Most Underrated Mario Game

[Ultima Shadow]

We all have our favourites from the many Mario games over the years, but as far as widespread acclaim goes, there are always a few that slip under the radar. So, Fungi Forumers, I ask you this: which Mario games do you think are far better than what people would suggest?

My picks;
Yoshi's Story- very kiddy in terms of graphics and such, but all in all a fun (if easy) platformer that stands up well on its own merits. I think it suffers a lot from comparisons to Yoshi's Island when in reality it is quite a decent game.

Mario Kart Super Circuit- with less of the memorability of SMK and MK64, and the fancy graphics of those that followed it, it's not unfair to say that MKSC is the black sheep of the series, when in actuality it combines the gameplay of its two predecessors brilliantly over 40 tracks (half of them recycled but still...) and sports addictive and fast-paced gameplay for the GBA. I always feel nostalgic when I see a MKSC track pop up in a retro cup on MKDS/MKWii.

[PaperLuigi]

Mario Strikers. It's underrated insofar as it isn't as popular as other Mario sports titles (Mario Tennis and Mario Kart come to mind). It's only outstanding attribute (aside from being a Mario title) is its quality of being fun. Seriously, I could play this game all day against my friends and never be bored with it.

EDIT: Also, Mario is Missing. trollface

[coolkid]

Yoshi's Story and Super Mario Sunshine.

[The Chef]

-Wrecking Crew
-Yoshi's Story
-Mario Party 1, 2 and 3
-Yoshi Touch & Go
-Mario Golf, Tennis and Baseball (people used to rip on these all the time just for being spin-offs)
-Mario Hoops
-Mario Strikers
-Super Mario Sunshine
-Super Mario Galaxy 2 (surprisingly)
-Super Mario Bros. (seriously, everybody touts SMB3, SMW or SM64 as the greatest game in the series but nobody ever acknowledges the originator)
-Mario Bros. (same here, except this one's been demoted to a multiplayer mode)
-Super Mario Bros. 2 (people seem to rip on this one just for being based on an unrelated game)
-Mario Kart: Super Circuit
-Tetris Attack (nobody ever seems to talk about it and it's one of my favorite puzzle games ever)
-Yoshi (same with this one)
-Game & Watch Gallery (I was playing these long before retro became cool and Mr. G&W was created)

[jugglechainsaws]

Dr. Mario.  It's right there with Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo as my favorite puzzle game ever.

[CrossEyed7]

I wanna say Yoshi's Story, though it seems that it, like SMB2(USA), is starting to come into its own, as all the people who criticized it back when it came out for looking too "kiddy" are now thirteen years older and are becoming more secure in their maturity, and now that we have an actual sequel to Yoshi's Island. I will argue, though, that it's a much harder game than people give it credit for. With six to eight lives at most, and only a single 1-up, hidden rather well, in each level, it's a far cry from the standard Nintendo lives-fest, especially with the prominence of insta-kill obstacles on the last few pages. And it gets really hard if you go for a perfect 30-melon score on all 24 levels (Trial Mode, not Story Mode, is where the game really shines).

Paper Mario is a great game, better in some ways than its sequels (for one, while not as funny of a game, it makes fewer gameplay sacrifices for humor, making it overall a more replayable game than TTYD or SPM), but almost always gets overlooked in favor of its successors. It also gets unfairly panned by SMRPG fans for not being the SMRPG2 they wanted, when it really is. Sure, there's no Geno or Mallow, but if you can get over that and the graphical shift (from 2D 3D on a 2D console to 3D 2D on a 3D console), it works very well as a direct sequel to SMRPG. Bowser forcibly joins Mario's party to get his castle back, they successfully get it back and protect the world from future invasions by Smithy's weapons, Bowser leaves and goes to fix up his castle, Bowser goes to the Star Road intending to discover and possibly steal the Stars' wish-granting power, he gets it and surprises everyone in the Mushroom Kingdom in the middle of a party while they're still celebrating Smithy being defeated. Just assume that the Star Spirits and Star Pieces are the same thing, as are Twink and ♥♪!?, and the two fit together just as well as SML1&2 or SMG1&2. That's not to say I wouldn't still love to see Square make another Mario RPG, of course (seriously, why haven't they gotten on this yet? Nintendo and Square have been friendly for five years now).

Speaking of Super Mario Land 1 and 2, neither of them gets enough love. SML1 is a great spin on SMB, with lots of little twists on classic enemies, all perfectly tuned to a pocket-sized experience (not to mention some nice music), while SML2 is a platforming work of art, with levels that still feel fresh nineteen years later.

The Game & Watch Gallery series really deserves another entry -- and no, the Club Nintendo Collection titles don't count. As I said before, the 3DS would be great for this, using the 3D to subtly simulate the multiple layers inside a G&W screen (backgrounds, foregrounds, liquid crystals in between) and using the camera to simulate a Crystal Screen game.

Mario Hoops is a lot of fun (though I'm still a bit annoyed that they didn't include Geno). Coins, items, and dribbling with the touch screen all work very well. Haven't played it in a while because my DS shoulder buttons always crap out (apparently you're not supposed to put these things in your pockets anymore? Come on, Nintendo. I'm out of college, I'm not going to buy a messenger bag now.).

More later if I remember them.

[WarpRattler]

-Super Mario Bros. ... nobody ever acknowledges the originator

Because there's no reason to consider the original when the sequels were as big of improvements as they were. Like going from Street Fighter to Street Fighter II, though at least SMB1 is still a playable game.

-Super Mario Bros. 2
-Tetris Attack

I really like both of these games, but at the end of the day they're just ROM hacks. Official ROM hacks, sure, but neither is really a Mario game, though SMB2 at least has the fact that a massive amount of stuff from it has ended up in other Mario games going for it.

