In the year 2021, YouTuber jan Misali released the video essay "how many Super Mario games are there?", a unique, data-driven look at the "mainline" Mario series. It, along with its 2024 sequel "how many Super Mario games are there NOW?", are in my opinion some of the best video essays on the entire website, two excellent videos covering how much surprising ambiguity there is in what is one of the most ubiquitous franchises in history. Utilizing a number of sources, both official and reputable, as well as polling the audience for their own opinions on the topic, jan Misali presents a fascinating look into how up for interpretation this seemingly simple question and, in turn, does not provide an answer, leaving the audience to simply ask what their own version of this same list would be. And like most people who watched that video, it compelled me to want to form my own list and, moreover, it compelled me to want to go back and finish many loose threads in this series, platformers I had, at various points in my life, started but never finished.
I learned some interesting things in this little venture, for instance, despite my initial dislike of Yoshi's Island off its first world years ago, the more I played it the more I loved it. Or that after many years of telling myself that Super Mario 64 has aged, has been supplanted by other Mario games that followed, and that the DS version is clearly superior due to the additional content, I actually love Super Mario 64, almost as much as I love Odyssey, and frankly feel like the DS version I grew up with is by and large the worse version because it is missing the most important thing to 64 as a work of art. I also confirmed suspicions I had. I had long thought that Mario 2 was my favorite of the NES Marios and Mario 3 is my least favorite and playing both of them over in what are likely their most definitive releases, the Advance series versions, confirmed this. Mario 2 is a flawed, weird, but ultimately misunderstood and incredibly interesting game while Mario 3 strives for perfection, succeeds, and kinda ends up boring because of it. I even learned that I don't like the All-Stars ports of Mario 1 and Lost Levels (not that I like original Lost Levels either, it's not a good game imo), finding its differences in physics from the NES originals very distracting. But the most interesting thought I had playing through all these NES Mario games finally is how different they are in design philosophy from Mario World, the 2D Mario I grew up with.
In particular Mario 3 was an eye opener as it contained many elements that would later be utilized in World, an overworld map to explore, more characters Mario comes up against, distinctive, themed worlds. I've even heard the criticism of Mario 3 that it feels like it was just a tech demo for World, a belief not really supported by the knowledge of Mario 3 and Mario World's reasonably well documented development cycles. But in these similarities, I started to notice how different they were on a fundamental level. How these two seemingly similar designs were made to accomplish vastly different goals, create different experiences. And I realized, there might not be just one philosophy of what Mario is in this series. There might, in fact, be...
...Two Marios
It would be impossible to overstate the influence Super Mario Bros. for the NES has had. Like, it is video games, everything descends from it. It's almost self-parody at this point, we take it for granted how much it changed the world. And I think the biggest thing we take for granted, is the fourth pipe on world 1-1. It's such common knowledge at this point that you can descend the pipe to find a stash of coins and a shortcut that we forget how mind blowing it must've been to find that for the first time. To be the first person in your friend group to figure out how to do 1-1 faster than everyone else. Mario 1 then follows it up with a truly spectacular secret, a Warp Zone, taking you from the first level all the way to the fourth, rewarding players for experimenting in the level and exploring every nook and cranny. These secrets were not the first in gaming, Adventure for the Atari is widely recognized to have one of if not the first secret(s) in gaming, but they are still incredibly influential and, more relevantly, set up Mario as a series about two things. Exploration, and speed.
In Mario 1's context the secrets are designed to help the player achieve the endgame faster. In level shortcuts or entire world skips are common in the level design and famously you can utilize these various tricks to beat Mario 1 in incredibly short times. At the time I'm writing this, we are rapidly approaching the point of no return on its speed, mere frames remain before we reach the fastest possible time on the game. The ability to find secrets to impact the gameplay is so inherent to Mario that the "true" sequel to Mario 1, The Lost Levels, parodies this idea, giving players the same generalized idea of "finding secrets to go fast" only for said secrets to be unhelpful and often undo progress. And it is from these two ideas, exploration and speed, that I am positing the two separate Mario series exist.
