Top 5 Worlds in Super Mario Bros 3

I’m taking it back to the early 90s, to one of the great video games of all time. After the radically different Super Mario 2, the third game was more like the first but on a grander scale. The 8 worlds had their own themes, which makes for convenient ranking.

5. Ice Land – World 6

It was slippery, I think.

4. Pipe Land - World 7

This one had the level where you could get extra lives until the power went out by turning the huge castle of blocks into a coin machine. Quite handy given the difficulties ahead.

3. Big Island - World 4

A brilliant idea. Those goombas weren’t so little.

2. Sky Land - World 5

I was always a sucker for the “platform” type levels where you had to jump form place to place.

1. Dark Land - World 8

Arguably the greatest “level” in the history of video games. It had 3 stand-out stages: the flying ship that forced you to make a series of difficult jumps without hesitation or mistake, the mini-fortress where you could use the doors to switch “dimensions”, and the final castle. Just a fantastic pay-off after hours of gameplay.

Top 5 Sports Video Games

Obviously, games today are much more realistic and complex than those from the Nintendo days. So these are the five games I enjoyed most at the time.

5. High Heat Baseball (Playstation 2)

They stopped making this a few years ago, but it was the baseball game of choice back in college. My roommate Blade was quite good at this game. One might say he was “born to play it”.

4. NBA Jam (Genesis)

A great heads-up game that generally came down to who was better at timing their two-handed shoves and goaltending. Much like the NBA back in the mid-90s.

 3. Madden (XBox 360)

No year in particular stands out for me. I’ll go with the most recent version, mainly because of the long-needed toe-dragging ability of the Wide Receivers.

2. Ice Hockey (Nintendo)

This game witnessed one of my proudest moments: my Soviet squad throwing up a complete game shutout against Weaf. Long-awaited redemption for the 1980 Olympics.

1. Tecmo Super Bowl (Nintendo)

The first football game to compile full season stats for all players. The possibilities nearly made my head explode. I would guess that I completed about 25 full seasons of this game.