The Ten Lowest Points of Mario's Career

Check out this Games.net video detailing what one gamer picks out as Mario's ten greatest missteps ever. In order, they are as follows:

10. Super Mario Sunshine
9. Super Smash Bros.
8. Dance Dance Revolution Mario Mix 7. Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!
6. Mario Paint
5. The Super Mario Bros. movie
4. Mario Party 4
3. Baby Mario
2. Super Mario 64 DS
1. Mario Kart: Double Dash!!

Oh, where to begin? I'll stick up for Mario when he makes the right moves and criticize the hell out of him when he trips up. But the minds behind this video seem to be wanting attention more than credibility with their prospective audience. Yes, the Super Mario Bros. movie did, in fact, blow. And yes, Mario Kart Double Dash!! seriously hurt from a lack of online play. However, does that merit it the top position for worst Mario move ever? What about Mario Is Missing! or Mario's Time Machine or even the emotionally unstable antics in Super Princess Peach?

I'll agree that Super Mario 64 DS could have played a lot better had the DS had an analog stick control, but most of the alleged faults of these games aren't expanded enough to make them stand up at all. For example, the number six position, Mario Paint, gets knocked just for Mario wearing a sideways cap on the cover art. The hell? Or Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! getting listed just for it making the beginning of Mario's cameo career?

Here's my response list of what — in my opinion, off the top of my head — are the most phenomenal screw-ups that have ever tripped up Mario and company.

10. Dance Dance Revolution Mario Mix

I'll agree with the video creators here. What the hell was Nintendo thinking sticking Mario in such a crappy, stigmatized franchise? However, the real fault here, as near as I can tell, is that Mario fans had to buy the DDR pad in order to play, only to have it sit otherwise unused and cluttery and a dead giveaway to the fact that you actually bought a DDR game. Yikes.

9. The Mario edutainment series

Both Mario Is Missing! and Mario's Time Machine sucked. I'll be honest. Why besmirch the then-sterling name of the Mario series by saddling him with shoddy gameplay just for the sake of teaching kids geography and history?

8. Yoshi's Story

Ah, what could have been. Yoshi's Island was a great game, as it managed to be a worthy successor to Super Mario World while spinning Yoshi off into his own series of games. Yoshi's Story nearly killed it. Directionless gameplay that had the Yoshis munching down fruit instead of doing anything fun plus braindead boss battles made for an entirely forgettable game. Thank god Yoshi's Island DS helped steer the series back into something worthwhile again.

7. Those two other Yoshi games

Sigh. Rather than returning the Yoshi series to its rightful greatness, Nintendo pumped out Yoshi Touch & Go and Yoshi's Topsy-Turvy. Both utilize gimmicky control schemes — the tilt sensor and the Nintendo DS touch screen — that worked much better in the WarioWare games. The end result was rehashings of the earlier two Yoshi titles with gummed up controls. The saving grace for the previous two titles: the fact that their original Japanese titles translate humorously as Catch! Touch! Yoshi! and Yoshi's Universal Gravitation.

6. Super Princess Peach

Talk about a lack of progress. Nintendo finally gets around to giving Peach her own game, only to stick her in a world of 16-bit-looking graphics. Besides that, the game had a challenge factor of zero and implied that Peach was a victim of her rapidly fluctuating emotions.

5. Random cameos in NBA Street V3 and SSX On Tour

I'm an advocate for the de-kiddifying of Mario, usually. These two, however, rub me the wrong way. Having Mario, Luigi and Peach — with their big heads and cartoony look — existing in an otherwise "real" universe just strikes me as odd — and as a lame effort on the part of Electronic Arts to draw interest in their games from the Mario-faithful audience.

4. Wario World

The hell? How did Treasure, the team behind Mischief Makers and Gunstar Heroes, miss so much of what made the Wario Land series good? These underrated masters of platforming madness could have easily used Wario World to boost their credibility with the casual gamers. Wonky gameplay, I found, plus a garish and decidedly un-Marioverse-like aesthetic, prevented them from making that jump. Not much from this game ever contributed to the Wario series. I say that's for the better.

3. Donkey Kong 64

Ignore the famously bad Donkey Kong rap and the pointless replacement of Dixie Kong with kid sister Tiny Kong. Concentrate on the fact that the transition into a three-dimensional environment rendered Donkey Kong 64 worse off than if had just stayed in the 16-bit era. It's not that Donkey Kong 64 was really and out-and-out failure, but in light of the success of the first three Donkey Kong Country games, this one doesn't add up. It has a decidedly un-snazzy multiplayer mode plus endless searches for golden bananas marred by awkward camera movements. Beloved by some, for sure, but not for me.

2. Every Mario Party since the second one, really

Bleh. Why churn out a Mario Party almost every year since the series debuted in 1998 and do nothing to enliven the formula? Mario Party 2 had some ingenious mini-games, but since then even the most clever of the little competitions couldn't help solve the tedium caused by drawn out game board sequences on which characters — too often controlled by the computer — would take their time hopping around and buying items. I don't even bother unless I can convince other people to play with me. The only thing the series has really done to grow and change has been adding to the roster of playable characters, all of whom move play identically. Why? Why couldn't Nintendo have let some second-party developer tweak with Mario Kart more and release more and more variations on that winning series?

1. The Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2

Yes, I went there. Nintendo's original concept as a follow-up to Mario's first NES outing, known as "The Lost Levels" here, kind of sucks. I mean, sure it's hard. But as far as sequels go, the title adds little to the series, aside from hair-pulling frustration, wind and Luigi having different jumping abilities. (And, I'll note, the American sequel had that last tweak anyway.) In the end, I'm much happier that we non-Japanese gamers got Super Mario Bros. 2.