Super Mario Bros. 3
Super Mario Bros. 3's secrets are almost as iconic as Mario 1's. The warp whistle was literally a major plot point in a Hollywood movie designed solely to advertise Super Mario Bros. 3, the Wizard, allowing the main character to defeat his rival in the final big video game competition. Mario 3 goes bigger and better with its secrets than Mario 1, part of its design goal to be "the best Mario game it can be" based on the context of NES Mario. There are many secrets so obscure in it that Mario 3 experts are still not totally confident in how to get them, like the secret mushroom houses which require oddly specific coin counts on specific levels to spawn. But these secrets largely exist to accomplish the central goal of "going fast". Powerups to skip levels and/or beat them as fast as possible, the aforementioned warp whistles which both exist in World 1 and allow you to immediately skip to the end of the game. It's very obvious that, taking from Mario 1, Mario 3 sees the purpose of exploring in the game to be "giving the players options to speedrun it".
This is also present in how Super Mario Bros. 3 utilizes its world map. One may think that Mario 3, having a world map at all, a first for the series, would be focusing more on exploration, filling the nooks and crannies with secret levels and weird alternate routes to take. In practice, however, the world map ultimately serves as just a way to give players options on what levels they want to complete and, moreover, what levels they want to skip. To my recollection, the only world that really has anything to explore is the Water World of World 3, where a canoe can take you to a hidden part of the map containing bonus toad houses and minigames. It is clear the function of the world map is simply to aid in the game's central goal of "go fast".
The level design itself also signals to the player that the goal is speed. Mario 3's levels are not only typically short but breezy as well. Even into the late game on my playthrough I often found myself kinda just holding left to win. Very few levels have puzzles to solve or any real obstacle getting in your way, you just can kinda go. Especially with the wide range of powerups, many of which are designed to literally let you fly over obstacles, including numerous instances where you obtain a more powerful version of said powerups that act as if you are always going at top speed allowing near infinite flight for the level used. Mario 3 is, ultimately, a game about speed, it is a game you can get really good at and then beat as a fidget toy in a half hour while you're waiting for something to happen.
Super Mario World
Juxtapose this with its immediate successor, Super Mario World. The fourth Mario game in many ways attempts to accomplish many of the same goals as Mario Bros. 3. Being a launch title for the more powerful Super Nintendo, Mario World intends to go bigger and better than Mario has ever been before. Unlike Super Mario Bros. 3, however, it does not attempt to do this by trying to produce the most perfect version of what we've seen before, instead serving as something of a reinvention of Mario. Mario World takes place not in a series of kingdoms ruled by seemingly allied monarchs but, instead, on a distant, foreign island. The world map, an idea established in Mario 3, is greatly expanded upon, now being one large, interlocking world instead of a series of individualized maps. Mario World goes back to basics with its powerup spread, whereas Mario 3 had several different powerups to aid the player in specific circumstances, Mario World goes back to 3, the Mushroom, the Fire Flower, and the games' new addition to the powerup canon, the Super Cape. Instead of focusing on powerups, Mario World chooses to instead develop an entirely new cast member, the long awaited noble steed to Mario's knight slaying the dragon to rescue the princess archetype, Yoshi. Yoshi fundamentally changes how Mario interacts with the world, giving Mario a different way of taking out enemies, having his partner eat them to gain other advantages, as well as allowing him to cross certain hazards no issue.
The most relevant thing currently though would be that world map. A massive, interlocking map of different levels and stages, Dinosaur Land is a far cry from previous Mario games' worlds. At a first glance it honestly may not seem that special, in fact, if you are just attempting to achieve the goal of "beat the game" it may even seem less impressive than previous maps, as the initial several worlds seem to be a straight, linear path, only divulging in a later world where the map becomes very ambiguous. But this is where Mario World really hides its true genius, as Mario World is full of secrets and it wants the player to explore its many levels to find them all.
