Since it is Mario Day I felt like I would take this opportunity to talk about my experience with Super Mario.

Mario is a franchise very near and dear to me as I've grown up with it like many others.

My first mario game ever I believe was Super Mario Bros. Deluxe for the Game Boy Color. I distinctly remember being captivated by the cover art for the game which probably factored into me wanting it since I was just a little kid at the time and didn’t even know anything about mario. I played it a lot and really enjoyed all the little extras in the game. I remember always using the calendar feature in the game to mark special occasions.

After that eventually I got a Nintendo 64 and super mario 64 later down the line. Mario 64 was always kind of a weird one for me. I remember playing little demos of the game in like Target and that was where I really played a 3D game for the first time. I remember one time I ran over to the little n64 kiosk thing and I kid you not, mario 64 was running on it BUT it was at the infinite stairs part of the game and I didn’t know that was how it worked so I literally stood there holding up on the control stick running up the stairs and looking over at my family as they were shopping hoping to play at least a little bit of mario 64 before having to run back over to them and it ended with me just having to stop and go back to shopping with them because the stairs just kept going. I always remember that along with other bits and pieces of mario 64 being seen in shops and stuff but I eventually did end up buying the game and owning it for myself. The game really did feel kind of mysterious the whole time I was playing it.

Gamecube came out and I remember seeing and getting Super mario sunshine out from the glass case it was behind. The gamecube I got was the black one that had the Zelda collector's edition bundled with it for those curious. Sunshine is the one I consider to be my favorite out of the 3d titles. I remember being so enticed by the visuals, especially the water, in the game and really liking the overall atmosphere of the game. Fludd was cool and I enjoyed just being able to talk to all the npcs and thought it was cool that there was voice acting. Also all the challenge rooms without fludd and a lot of the levels were just really memorable.

I had a game boy advance and I think the only mario game I had on it was Super Mario Bros. 3, and I had the game boy player for the gamecube so I played on that as well. I enjoy playing Mario 3 since it is pretty close to world. I had a nintendo ds and that is where I played my first mario kart game, Mario Kart DS. I played A LOT of mario kart ds because it was my first sort of online multiplayer game since it had the nintendo wifi in it. I also had an action replay for my ds so I used that with mario kart ds a lot of the time too. I also played partners in time and bowser's inside story. All the mario rpgs in general are all really memorable to me, just great experiences overall! New super mario brothers and mario 64 ds were also games I used action replay on.

I remember renting paper mario but never actually owning it on the nintendo 64, so when the wii happened the virtual console was a good place to get a lot of the games I had missed out on. I played a lot of paper mario and paper mario TTYD and consider them to be very special games to me. Mario RPG was another game I got through the wii’s virtual console and that game was a pretty cool experience. I got mario world and thought it was just a very comfy game to play through. The virtual console in general was just a great thing to have in those times!

Super Mario Galaxy was considered sort of the big one for me as I did get all the stars with both mario and luigi. I remember seeing the visuals to that game and thinking about how HD the game looked. The wii remote and nunchuck are nice because your hands are kinda free to move around so playing galaxy was just another comfortable experience. When galaxy 2 was released, I remember doing that final challenge level where you can only get hit once and beating that. 

Mario 3d land was a nice game to have on the 3ds because it was sort of just a mini 3d mario game. Mario 3d world on wii u felt like a larger version of that and I remember enjoying that one more over 3d land. It was also cool to be able to play as the other characters besides mario.

Mario maker was a very cool game to have and I remember making a handful of levels in that game. Mario world rom hacks were something I had known about so to have mario maker and be able to actually make your own levels in the various styles really was such a cool thing. The 100 Mario Challenge was a good way to just play the game but I think making the levels was something that stood out to me a lot more.

I have many of the mario sports games across all the different consoles. All of which I find very enjoyable to play. Tennis and golf being ones I played probably the most. Mario sports mix for the wii was another one I played a lot of because of the online multiplayer. I remember always picking cactuar and winning many matches because of how fast you went and the needles!

I had a handful of the mario party games, I had mario party 3 and remember playing that one many times, going into that little library playing the minigames and playing that duel mode with the different partners you could have. Mario party 6 is another one I remember a lot of because I had the gamecube microphone. 

Mario Kart Wii was very fun. I used the wii wheel and was impressed with how well it actually worked. I remember Mario kart wii being one of the only online multiplayer games I could really play because at the time the internet was a little on the slow side and MKwii always worked online no matter how the internet was. These days I still play mario kart wii from time to time with CTGP and such because mario kart wii is my favorite out of all of them!

All in all, Super Mario is a wonderful video game franchise that I greatly enjoy and appreciate!