I definitely agree about Super Mario Land 2 (the original is a bit weak, though I like the superball and Marine/Sky Pop), Super Mario Sunshine, and Mario Hoops.

[BP]

SMB's fun and all but I believe it's OVERrated simply for being so close to first, and for being so old. It's good, but truly, 3, World, Yoshi's Island, and NSMBW knock it all down. Hard.

Lately I've been... not exactly worried, more like sadly expecting that this will happen to NSMBW and SMG2. That they'll be forgotten... that nothing in them will ever become iconic. Neither would indicate that they're bad games, but you know what I mean

[CoconutMikeNIke]

I'd say, more than Dr. Mario, Wario's Woods is underrated. I enjoyed that it was more than just 'match the pieces' kind of puzzles, and it hasn't had the same luck in remakes and re releases that Dr. Mario has enjoyed. I was quite surprised when it showed up on Animal Crossing,

[The Chef]

Come to think of it, Super Mario Land 3: Wario Land is pretty underrated, as are its sequels to some degree. Nobody seems to remember that there was a time when Wario based blocks and used power-ups just the same as Mario did.

[Weegee]

SMB's fun and all but I believe it's OVERrated simply for being so close to first, and for being so old. It's good, but truly, 3, World, Yoshi's Island, and NSMBW knock it all down. Hard.

Too true. Likening SMB to its successors is like comparing early Mesopotamian civilization to that of Ancient Greece or Rome.

[Toad]

I agree that the Mario Land series (Including the first Wario Land game) and Wario's Woods need more recognition. They are all great games. Where are the remakes/rereleases of these?

(apparently you're not supposed to put these things in your pockets anymore? Come on, Nintendo. I'm out of college, I'm not going to buy a messenger bag now.).

You're not supposed to put them in your pockets? Really? But it's a portable system. I thought the idea was for gaming on the go..

[penguinwizard]

Any games I may have nominated for being underrated have already been said. Loved Tetris Attack (the only way you'd get me to play Panel de Pon in any form. If videogames had slap-on skin packs to replace a set of characters with another, I'd use Yoshi characters every time). Wario's Woods was a favorite back in the day for how crazy things would get later on, and the first game where I had a crush on Birdo (and hey, Toad got some recognition). And of course the first Wario Land. The later Wario Lands may be tighter and feel better, but the first game had more adventure and a sense of whimsy that the later games seem to throw out.

For a few games I didn't see in my quick scan of the thread:

- Mario and Wario: Decent puzzler, released only in Japan yet is perfectly understandable.
- Yoshi's Cookie: I loved this game for the Yoshi focus. Might not be as enjoyable as Tetris Attack, but still a good time.
- Mario's Picross: Love love love it. Picross is awesome. Why on earth didn't people pick up on it sooner? Screw Sudoku, screw it to heck - I want Picross.

Also, while I enjoyed Yoshi's Story and consider the "Tower Climb" stage to be the closest I've been to Yoshi nirvana (lovely music, Yoshi gliding on a leaf, particularly easy to run a lot in this stage to have Yoshi breathe heavily), it's the incredibly annoying between-worlds music and overall heavy kid slant and Yoshi humming ALL THE TIME which scares me away. I bought it because I was a Yoshi supporter. I later gave it away.

[toadettesthewinner]

Both have already been mentioned, but my two picks are

Wario's Woods
This game was one of my absolute favorites as a kid. It was my favorite puzzle game of all time (until I started really getting in to the new Tetris), and it was an opportunity for Toad to star! I'd love to see a remake/sequel.

Mario Golf
This game was popular enough that they made versions for N64, Gameboy Color, and Gameboy Advance, and Gamecube. But it was apparently underrated enough that they didn't see fit to make one for the Wii, which would have been AWESOME with the motion sensitive controllers.

[Dark Jaguar]

Hi, new to this forum.  I wanted to make this it's own thread but I can only respond just yet.

I nominate Super Mario Bros. 2 as most underrated, along with maybe Mario Land 2.  I don't understand why there's all the recent hate over it, across so many reviews.  I think if people were honest a lot of people would recall loving it as a kid.  Who cares if it was "just a ROM hack" or however one might put it?

That said...

I've got a pretty big recent discovery thanks to wired and ars technica, the reason I decided to post to begin with.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/04/the-secret-history-of-super-mario-bros-2.ars
This is from an interview with the game's designer, Kensuke Tanabe.

It seems that before Doki Doki Panic, the game started out as a prototype for a new Mario game.  The original prototype, designed by Kensuke Tanabe, was going to focus on vertical scrolling levels and throwing blocks around (at enemies, to use as platforms, you know the drill).  Further, in something I would have loved to have seen finished, the prototype had two player simultaneous multi player, allowing Mario and Luigi to toss each other around.  It later was cancelled because there just weren't enough fun elements according to Miyamoto.  The prototype got life in it when Tanabe was asked to put the mascots for the upcoming "Dream Factory" fair into a game.  The prototype was greatly fleshed out with side scrolling as well as replacing the "ally tossing" with "enemy tossing" and Doki Doki was born.  That, as we all know, was later changed to Mario 2.  (For the record, it wasn't a NOA hack but Tanabe himself that handled the second upgrade into a Mario game.)

When you look at Doki Doki Panic, on this site for example, the differences between it and Mario 2 are well known.  One thing that's important to note however are all the similarities Doki Doki Panic already had with Mario games, from the stars to "warp pipes" to some mushroom houses here and there to vines you can climb.  This information suggests that these similarities are probably inherited from it's origins as a Mario game prototype.

With this new knowledge, I think it's safe to say that rather than Mario 2 not being a "true" Mario game but just a repaint of Doki Doki, it's more accurate to say that it has always been a true Mario game, and if anything it's time as "Doki Doki Panic" is the paint job.