Super Mario World's overworld map conveys levels in many ways but mainly as simple, easy to recognize dots in two colors. Yellow dots inform the player the level is no frills, a level meant to be played and completed entirely at face value, you get to the goal, it's a-him, Mario. The red dots though, are interesting. The red level dots indicate that there is a hidden exit in the level, for the player to find. Either a proper hidden area or a key hidden level to insert into a lock hidden elsewhere in the same level. This immediately signals to the player how important level exploration is to Super Mario World, that it is informing you that there are many levels throughout with something more to them. And here's the biggest break Mario World has from its predecessors; finding secrets within levels does not always make the game go by faster. In Mario World, the game expands when you find secrets within levels, revealing hidden pathways and unique areas. There are entire alternate routes with unique stages you would not normally encounter and the linear pathway locked behind in-level secrets. And many of the Switch Palaces, areas in the game that when reached and completed change the geography of the game's many levels, are hidden, making the player find them within the levels.
But it goes even beyond this as Mario World has an unlockable world for finding hidden paths. The Star World, a mysterious world containing five levels, has numerous entrances throughout Dinosaur Land, locked away until the player uncovers their secrets. Star World itself is full of hidden pathways, and as the player accomplishes the objectives within, they are rewarded with a few special unlockables. The first is the different colored Yoshis. I had not previously commented on this, waiting for this part of the text, but one of Yoshi's unique powers is that when he eats a Koopa shell, he gains abilities based on the color of said shell. Red gives him the ability to breathe fire, blue gives him the ability to fly, and yellow makes Yoshi creates shockwaves when he hits the ground. By completing the Star World levels, you are rewarded with red, yellow, and blue Yoshis who adopt these powers on any Koopa shell eaten on top of powers they would gain. The second big unlockable is more game. By finding all the hidden exits in Star World you unlock the Special World, a series of challenge levels with funny names like "Tubular" or "Mondo" for the player to test their skills in. For the record, I have never found Special Zone despite all my years of playing Mario World, I should probably do that at some point.
The third unlock you get, however, brings us back around to the idea of exploration and speed. By completing the Star World, you gain the ability to warp directly to the final boss. The place where Mario World seems the most similar to its predecessor. If the idea I am putting forward is that there are Two Marios, one of speed and one of exploration, how does the supposed divergence point, Mario World vs. Mario 3, end up at seemingly the same place regardless. Mario World, for all its focus on exploration, seems to go back to "go fast". I think of it kind of like the following, and you are welcome to disagree, like jan Misali who started this whole train of thought, I do not seek to provide answers. My belief in the Two Marios is my own interpretation of the series and it's fine if you don't concur, that's kinda the point of the videos.
As previously stated, Mario 3 feels as though speed is not simply reward for finding secrets but the purpose of said secrets in the first place. The intent is almost always focused on the idea of getting to the end of the game faster. Mario World I feel contrasts this by making the purpose exploration and the reward speed. Rather than the two being intrinsically linked, existing solely as a unit, they are two concepts working in tandem, a mechanic and a reward. You don't explore in Mario World to go fast, you explore in Mario World to find secret pathways and new levels and your reward for your due diligence is that you can go fast. And with this, we establish two ideas of Mario, one of speed, and one of exploration.
3D Mario
Meanwhile, Mario 64 exists as an uncontroversial entity. Sure, some may put forward the argument that Mario 64 begins a subseries within the Mario canon, that all the 3D Marios are in fact a separate series from the 2D games, but I don't think those people are doing it in the sense of "Mario 64 isn't true to the 2D games" but rather that it makes sense for their own interpretation to place the 3D Marios, largely a group of collectathon platformers, in a separate category from the sidescrolling 2D games, a different sort of "Two Marios". But personally I think this lack of controversy around Mario 64's status is because it is a natural progression in many ways of the philosophy of Mario World, a Mario game that, in my mind, gave birth to the idea of Mario focusing on exploration.
