Super Mario Bros. 3

There exists a platformer that even people who had never heard of video games wanted to play, and its name is Super Mario Bros. 3. In America it was also made famous by the feature film The Wizard, which functioned like one big two-hour advertising trailer and stirred up mass hysteria even before the game reached stores. And when it did arrive, it showed just how far the genre could go.

Under the leadership of Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka, one of the greatest platformers ever came to life, and at the same time the best-selling non-bundled game for the NES, selling over 17 million copies. That is no accident. The third installment introduced a world map that gave the adventure structure and a choice of routes, and above all costumes that change Mario's abilities: the tanuki, the frog, the boot and the legendary tanuki statue.

What is truly ingenious is the variety. Each of the worlds has its own theme, its own enemies and its own ideas that rarely repeat. The game constantly surprises you, and the moment you think you've seen everything, it throws a flying airship, a giant version of a familiar setting, or an entirely new trick at you. It is a nonstop stream of creativity of a kind you simply didn't see back then.

In terms of design, the third game set a bar that others had to clear for decades afterward. Precise controls, clean pacing and balanced difficulty turned it into the quality benchmark of the entire genre. Even today it holds true that if you want to explain what makes a platformer great, you simply point to Super Mario Bros. 3.

It is no wonder, then, that it appears at the top of practically every list of the best games in history and that its influence is felt to this day. It is the crowning work of the NES era and proof that Nintendo knew how to spark timeless fun from a simple concept.

Why play: Because it is one of the greatest platformers of all time, unsurpassed in variety, pacing and pure joy of play.