Super Mario Retrospective Bonus
Hello hello! Just wanted to chime in with a fun update.
The inspiration for this post came when something dawned on me. Despite being a loyal Super Mario fan since childhood, I’ve never actually 100% completed every Mario platformer.
I mean, I knew broadly which Mario games I had and hadn’t fully played & finished before. But it was only just recently when I really stopped to think about it, that I haven’t completed the entire series. I’ve fully cleared some of the games, but not all of them. Which was a surprise to me, as I’ve gone through most of the games multiple times. Mario is something that I always come back to. Whenever I start another playthrough, I usually (though not always) play to 100% completion, as I enjoy the feeling that I’ve experienced everything the game has to offer.
What an irony then to realize that, for being my all-time favourite video game series, I have not in fact experienced everything it has to offer. I told my mom about this and she was surprised too, as she knows how big of a Mario fan I am.
To clarify, I’m specifically talking about the main platformers, as there’s quite a lot of the spin-off games I’ve never completed, or sometimes not touched at all. Still, even within the main series, a lot of the missing gaps in my playthroughs have been for the more modern Mario titles which I simply haven’t gotten around to playing as much, compared to childhood classics like Super Mario All-Stars and Super Mario World which I’ve played over and over and over and over again.
Another note of clarification that, in the later games, getting 100% completion means getting all the major collectibles in each level. The earlier games didn’t track the collectibles as part of your completion progress, but I’d still do a full run by playing through every single level. As iconic as Mario’s warp zones are, I seldom ever use them for the exact reason they skip over certain levels, whereas I like to play through the whole adventure from beginning to end.
So which entries have I fully finished, and which ones have I not? As of this writing (June 25th, 2024), here’s where I’m at:
Super Mario Bros.
NES version status: Completed, including the second quest/hard mode.
SNES version status: Completed, including the second quest/hard mode.
Game Boy Color version status: Incomplete, but not a priority. While I have played a bit of it, and I’ve seen other people’s playthroughs of it, I haven’t fully beaten it myself. With the NES and SNES versions, even if SNES is my favourite, I still enjoy playing through both. Due to the different graphics and music between them, they offer quite different experiences despite being broadly the same game. The GBC version, meanwhile, uses the same graphics as the NES. And so, I don’t have a lot of desire to play through it simply because, well, I’ve already played through the other versions. I have completed all eight of the You VS. Boo stages, however. That was the main thing I cared about with the GBC version, since they were additional levels not found on the NES or SNES.
Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels
Famicom version status: Incomplete, but not a priority. I enjoy playing the Famicom version in shorter bursts, but I’m not really interested in playing it to the very end. The last time I played, I did a self-imposed challenge to see how far I could make it before getting a Game Over, whereupon I’d start all over from the beginning for my next attempt. The furthest I made it was to World 4-3.
For a more general playthrough, even with continues, Lost Levels is already a very tough game as it is, and it’s even tougher on the Famicom version. Since, after losing all your lives, you only get to continue from the beginning of each world, instead of continuing per individual level as on the SNES. There’s also the barrier that the Famicom version needs to be beaten eight times to unlock Worlds A-D, unlike the SNES version where you only need to beat the game once to unlock them. All of that combined and I’m content to just stick with the SNES version for fully clearing the game. I’ll probably play the Famicom version again at some point, just not to 100%.
SNES version status: Completed, including the bonus worlds.
Game Boy Color version status: Not played, and not a priority. Especially since the bonus worlds are missing from the GBC version. Also, as with the first game, the GBC version uses the same graphics as the NES/Famicom version.
Super Mario Bros. 2
NES version status: Almost complete. I think I’ve only ever played the NES version once. I played it with my brother, where we alternated levels. As in, he’d play a level, then I’d play a level, then back to him, etc. Eventually, on my last turn, I made it to the final battle against Wart. But then I stopped after a few failed attempts, as I hadn’t played the game in a while and was a bit rusty, and was starting to get frustrated.
