Best Platformer Games Like Super Mario Bros

The best platformer games like Super Mario Bros are Super Mario World, Super Mario Bros 3 and Super Mario Bros Wonder. Below are 9, each with the reason it is here — and, at the end, what filtering to platformer costs you.

Why Platformer Is a Good Answer for Super Mario Bros

Filtering to platformer means you want the movement itself to be the pleasure. It is the right filter when the thing you liked was getting from one place to another.

What you get: A game you can judge in ten seconds. Platformers live or die on the jump, and a good one feels right before anything else happens.

What made Super Mario Bros worth playing in the first place is covered on the full list. This page is the platformer part of that answer, and only the platformer part.

9 Platformer Games Like Super Mario Bros

  1. 1. Super Mario World

    The best 2D Mario, with a spin jump and a cape on top.

  2. 2. Super Mario Bros 3

    The most inventive of the NES entries and still remarkable.

  3. 3. Super Mario Bros Wonder

    The modern one, and it reinvents itself every level.

  4. 4. Celeste

    The best-feeling modern platformer, and it teaches like Mario does.

  5. 5. Rayman Legends

    The most polished 2D platformer of the last fifteen years.

  6. 6. Shovel Knight

    NES design sensibilities with modern fairness.

  7. 7. Super Mario Maker 2

    Every Mario level anyone has ever made, plus a good campaign.

  8. 8. Kirby's Adventure

    NES platforming that is kinder but just as well made.

  9. 9. Pizza Tower

    Momentum platforming taken to its extreme.

What This Filter Leaves Out

Weight. Platformers rarely carry a story you will think about afterwards, and the collectible-led ones can become checklists if you let them.

The full list is on games like Super Mario Bros — 9 picks, no genre filter.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best platformer game like Super Mario Bros?

Super Mario World. The best 2D Mario, with a spin jump and a cape on top.

Are all of these on the Nintendo Entertainment System?

No. Super Mario Bros released on the Nintendo Entertainment System, but a recommendation is only useful if you can play it, so the picks above span platforms and eras. What they share is the genre and the reason.

What separates a good platformer from a bad one?

Whether the move set is complete early. The great ones give you everything in the first level and spend the rest asking better questions of it; the weak ones drip-feed abilities to disguise thin level design.

2D or 3D?

Different games. 2D platformers are about precision on a single screen; 3D ones are about reading space and camera. Each pick below says which it is.

How are these chosen?

By hand. Each pick was written for the full Super Mario Bros list first, on what the game actually does, and this page is the part of that list that is platformer — never a genre tag lookup, which is how "best racing games like Super Mario 64" used to be a page on this site.

Other Angles on Super Mario Bros

More Platformer Games Recommendations

Or read the platformer guide for where to start in the genre generally.