The Rest of the Series
To finish this out I want to go over my own interpretation of what the Mario series is with this idea in place. To start, the two Mario 2s, Lost Levels and USA. They kind of nebulously exist in both categories, mainly due to existing before the divergence point in the series, but I wanted to highlight them anyways because I find them interesting. Mario USA, in my mind the "true" Mario 2 due to its greater lasting influence on the Mario series, at first feels like it is more in line with Mario World due to its larger levels that frequently are designed to be combed through to find objectives. And this is certainly true, an earlier idea of this same concept had the divergence be the two Mario 2s, with Lost Levels representing what would become the 3 legacy. But ultimately Mario USA doesn't do a whole lot past having big levels the exploration of these levels ultimately doesn't accomplish anything in the grander design philosophy which is very much a "get to the end as fast as possible side scroller". It's sort of a half step between the two, existing in both Marios at once.
The Lost Levels, meanwhile, is bad. But also surprises me in this context. I have long thought of the Lost Levels as a game that only technically counts, that a ubiquitous fun fact has turned what is effectively a romhack into the true sequel to Mario 1 and despite this, Lost Levels doesn't really have much legacy in the Mario series. But, if anything, the Lost Levels is another half step between both Marios. Like by definition The Lost Levels is like Mario 1 and by extension Mario 3, it is literally Mario 1 but hard now. Surprisingly though, the Lost Levels does implement a key ideas that would also become part of World and its legacy. The Lost Levels is full of secret worlds, five of them to be exact, found by accomplishing various goals during gameplay of the "standard game". Again, it ultimately exists in both of them and honestly leans even more towards 3 than World, but its such an interesting little note about the Lost Levels and a legacy it leaves behind that may be overlooked.
It should come as no surprise that Super Mario Land for the Game Boy is, decidedly, on the speed side of this spectrum. Like, all Mario Land is, is speed, it's not only a very short Mario game, barely containing over ten levels, but many of these levels take seconds to complete. It could be argued it shouldn't even count for any metric I put forward, as the only secrets in the levels are coin rooms which give you minor shortcuts. But like, it's a Super Mario game, what are you going to do.
Mario Land 2, on the other hand, is far more nuanced. Mario Land 2 has a decently sized, interlocking world map akin to Mario World. It is, seemingly, a game designed to be explored. And there are a lot of different places to go to, some of which are hidden behind seemingly innocuous facades that you have to dig deep into. However, ultimately all of this is required, your exploration is just choosing where you wish to go and what order you wish to do things, you are still attempting to accomplish the goal of getting to the end as fast as possible. It's a surprisingly tricky entry in the grand scheme of things but, ultimately, I think it's fair to say that it is an exploration game and throw it on that side. I mean I guess I could always put it in both as well but I don't want to have to do that already 3 games after the split happened.
Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3, arguably shouldn't count. Like it's not really the third Mario Land game, it's the first Wario Land game, an entirely different series with its own design philosophy. But a part of me also feels like there's a distinct reason why Wario Land is labeled initially as a Mario game before branching into its own thing, as I could see the argument being made that, in a very generous sense, all Mario spinoff series start off as Super Mario games and then only after do they become their own series, i.e. Super Mario Kart would be a Super Mario game but Mario Kart 64 would not be. Otherwise, like, how is the series spinning off if it doesn't exist in the original series in the first place. I won't be doing every spinoff by this logic, don't worry, but I think for Wario Land I'll make an exception and I think Wario Land is pretty decidedly an exploration based game, you are trying to navigate labyrinthian to find and collect treasure.