I would be interested in trying again at some point in the future. Unlike the SNES version, the NES version has limited continues. It’d be a fun challenge to try and clear the game before the continues run out. When I played with my brother, we played on the Nintendo Switch Online and relied on save states, bypassing the limited continues. Whereas, I generally prefer to not use save states, which is another reason I’d like to try this again sometime.
SNES version status: Completed
Game Boy Advance version status: Completed. Even though it uses the graphics from the SNES version, I was interested in playing through this version as well because it features some distinct gameplay shake-ups from the NES and SNES.
Super Mario Bros. 3
NES version status: Completed
SNES version status: Completed
Game Boy Advance version status: Incomplete, but not a priority. Or at least, the main quest wasn’t a priority for me. This too uses the SNES graphics, but otherwise isn’t changed as much when compared to Super Mario Bros. 2. However, similar to the first Super Mario Bros. with its GBC You VS. Boo levels, I was interested in the Advance version here since it too has extra levels. Namely, there were a whole bunch of brand-new levels added with the e-Reader device. For a long time, most of these were not available outside of Japan, but they were thankfully made available years later on the Wii U Virtual Console and the Nintendo Switch Online. I have completed all of these.
Super Mario Land
Status: Completed, including the second quest/hard mode.
Super Mario World
SNES version status: Completed
Game Boy Advance version status: Not played, and not a priority
Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins
Status: Completed
Super Mario 64
N64 version status: Completed
DS version status: Completed. In this case, I enjoy playing both versions. While the DS version is great for having more stars and levels, there are also a few things I prefer in the N64 version. Both versions of the game are also different enough that I can justify doing a playthrough on both.
Super Mario Sunshine
Status: Completed
New Super Mario Bros.
Status: Completed, including all the Star Coins.
There are also five stages outside of the main game which are exclusive to the multiplayer Mario Vs. Luigi mode. These I have not played. I’m not really counting them just because, well, they’re multiplayer-exclusive and so I can’t play them on my own. Although I have watched online playthroughs of the Mario Vs. Luigi mode so I can at least see what the stages are like.
Super Mario Galaxy
Status: Completed, including the Luigi playthrough, and Grand Finale Galaxy as both Mario and Luigi.
New Super Mario Bros. Wii
Status: Completed
Similar to the first New Super Mario Bros., there are five stages outside of the main game which are exclusive to the multiplayer Coin Battle mode. And similar to the first game, I’m not really counting them in my playthrough since they’re multiplayer-exclusive. Although in this case, I connected a second Wiimote and so I was still able to play the stages anyway; it was just without a second player there to compete with me.
Super Mario Galaxy 2
Status: Completed, including the Green Stars and Grandmaster Galaxy.
Super Mario 3D Land
Status: Completed
New Super Mario Bros. 2
Status: Almost complete. I’ve cleared the main game; found all the secret exits and collected all the Star Coins. I beat the Coin Rush extra stages as well… all except for the very last DLC level pack, the aptly-named Impossible Pack. I eventually managed to beat its first stage, but didn’t beat the second stage, and thus didn’t even play the third. Not as regular Mario, at least. I later went through and beat them all as White Raccoon Mario, but that removed all of the challenge since White Raccoon Mario is invincible, and thus it felt like cheating to me.
I didn’t find all of the Star Coins in the other Coin Rush stages either. And so, I’ll have to come back to Coin Rush at some point to finish up what was left unfinished…
A side note that, despite otherwise going for 100% completion, I’m not aiming for the optional side goal of getting 9,999,999 coins on the save file. As with the other Mario games, I’m counting fully-completed as simply playing through all the stages, finding all the secret exits, and getting all the Star Coins or other noteworthy collectibles in each level.
