What do you think the worst Mario game is. (Including spinoffs) if you have a reason for not liking it include it.
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Flash Sentry
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Mario Kart Wii. My reason for not liking it is because I don't find the gameplay very interesting (probably just that racers aren't my type) and the game has no story and no interesting characters in its roster (imo) not that I dislike characters like Peach, Luigi, and Donkey Kong just that they're in enough other Mario related games that it's not really interesting to me. The graphics are also average i guess for its time, so by present day me's standards not great and its artystle is nothing special either. At least it does have catchy music. The only reason i'm not answering another mario kart game is because i haven't played any others, apart from i think i played the snes one in a retro gaming event once, a very long time ago, and it wasn't so bad
Neku Sakuraba
Currently playing Paper Mario 1
Lost Levels is basically a Mario Maker troll level, but stretched out to a full game. The Mario 2 we got is way better imo.
Mario Kart Tour has some pretty bad microtransaction stuff, but the core game is pretty fun, so idk if that counts.
Sticker Star is just a poorly designed game. There's no exp so battling random enemies is completely pointless. Key items that you need to solve puzzles are easily missed, and the game doesn't really tell you where they're at, so it's super easy to get stuck.
Mario Kart Tour has some pretty bad microtransaction stuff, but the core game is pretty fun, so idk if that counts.
Sticker Star is just a poorly designed game. There's no exp so battling random enemies is completely pointless. Key items that you need to solve puzzles are easily missed, and the game doesn't really tell you where they're at, so it's super easy to get stuck.
9DB7
Dry Bones Walk Again
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Imma go ahead and put mine. I really don't like any of the Mario party games. I just find them bland and boring. I don't really like warioware either being the same game but 2D. I simply don't like mini game style games. I also dislike 3D land but at least it's okay.
Takuto Maruki
Stay determined, Walkazo.
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I have to say, while Super Mario Maker 2 was far from being a bad game, it also wasn't great either? Like only a month in and I was generally unimpressed by the game itself. By the time it received its last update, I was already invested in Animal Crossing to give SMM2 my attention.
I wish I could go back to it, but what new benefits would I get?
I wish I could go back to it, but what new benefits would I get?
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Say what you want about poorly designed games but none of them are as harmful and predatory as Mario Kart Tour
People say the same about Diablo Immortal, only that Diablo Immortal is wayyy worse about the microtransactions. They're both over that turd bedrock.
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Junior on hold
happy pride!
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I'm not a fan of the Mario VS Donkey Kong series. It gives me too much tension and anxiety having to pay attention to everything everywhere all at once.
Also one user here won't like this but I never cared much for Dr. Mario. Out of all the big wig puzzle games it's one of the more convoluted ones. Only to be trumped in dislike by the minigame Tox Box Shuffle. Though I do rank Dr. Mario better than its clear cut rival, Mean Bean Machine.
Also one user here won't like this but I never cared much for Dr. Mario. Out of all the big wig puzzle games it's one of the more convoluted ones. Only to be trumped in dislike by the minigame Tox Box Shuffle. Though I do rank Dr. Mario better than its clear cut rival, Mean Bean Machine.
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As someone who has actually played Mario's Early Years: Preschool Fun and its CD ROM collection version of the game and has explored everything it has to offer, you are wrong; it exemplifies the sheer hypocrisy of fans who go "oh why doesn't Nintendo include representation of more niche series in their spin-offs" and ignore the timeless beloved characters such as the Fun Friends and these unnamed child characters who bear an uncanny resemblance to Mario
It has creatively designed worlds such as Shape World, Opposite World (which is just a carnival theme park), and Color World (the last two levels are grocery-themed, a theme we have yet to have in a Mario platformer)
You can play as Peach and Yoshi, you couldn't play as Peach since SMB2. Yoshi is only to the SNES version of the game so make sure you get both versions to get the complete experience (as well as the CD Rom collection version of the game)/
The game has voice-overs, which has preceded every other Mario game ever.
and deep lore such as Weegee being a bus driver (if only we had a Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers-style reference and have the Illumination Mario movie reference Weegee and his bus driver occupation!)
this kid who loves the Koopas and has a picture of Icky Iggy's face in his room for some reason
this unexplored part of a location from Dinosaur Island (evident by the familiar-looking hills in the background)
and if this dude is Old MacDonald or Mario dressed as Old MacDonald.
Enjoy the horrifying stark contrasts between the two versions of this game (what other Mario game can be played on two platforms? HUH? It's ahead of its time.), because if you continue to shit on it, I'll go and play Fun with Letters and Fun with Numbers and continue to dig up lore to prove you wrong:
Koopa con Carne
the slowpoke
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None of this matters if the games aren't good. Yes, edutainment games should have standards, too. And it looks like Reader Rabbit Preschool got these beat not even half a decade later.
