#1: Super Mario Bros. 3

Released In: 1990
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo

      Bowser sends his seven Koopa Kids to steal magic royal wands from seven of the kingdoms in Mushroom World. The Koopa Kids use them to turn the countries' kings into animals and create chaos and strife in Mushroom World. While Mario is busy dealing with his children, Bowser kidnaps the Princess and brings her to his giant Dark Land castle. Can Mario defeat Bowser and restore peace to Mushroom World?

Syd Lexia: I will never ever get tired of this game. Specifically, I will never ever get tired of World 5-3, because Kuribo's Shoe is the best power-up ever. In fact, Mario has never had better power-ups to play around with than he did in SMB3. The New Super Mario Brothers may have sold like gangbusters, but power-ups like the Mega Mushroom and Blue Shell from NSMB are complete shit when compared to the sheer awesomeness of the P-Wing, Frog Suit, Hammer Bros. Suit, and Tanooki Suit. In addition to that, the game added a whole bunch of new enemies, minigames, and eight wonderfully designed worlds to play through. My personal favorite was Giant Land.

And then there were the warp whistles. Everyone knew where the warp whistles were. There was the one in the first Mini-Fortress that the kid *somehow* finds in The Wizard, and if that wasn't enough, they told you how to get the one in World 1-3 on one of those Nintendo Power ads that came packaged with every fucking officially licensed game. And if that wasn't enough, there was a third whistle in Level 2, guarded by 2/3 of the game's Fire Brothers. You had to suck pretty hard at this game not to make to it to Dark Land, and I most certainly did not suck at this game. I explored every inch of every level, over and over and over again. I did it on the NES. I did it on at least five different emulators. And then in 2003, I bought Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3 for my GBA and did it all over again.

Valdronius: It should come as no surprise to anyone that this is #1. A masterpiece among video games, it provides a fun challenge for all players without being frustratingly difficult. There were really no levels that couldn’t be cleared with practice. The graphics, sound, and play control are all excellent, and each level is unique. The various magical items, such as the raccoon suit, the music box and the cloud, along with secrets like the memory game and the black-and-white Toad House all add to the overall fun factor. Whether you wanted to whistle right to the last world, or play through all eight worlds, it never disappointed. I’d say that anyone who has played this game would rank it in their Top 5 at least, if not Top 3.

Rycona: There's so much you can say about this game, but let me just state this: ULTIMATE PLATFORMER.

greeneyedzeke: And the #1 game on the list is... not what I personally had picked. I’ll give you three guesses on that one. Super Mario Bros. 3, though, is a hell of a game, upping the ante on the Mario series in a big, big way by introducing new enemies, new power-ups, a map system, and just having an overall phenomenally huge world for an 8-bit title. What it boils down to is the simple fact that every Mario game on every system since the NES owes a debt of gratitude to this one (yes, even the highfalutin 3D versions). What really pushes this game over the edge into eternal awesomeness is that Nintendo financed a fucking feature film almost solely to advertise the damn thing. That’s a sign of both the Big N’s commitment to, and belief in, the game. And it worked. The day my friend’s mom took the two of us into Child World on an unrelated errand and we saw Raccoon Mario smiling at us from behind the glass in the video game display case, it was a religious experience. He put on such a show on the damn spot that his mom caved almost instantly and bought the game for him and I was on the phone to my mom within thirty seconds of arriving back at his house. Three hours later I had my own copy. Congratulations, Mario.

Dr. Jeebus: There's little that needs to be said about one of the all-time greatest games ever. I could write pages on this, but anyone who would bother to read this site has played the game, so you already know how awesome this game is.

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