New Super Mario Bros. U
Status: Incomplete. The main game is fully cleared. What I didn’t complete was Challenge Mode. I beat a few of the challenges, but most of them I haven’t played at all. I was meaning to come back to it, partly since some of the challenges have original levels not found in the main game, but I’d like to complete the other challenges too since they look like fun.
New Super Luigi U
Status: Completed
Super Mario 3D World
Status: Completed
As with NSMB2 with 9,999,999 coins, here I’m not aiming to complete every stage as each of the five characters. I did it with Super Mario 3D Land as both Mario & Luigi because that was actually required to unlock the very final stage. But here, you don’t actually need to beat every stage with all characters to make it through the entire game (it just unlocks a few final stamps if you do), and so I didn’t.
Super Mario Maker
This game sits in an interesting position. I don’t quite count it as one of the main Mario platformers, since it’s more of a level editor utility than a traditional platformer. And, unlike the traditional platformers, how to “complete” the game isn’t so easily-defined. Since it runs on players creating and sharing their own levels, you could keep playing new levels pretty much endlessly.
At the same time, the level editor reuses a lot of assets from the main series, along with some clever new ones added in, so the levels themselves still feel very much in the spirit of Mario. And, perhaps more importantly, there are actually a number of official courses that came with the game. Namely, the Wii U version has the pre-installed Sample Courses, the Event Courses, and the courses from the Official Makers. There’s also the 3DS version which has its own set of levels in the Super Mario Challenge. It’s these that I’ll be counting towards my completion progress.
Wii U version status: Incomplete. I’ve played and beaten a lot of the official courses, but there’s also a lot I haven’t gotten to yet.
3DS version status: Not played
Super Mario Odyssey
Status: Incomplete. I made it pretty far. I got most of the Power Moons. Several of the kingdoms were fully cleared. Notably, however, I played very little of the Dark Side and Darker Side. There may have been a few other moons here and there that I missed as well.
Super Mario Maker 2
Again, I’m counting completion here based on the official courses; the pre-installed courses of Story Mode and the official makers’ courses in Course World.
Status: Barely started. I played maybe the first two levels of Story Mode, but that was it.
Bowser’s Fury
Status: Incomplete. I beat the initial boss fight with Fury Bowser and saw the ending, but there were a lot of leftover Cat Shines I didn’t get.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder
Status: Almost complete. Cleared every stage… all except for the very last stage, “The Final-Final Test: Badge Marathon”. I tried it several times, but didn’t beat it.
And then there’s this fellow. A Super Mario spin-off that evolved into a fantastic series in its own right. Just like with its parent series, the Wario games are ones I will come back to again and again. These too I would eventually like to cover as a spin-off to my Super Mario Retrospective.
Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3
Status: Completed
Virtual Boy Wario Land
Status: Completed. Although I haven’t done the second quest/hard mode and I would like to.
Wario Land II
Status: Completed
Wario Land 3
Status: Completed
Wario Land 4
Status: Completed. However, I’ve always played the game on Normal mode in the past. I would like to complete it on Hard mode sometime which I’ve never done before. There is also Super Hard, but I don’t think I’ll bother with that one; the regular Hard mode is probably enough for me.
Wario World
Status: Completed
Wario: Master of Disguise
Status: Not played
Wario Land: Shake It!
Status: Completed. Albeit it’s been such a long time now since I last played the game, longer than any of the other Wario Land games and Wario World, so I’m definitely overdue to give it another go.
Then finally, there’s this little guy. Another spin-off that I wanted to include in my Mario overview. It started with the Captain Toad levels introduced in Super Mario 3D World and was then expanded into its own game. It even contains a few levels of its own directly based off 3D World, and then a later re-release which has new levels based off Super Mario Odyssey.
Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker
Wii U version status: Barely started. I played through the first several stages once and, while I did enjoy the game, for some reason I just stopped after that and never got back into it.
3DS & Switch version status: Not played
Well anyway, I’ll report in again once I have finally beaten all of these. Until next time. 🙂