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The games ARE good. You're not allowed to criticize that game unless you have played it yourself!
And good luck getting the DOS version to run on your Window 10 modern computer with an RTX uber graphics card with your i11 CPU! Much more challenging to do than beating any level in any Mario game ever!
And good luck getting the DOS version to run on your Window 10 modern computer with an RTX uber graphics card with your i11 CPU! Much more challenging to do than beating any level in any Mario game ever!
ThatOneUniqueToad
Just a guy who loves Mario RPGs.
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I'll have to go with Mario Party: The Top 100. Why? Cause there's very little to do in this game. There's only one board in the game and it's just a massive disappointment. Also, why is it called The Top 100 if Nintendo didn't rank the minigames by popularity? The title is just...so misleading.
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That game should be sued for false advertising considering Mario Mechs, the best Mario Party minigame ever made, is not on there and instead we got fucking Triple Jump.
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I still remember the sprites Nintendo gave the developers for the Mario's Early Years game.
You end up with this situation where you're left wondering why you find weirdly on-model Mario in parts of the game and then you find shockingly off-model ones in other parts. It makes sense to think that these weren't theirs, though. You can clearly tell which ones are Nintendo's sprites and which ones are theirs, like this on-model well-shaded Mario over this flat obnoxious background with zero shading.
Oh boy look at this. It's really blatant here. You see BOTH Luigi sprites sleeping, and you see the better one that's just a minigame asset.
Or this. You're like "wow Mario and Peach and that pan on Mario's left hand (RIP the other pan though) looks good actually, who's spriting this game?". Nah. Those are just Nintendo's.
Because you then see this version.
And these exist
And then there's this one floating Mario sprite where you're like "hey the proportions are good and this looks quite charming"
Or you have this attempt at copying Luigi's sprite but the proportions are off.
And this all existing in the same screen in the same game
If Nintendo handled all the spriting and the game was pretty much the same, I'm sure we wouldn't go anywhere as hard on it, or at least I'd forgive it for being an edutainment game. We got some charming sprites at least once we dived into the unused files. But I can only imagine how disappointed Nintendo must've been in seeing their IP all shredded apart, that Nintendo expected these people to competently sprite and actually USE those reference sprites rather than haphazardly make these bad sprites and then sloppily reuse those reference assets in tandem with their crappy sprites.
But there's a silver lining. You know how these titles are supposed to educate people on things? This game is a good way to educate HOW to sprite and what NOT TO DO when you're making a sprite. Here's an example.
I'll compare these two sprites, Nintendo's sprite and that other one
First thing you'll notice right away is that the scaling is terrible. It's really clear in the first one that Bowser is menacing and bigger than Luigi, but the second one, Luigi is bigger and he looks like he's dragging a corpse (it doesn't help too that Bowser's pose is bad too... what is doing on with the legs? The arms don't even look like arms). Luigi's eyes aren't evident either, as Nintendo knows how to use limited texture space while Bowser's eyes are just... confusing. This is also clear with the overall buttons where Nintendo placed it a little lower than normal for Luigi, but in a way that you know those are buttons. They decided to stick that color next to Luigi's gloveless hands (and it's not like they're limited by palette, as Bowser's horns are white. You also see the spikes on Bowser. They're all placed in ways that make sense, but for the second sprite, it's just lying all flat on the "shell" (their shell doesn't even have a rim) which gives off the appearance of scattered tortilla chips rather than spikes.
The proportions are bad too. They tried for perspective on Luigi's shoes, but it's too much, so it looks like his left foot is too small. Luigi just looks too long, his arms too long, hands too small but maybe the face is all right. Bowser, however, suffers a lot from proportions. The arms look like pig's trotters for instance. There's no wristbands either.
And then there's the shading which is overall crummy. Not contrasted enough. You also see Luigi's hat and arms don't even match for shade of green. But the shading is ALL over the place here, with that Bowser corpse lit on top apparently but not Luigi who looks pillow-shaded (the top of his hat isn't even lit). It's really inconsistent too, with Bowser having like four different colors shadows and Luigi's show only two, while Nintendo's sprite uses way less colors and is a lot clearer. Nintendo seems to have put the light source of this sprite to the right and it seems pretty consistent. The line work for that ugly sprite doesn't seem AWFUL really but it's a mishmash of blacks, browns, dark grays, and so on, with black only being the outline... sometimes.