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Speaking of exceptions, another one on the list, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. Again, this should probably count not as a Mario game but as a Yoshi game but like, I want to count it. Suffice to say, this is again another exploration game. Although incredibly linear, with the world map existing as effectively a list that you can scroll across to pick levels, Yoshi's Island is all about exploring its levels' every nook and cranny to find numerous collectibles, accomplishing a final score of 100 and unlocking levels as a result. It is one of the most nonlinear linear games ever made.
We've already talking about Mario 64, so lets instead talk about its sequel, Super Mario Sunshine. Sunshine is pretty decidedly an exploration game, but I think it's noteworthy in that we are starting to see a decrease in true exploration for the 3D Marios already. While Mario 64 allows the player a lot of freedom on what stars to collect, when to collect them and how, only having as single actually required star if the player is playing normally (and for the most part even if they aren't), Mario Sunshine roadblocks the player a lot, having numerous levels with inaccessible elements that will not appear until you beat earlier missions. There are sadly very few shines you can get out of order, and, ultimately, collecting Shines is not exactly your goal as advertised as ultimately you are attempting to just make it to the seventh mission in each world to beat Shadow Mario. An argument could certainly be made it belongs in both and maybe even that it is just a speed game.
Super Mario 64 DS is next, it is the only remake I am counting because it is the only Mario remake thus far that I feel is a substantially different enough game from its original counterpart to be a unique entry. It's Mario 64, you know where it goes.
New Super Mario Bros.! I will, against my better judgement, be covering the New Super Mario Bros. games individually even though I'm pretty sure they are all going to have the same verdict. New Super Mario Bros. is 100% a speed game, the whole purpose of it was to bring back the original Mario gameplay but updated with modern Mario's moveset. It has warp zones to throw you into different levels and it even forces you to skip several worlds on each playthrough, making the player choose which worlds they want to skip but skipping them all the same, this is a game designed to be beaten as fast as possible if I've ever seen one.
Super Mario Galaxy is up next and, well, it's complicated. If Sunshine was already starting to kick the can down into speed game territory, Galaxy almost gets it all the way to the junkyard. Galaxy gives the player a lot of options for nonlinearity but almost every level in Galaxy once you arrive is a pretty simple "get to the goal as fast as possible". The level design is very linear, having far more in common with the 2D sidescrollers than its 3D predecessors, primarily because the Wii kind of required a more simplified gameplay to be able to function with its more simplified controllers. My heart says Galaxy is still an exploration game, but this one I could go either way on, ask me again in a month and I'd say speed game.
New Super Mario Bros. Wii! New Super Mario Bros. Wii is, like its predecessor, absolutely a speed game. In many ways it's even moreso, New Super Mario Bros. Wii not only has easily accessible secret warp zones to rocket you to other levels and pathing designed only to let you skip over levels to get to the end as fast as possible but the actual levels are this weird blend of overly large and spacious but still fast. This is of course made to support the four player simultaneous multiplayer, causing the game to just feel a little empty and emptiness makes for faster levels.
Mario Galaxy 2 is up next and when conceiving of this idea initially, I believed genuinely that Mario Galaxy 2 was going to be the breaking point. I believed we would get to Mario Galaxy 2 and face the reality that 3D Mario was no longer exploration based at all. Mario Galaxy 2, infamously, walks back on many of the things that the first game was praised for, its sense of scale, its atmosphere, its tone, its story. And it's all in service of making the most "fun" game possible, something that causes many people, myself included, to kinda feel like it's fun but pretty soulless. The big thing about Galaxy 2 is that it does adopt classic 2D Mario design ideals and bring them to a 3D space, featuring tons of linear obstacle course levels just floating out in space. Would you believe me if I told you, though, that Galaxy 2 is not only an exploration game, but its status as one is less ambiguous than the first game. See, Galaxy 2 features an incredibly extensive post game where you are tasked with revisiting every level in the game to find hidden objectives within. Meaning that Galaxy 2 ultimately incentivizes the player to find as many collectibles as possible and explore all these levels in depth. And the goal? To unlock more levels, in this case a final gauntlet level. I know, it's wild to me too, but Galaxy 2 is exploration.
