(ThyBlackMan.com) Growing up, I used to play the living daylights out Super Mario Bros for The NES and then later Mario games that came out over the years. And it’s always been an amazing experience for me to enjoy playing Mario games.
I have experienced the highs like getting three stars in a row to get 5 1 ups and the lows like not being able to pass the mirage stages in the original Super Mario Bros. game.
I remember going to The 1st Annual Gump City Convention a couple of months ago and prior to playing Super Mario Bros. under Super Mario All-Stars for Super Nintendo at the event, I actually spoke to 
a sista who said that she used to play Mario all the time and I told her “Me and by brother also used to play Mario all time too, especially after we came home from school during our much younger days. It’s always refreshing talking to fellow black nerds like the sista I spoke to at the event to relive some of our favorite childhood memories of playing the old Mario games.
Mario is one of the most iconic and legendary characters in the history of video games in which he’s been in so many games from his first appearance in the Donkey Kong arcade game in 1983 to the recent release of Super Mario Odyssey for The Nintendo Switch. He is one of my top 5 favorite all-time video game characters.
Here are my top 5 favorite Mario games I’ve ever played.
1. Super Mario 3 – I remember coming home from school back in the day and the first thing that I wanted to do was play Mario and I would more often than not play Super Mario 3 because unlike it’s two previous iterations, you can actually collect and store certain weapons like starman and the fire flower and powerup suits like flying cape suit and rare ones such as the frog suit and the hammerman suit. Another thing that I loved about this game was the fact that this became the first Mario game in which you could run and jump to fly in the air for a little while to either get around to the later portions of the stages, coins, or to get to what they referr to as “bonus tubes” where you can get coins and on rare occasions a powerup like a mushroom, fire flower, or the flying cape suit. My favorite world in this game was Ice World aka World 6 because the stages were so beautiful and plus you had to make sure that you maintain traction on the slippery ice blocks because if you didn’t, you would lose a life and that’s a not-so-good feeling. This game will always be my favorite Mario game.
2. Super Mario: The Lost Levels – This game was supposed to have been released in The U.S., but Nintendo Of Japan decided against it because they deemed the game “too difficult” for U.S. gamers. I remember first playing this game many years ago under the Super Mario All-Stars complication cartridge for Super Nintendo and the first time I played it, I immediately noticed how tough they made this game from the previous iteration of the game where there was the added new dark poison mushroom that could either de-power you or kill you and then the gaps were much wider and there were numerous enemies on the screen at one time that made it so difficult to pass the levels even the underwater levels in this game were more difficult to pass. This game is the toughest Mario game that I’ve ever played.
3. Super Mario Bros. – I used to often play this game during my childhood with my fellow siblings and they would sometimes complain about me being a “game hog” when in fact, I was a genius when it came to figuring out where the “bonus pipes” were as well as using clever wits to avoid getting hit by goombas, paratroopers, and even those irritating luckatoos that throw red porcupines at you to try to kill you. The main thing that I love most about this game was the starman because in certain levels that I got it like 1-1 and 1-2, I love to run all over the enemies for about 10 seconds with it which made the game so great to enjoy. My favorite world in this game was the nighttime level in world 3 because it looked so beautiful in the night than the day in the game.
4. Super Mario World – This SNES iteration of the Mario series was an amazing game overall because even though the first two worlds are easy, but from there, the stages got much tougher with giant bullet bobs, caterpillars, and even wizard spells in the castle stages that you definitely had to avoid if you was gonna pass the castle stages. This was also the first Mario game to introduce the “spin jump” where you pressed a certain button on the SNES joystick to do the “spin jump”. Even though the “spin jump” couldn’t defeat certain enemies like the red porcupines, boo ghosts, or the skeleton paratroopers, but it was very effective against regular paratroopers, goombas, and bullet bobs. There was also a bonus world called “Star World”, where you had to find at least 5 keys hidden in certain levels to unlock the paths to all five levels of “Star World”. This game is definitely one of my favorite Mario games.
5. Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins – I used to have the original Game Boy when I was in my teens and one of the games that I greatly enjoyed playing so much was Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins because in order to get to The Dark Castle To face off against Wario (Mario’s mischievous cousin) in his first appearance in The Mario Series, you had to complete all the levels of six zones to collect 6 golden coins to open up the door to The Dark Castle. This game had the new bunny power up and the traditional one in the red mushroom and my favorite part about this game was when you get starman in certain levels and run over 5 enemies in a row, you automatically get a 1up which I thought was a very cool thing for the developers at Nintendo to do because I absolutely loved it. The stages for the 6 zones looked absolutely amazing and the toughest part about this game to me was The Dark Castle and I did manage to beat this game several times.
The Conclusion – I still enjoy playing Mario games to this day because they are so fun and enjoyable to play, even with your family and friends.
Staff Writer; Kwame Shakir (aka Joe D.)