Gosh I really want to go a little more into this but if you can find more things wrong with that sprite, why that sprite doesn't work and why Nintendo's sprite does, then it might be a good way to help YOU sprite. When you sprite, please block out basic shapes and get proportions and scaling correct. LEARN GESTURE. It'll help you get the pose you want. USE reference images too, like what Nintendo did but they didn't take advantage. When shading, use really basic solid colors and DECIDE and COMMIT to how complex you want shadows and also decide your light source (and generally don't pillow-shade by having the edges of the sprite have shadows, unless you know what you're doing, but if you're not experienced in spriting, don't pillow-shade). Also BE COLOR SENSITIVE. Luigi benefits from these bright appealing greens, not these dull greens, but don't make them TOO bright (you want a balance between the bright green and the blue overalls and the skin color), so apply discretion.
You end up with this situation where you're left wondering why you find weirdly on-model Mario in parts of the game and then you find shockingly off-model ones in other parts. It makes sense to think that these weren't theirs, though. You can clearly tell which ones are Nintendo's sprites and which ones are theirs, like this on-model well-shaded Mario over this flat obnoxious background with zero shading.
Oh boy look at this. It's really blatant here. You see BOTH Luigi sprites sleeping, and you see the better one that's just a minigame asset.
Or this. You're like "wow Mario and Peach and that pan on Mario's left hand (RIP the other pan though) looks good actually, who's spriting this game?". Nah. Those are just Nintendo's.
Because you then see this version.
And these exist
And then there's this one floating Mario sprite where you're like "hey the proportions are good and this looks quite charming"
Or you have this attempt at copying Luigi's sprite but the proportions are off.
And this all existing in the same screen in the same game
If Nintendo handled all the spriting and the game was pretty much the same, I'm sure we wouldn't go anywhere as hard on it, or at least I'd forgive it for being an edutainment game. We got some charming sprites at least once we dived into the unused files. But I can only imagine how disappointed Nintendo must've been in seeing their IP all shredded apart, that Nintendo expected these people to competently sprite and actually USE those reference sprites rather than haphazardly make these bad sprites and then sloppily reuse those reference assets in tandem with their crappy sprites.
But there's a silver lining. You know how these titles are supposed to educate people on things? This game is a good way to educate HOW to sprite and what NOT TO DO when you're making a sprite. Here's an example.
I'll compare these two sprites, Nintendo's sprite and that other one
First thing you'll notice right away is that the scaling is terrible. It's really clear in the first one that Bowser is menacing and bigger than Luigi, but the second one, Luigi is bigger and he looks like he's dragging a corpse (it doesn't help too that Bowser's pose is bad too... what is doing on with the legs? The arms don't even look like arms). Luigi's eyes aren't evident either, as Nintendo knows how to use limited texture space while Bowser's eyes are just... confusing. This is also clear with the overall buttons where Nintendo placed it a little lower than normal for Luigi, but in a way that you know those are buttons. They decided to stick that color next to Luigi's gloveless hands (and it's not like they're limited by palette, as Bowser's horns are white. You also see the spikes on Bowser. They're all placed in ways that make sense, but for the second sprite, it's just lying all flat on the "shell" (their shell doesn't even have a rim) which gives off the appearance of scattered tortilla chips rather than spikes.
The proportions are bad too. They tried for perspective on Luigi's shoes, but it's too much, so it looks like his left foot is too small. Luigi just looks too long, his arms too long, hands too small but maybe the face is all right. Bowser, however, suffers a lot from proportions. The arms look like pig's trotters for instance. There's no wristbands either.
And then there's the shading which is overall crummy. Not contrasted enough. You also see Luigi's hat and arms don't even match for shade of green. But the shading is ALL over the place here, with that Bowser corpse lit on top apparently but not Luigi who looks pillow-shaded (the top of his hat isn't even lit). It's really inconsistent too, with Bowser having like four different colors shadows and Luigi's show only two, while Nintendo's sprite uses way less colors and is a lot clearer. Nintendo seems to have put the light source of this sprite to the right and it seems pretty consistent. The line work for that ugly sprite doesn't seem AWFUL really but it's a mishmash of blacks, browns, dark grays, and so on, with black only being the outline... sometimes.
Gosh I really want to go a little more into this but if you can find more things wrong with that sprite, why that sprite doesn't work and why Nintendo's sprite does, then it might be a good way to help YOU sprite. When you sprite, please block out basic shapes and get proportions and scaling correct. LEARN GESTURE. It'll help you get the pose you want. USE reference images too, like what Nintendo did but they didn't take advantage. When shading, use really basic solid colors and DECIDE and COMMIT to how complex you want shadows and also decide your light source (and generally don't pillow-shade by having the edges of the sprite have shadows, unless you know what you're doing, but if you're not experienced in spriting, don't pillow-shade). Also BE COLOR SENSITIVE. Luigi benefits from these bright appealing greens, not these dull greens, but don't make them TOO bright (you want a balance between the bright green and the blue overalls and the skin color), so apply discretion.