Super Mario 3D Land, however, does break our trend of 3D Mario games being exploration based. Mario 3D Land is, very literally, an adaptation of classic obstacle course style 2D Mario into the 3D space. In many ways it is a direct successor to Mario 3, one of the games that started this divergence in the first place. And I know that 3D Land has a ton of unlockable levels, doubling the length of the game, but these unlocks are, as far as I'm aware, essentially automatic once you complete the main game. This game doesn't really have 8 normal worlds and 8 unlockable worlds, it just has sixteen worlds.
Remember when I said I was gonna do the New Soup games individually. Well there's three of them in a row so you're getting all of them, sorry, I'm a liar. New Super Mario Bros. 2, New Super Mario Bros. U, and New Super Luigi U are all speed games. Especially that last one where you have 1/3 the time to beat every level and they're all designed for Luigi' s faster gameplay. Something I haven't brought up about the New Super Mario Bros. series is that it does indeed have exploration mechanics to it, there are collectibles in every level and obtaining them all nets you unlockable bonus levels, one for each world you achieve all collectibles on. As such the argument could very well be made that they are more ambiguous than I am giving them credit for and could even count as exploration games. This is a valid viewpoint, of course, and in the same way I think Mario Galaxy could be parsed as a speed game depending on the day I'm asked, the same holds true for the New Soup games. But I think the reason why I'm hesitant to say they're definitely exploration games is that the exploration is clearly not the main focus of their design philosophy. They want to be successors to the 2D Mario games a whole and, as such, they end up adopting points from Mario World, but in totality, they have more in common with 1-3.
Super Mario 3D World is easily the most ambiguous game in this exercise. As a followup to Mario 3D Land, it adopts many of philosophies that game had, choosing to be a collection of pretty generic obstacle courses in the sky rather than having like real explorable 3D worlds (heh) like some of its predecessors. Contrariwise, a lot of the game is about exploring these levels, there are plenty of secrets hidden throughout, alternate paths to find, unique puzzles for a single playable character. And these secrets unlock substantial post game content, which itself leads to more exploration. If any game were too truly be where the two become one once again, it would be 3D World. But, I'm not going to cop out like that, so I will say, going on the record as I'm writing this, that 3D World is an exploration game. And if I write anything that says it's a speed game, look dude, it's too hard to determine, I'm sorry.
The third, and final, spinoff exception to the list, Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker. This is a weird one, absolutely the most bizarre entry on this list. I'm frankly only counting it because it is a direct spinoff and continuation of Mario 3D World, and I feel as though I really can't justifiably put Wario Land and Yoshi's Island on this list without also counting Captain Toad. Despite its oddness though, its placing is clear, it is an exploration based game, you cannot go fast in it even if you wanted to, the whole point is solving these puzzle levels by having Toad explore around and controlling the overall level as he does so.
You know, when I was conceptualizing this as a cool thing to write about, I completely forgot about the Mario Maker games which, according to all official sources, are mainline Mario games. That's a choice. The Mario Maker titles are a problem because, while they certainly are full of platforming levels, too full if anything, Mario Maker is not a platformer, it is a stage builder. The core gameplay is meant to be creating and sharing your levels for other people to play and the ability to play others levels is just part of that stage building community experience. But they're listed officially so even if I wouldn't put them on my personal list, we gotta put 'em somewhere and I don't think you'll be surprised but both are speed games. Like regardless of what is implemented into the level to force the player to explore through it, the goal is always going to be at the end "reach the goal as fast as possible".
