November 2022 – DaveGladow.com

Super Mario World is without a doubt, 100%, a stone-cold lock of an essential game – even though upon release, it wasn’t essential for me.

These sorts of distinctions are important in an exercise such as ranking games, because when you’re talking about games that are, for lack of a better term, essentially perfect, and you’re interested in determining an order of some kind, picking the nits and trying to dig for problems can be, well, a little fruitless.

Take Super Mario World as an example. Am I going to sit here at the outset and say it has microscopic faults that definitively prevent it from finishing higher on my list of retro gaming essentials, picking at stupid things like the color palette being slightly different or the gameplay not quite being the same as the previous games, or any other number of dumb, nitpicky things?

Nah, that would be boring.

It would also be dishonest. Super Mario World is universally beloved as one of the greatest platformers of all time, many consider it to be THE best Mario game of all time, and still others think it’s got an argument as the greatest video game of all time, period.

One of the greatest games of all time? And we’re going to try to find faults with THAT?

I fully believe this game to be borderline perfect, and that is the thing we should focus on: why it is so good.

And of course the real reason why I don’t have it higher than No. 23 on my list …

Well, that comes down to my personal story. And so here is my acknowledgement of how this ranking came to be.

Super Mario World
Genre: Side-scrolling platformer
Released: 1991
Platform: SNES
Empire’s greatest game of all-time

I’m going to address this right out of the gate: This game is too low on the list of retro gaming essentials at No. 22.

That’s a statement of quality in itself, that a game can be underrated as a best-of list’s No. 22.

But it’s true. I can’t deny it.

And it’s not because of industry standards, or impact on the genre, or critical consensus, or anything quite so grand as all that.

No, it’s actually too low among my own personal favorites.

How? Why? What?

Well, I covered the why right here. I wanted variety at the top of any list of recommendations.

And the how is covered right here. I went with Final Fantasy VII up high (No. 12!)* instead by the slimmest of margins, leaving Final Fantasy VI in the uncomfortable position of having to tumble down the list to accommodate my “no series repeats” criteria.

* One might have a problem with the FF7 choice, and that’s fine. I can only say in my defense that it was a REALLY close call.

Well, that criteria of no repeats, I decided, should only apply to the top 20. The rationale being, yeah, you want some variety at the very top, but gosh, if a game is great, it still deserves to be advocated for.

And Final Fantasy VI is undeniably great.

Final Fantasy VI
Genre: RPG
Released: 1994
Platform: SNES
Electronic Gaming Monthly’s No. 9 console game of all-time

Month: November 2022

Super Mario World: Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 23)

Final Fantasy VI: Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 22)