt stomp, and the ability to fling eggs and
enemies within a 180-degree arc. Along with these changes came a
radically new philosophy of level design, presenting players with
denser, more exploratory playgrounds to poke around in and a slate of
collectibles to hunt down — not too many, though, and all in service of
unlocking the insanely complex bonus stages. Really, if it weren't for
Baby Mario's caterwauling, it would be hard to find a fault in this
brilliant 16-bit send-off. At the time, it looked like this might be
Mario's final outing in two dimensions... and what an outing it was.
1. Super Mario World
[Super NES, 1991]
Mario's 16-bit debut also doubled as the pack-in game for Nintendo's
Super NES system, and it had a lot riding on its shoulders. It needed to
show off the machine's new graphical capabilities, advance the Mario
concept as a whole, and create a compelling case for fans to upgrade to a
new generation while not straying toward a rival 16-bit platform in the
process. It did all of these things (and more!) with panache.
Super Mario World felt like a huge upgrade over Super Mario Bros. 3 in
almost every way. About the only area in which it took a more modest
approach than its predecessor was with its power-up system — it pared
Mario's abilities back down to two, the Fire Flower and the cape,
abandoning advanced skills like the frog suit and tanuki suit
altogether. But since those powers had been fairly obscure to begin
with, the loss proved less critical than it first appeared; meanwhile,
the limited scope of Mario's powers allowed Mario World's creators to
really focus on making the cape something special and turning it into a
sophisticated tool with secondary abilities that opened up exciting new
gameplay opportunities for advanced players while providing basic new
skills for everyone.
The game harnessed the Super NES's built-in capabilities to great
effect. While some features seemed more fully realized than others — no
one was quite sure what to use control pad shoulder triggers for in
1991, and Mario World's limp camera pan feature felt like the textbook
definition of "there just because" — many of them changed the way you
played and approached levels. Portions of stages would rise, sink, tilt,
and bob; Mario could flip to the "reverse" side of certain levels,
adding a third dimension to the action; ghosts would phase into and out
of Mario's material plane; and gigantic monsters were no longer
quarantined on a single island but rather appeared throughout the world
as a matter of course. And Mario's new dinosaur pal Yoshi allowed the
game's creators to finally realize their desire to have the hero ride
around on the back of a mount, something they'd been longing to achieve
since the early days but couldn't for technical reasons.
Unlike so many other early Super NES games, though, Super Mario's
technical shenanigans never felt like Nintendo just showing off for the
heck of it. At the very beginning of the game, you're allowed to visit
two different stages right away — one that features classic Mario
mechanics, and one that shows off the wacky new elements of this
adventure, such as stubby dinosaurs, diagonal pipes, and huge version of
Bullet Bill. Every programming innovation in Super Mario World was
accompanied by clever game design advances. Whether it was something as
simple as the added patter of bongo drums as you rode Yoshi or as
literally game-changing as the persistent, global modifications caused
by visiting a Switch Palace, Super Mario World upped the stakes for game
design at every turn. Its worlds took a more convoluted turn than the
mini-stages of Super Mario 3, encouraging players to use advanced
techniques to unearth hidden secrets — doors to new stages, or helpful
shortcuts to the end of the game. And once you'd mastered the main game,
Super Mario World featured an entire hidden extra world, the Special
World, a full suite of expert-level platforming tests for the truly
determined. A true high point in video game history.