Super Mario Run, the only game on this list not on a Nintendo console or, for that matter, a game console in general. Super Mario Run's inclusion may be more controversial than Captain Toad's, all told, just due to that fact that it's a mobile game, a weird attempt at courting a new market at a time where Nintendo's future was very uncertain. And on top of that, it's arguably not a platformer, instead being of the mobile-friendly genre of endless runners/ But in my mind, its status as a Mario game is unambiguous, it is basically the sixth New Super Mario Bros game. Surprise surprise, it is, like its brethren, another speed game.
Super Mario Odyssey, my favorite of the Mario games, is up next and like. Do I even need to say it? Mario Odyssey is effectively the first 3D Mario game since 64 that isn't even a little ambiguous. It is an exploration game through and through, it is basically the proposed Super Mario 64 2 given life finally. Odyssey has just an absurd amount of exploration in it, over 800 moons base and to get to the final boss you barely need 1/4 of them, giving the player tons of freedom to explore on their own.
Super Mario Bros. 35 is on neither list because it doesn't exist anymore. I kid, I kid, I'm going to classify it. Mario Bros 35 is a difficult one to parse because we've had games on this list before that are in different genres from the standard "platformer" of the majority. But I don't think one has been in a genre that makes it as incompatible as 35 does. See 35 is neither about speed nor exploration, it's about survival. You don't necessarily want to get to the end as fast as possible, nor do you wish to find secrets and get to warp zones. In Mario 35 you want to survive the longest. Ultimately though, I'm going to say speed game, between the two options it objectively fits more than exploration.
Our penultimate game on the list, Bowser's Fury. Bowser's Fury is kind of a best of 3D Mario, combining the core structure of 3D World and placing it into a more direct collectathon package. It is effectively a marrying of 3D World and Odyssey, and frankly it's the only reason I feel compelled to buy 3D World in any capacity just to play this. As such, it is an exploration game, in fact, in many ways it is the first truly open world Mario game, presumably something we can expect from the as of yet unannounced 3D Mario game for the currently upcoming Switch 2.
Finally, Super Mario Bros. Wonder. In the videos that started me on this whole train, Mario Wonder is unique in that it's the first entry in the series since World that no statistically substantial demographic of people who do not consider it a Super Mario game. I've always been curious if that data would remain the same asked a few years later, if opinions on Wonder would change as more people analyze it and determine why it's not. Full disclosure, I don't know a lot about Wonder. From the game's first reveal, I immediately clocked it as a game I would not like and thus haven't really engaged with it. But from the things I've been able to parse from my limited experiences with it as well as developer interviews, I am willing to state that it seems like an exploration game. I know there is a substantial overworld to explore and every level is literally designed with the purpose of finding secrets because the game's design philosophy is built on finding secrets to change how the level plays.
Actually going through this whole thought experiment was very surprising to me. When I initially conceptualized this idea of the Two Marios, as I was discussing my own experiences playing Mario 3 with people, I initially believed what we would find is twofold. Firstly, I believed that there would be may more Mario games on the Speed side than the exploration side, I believed as a rule that 2D games would all be on the speed side and that honestly most of the 3D games would be as well. I fully expected the exploration category to just contain World, World 2, 64, Sunshine, 64 DS, Odyssey, and Bowser's Fury, and for the remaining titles to be speed based.
Secondly, and more importantly, I found how ambiguous this idea really was, way more than I was assured of. I still believe in the Two Marios, don't get me wrong, this is my own interpretation of the series, I find this idea of there being two core design philosophies that take turns deciding which one is central to the game in question to be really compelling. But as you could read when I started classifying, these two categories are themselves ambiguous, and many games could justifiably be put in the other category or put in both. While my interpretation of the series may be that there's two Marios, this may not stay forever. I may believe in weeks, months, years that the Super Mario series, rather than being defined by multiple ideologies that change on which one is the dominant one, is instead just one thing, and these ideologies are one and the same. And you know what, that's fantastic, this ambiguity is what makes this idea of the Super Mario series great and I look forward to how future experiences shape this idea. It's an exciting prospect to me, and I hope it is to you too.