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I really think that explains the whole Body World situation where you have that extremely grotesque Mario sprite in the DOS version of Preshool Fun drawn by spriters who can't draw fingers properly vs someone who can draw fingers in the SNES version of the game.
Flash Sentry
Whoa! You okay?
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Um, DOSbox is a thing and could deffo run mario teaches typing with those specs
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(I used DOSBox but using command prompt and needing to memorize is a pain in the ass for someone who understands 1990's mounting cmd.exe as much as a monkey does)
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- Fawfulthegreat64
My most hated Mario game is Paper Mario: Sticker Star. Now, it's absolutely not the objectively worst game, but it definitely had the most negative impact on me personally. I might cut it some more slack if it didn't form the standard all future Paper Mario games were derived from, by that I mean disallowing new characters that touch on the Mario world, and forcing any new characters to relate to the paper theme in some way. Starting from Sticker Star, Paper Mario games couldn't tell organic stories with the Mario cast anymore, they now have to be paper related. It essentially started what I feel is a flanderization of the Paper Mario series. If it wasn't for Sticker Star, Paper Mario would still be going as strong as it was in the 2000s today, and I'm confident in that. Sticker Star introduced unnecessary restrictions and limitations that have not been shaken from the series since, and don't look like they will anytime soon. Oh, and the sticker system sucks ass but I'd tolerate that if the tone, story, and character design was on par with the previous games.
That said, I give the game credit where it's due. The overworld gameplay is fun, the act of pulling off moves in battle is satisfying (just not the structure by which attacks are available and chosen). The music bops, and I actually prefer the art style of Sticker Star over the next two games (even if overall they are better, especially Origami King). I also prefer Sticker Star's battle system over Color Splash's, despite how similar they are Color Splash decided to hardcode its stupid design into bosses forcing you to beat them using the single move the devs designated as their weakness, whereas while Sticker Star encourages this, it is still possible to beat the bosses traditionally if you strategize hard enough. Sticker Star also doesn't have a random chance of Kamek showing up and casting a RNG spell that doesn't account for potential unwinnable situations. Still overall, Sticker Star is the antithesis to everything I love about the Mario RPGs, and considering how strong my love for those games are, yeah it'll be an achievement for a Mario game to be more disliked by me than Sticker Star. Also, the fine fellow my profile is currently based on was cut from Sticker Star, and is now forever trapped in prototype limbo. Godspeed, Mander. Maybe you'd have existed in a finished product if your game hadn't been hit so hard with mandates and restrictions.
That said, I give the game credit where it's due. The overworld gameplay is fun, the act of pulling off moves in battle is satisfying (just not the structure by which attacks are available and chosen). The music bops, and I actually prefer the art style of Sticker Star over the next two games (even if overall they are better, especially Origami King). I also prefer Sticker Star's battle system over Color Splash's, despite how similar they are Color Splash decided to hardcode its stupid design into bosses forcing you to beat them using the single move the devs designated as their weakness, whereas while Sticker Star encourages this, it is still possible to beat the bosses traditionally if you strategize hard enough. Sticker Star also doesn't have a random chance of Kamek showing up and casting a RNG spell that doesn't account for potential unwinnable situations. Still overall, Sticker Star is the antithesis to everything I love about the Mario RPGs, and considering how strong my love for those games are, yeah it'll be an achievement for a Mario game to be more disliked by me than Sticker Star. Also, the fine fellow my profile is currently based on was cut from Sticker Star, and is now forever trapped in prototype limbo. Godspeed, Mander. Maybe you'd have existed in a finished product if your game hadn't been hit so hard with mandates and restrictions.
I'll be honest I like how Peach looks here. Mario doesn't look that bad either, though Nintendo's sprite for him is still better. But the Peach gives me Super Show vibes and I actually like that design of her, it's cuter than the Nintendo one imo.
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why is Mario standing next to a bed with a presumably dead grandpa with swastika eyes
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Also, if the ending to Mario Pinball Land isn't high art, then I don't know what is.
After witnessing the death of old man Swastika Eyes, the infamous swastika eyed old man, the angry sun became the delighted sun.
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I think that's why the angry sun didn't appear in a Mario title since, he was too happy at that swastika-eyed man's death to be mad anymore.