Best platformers of all time

Super Mario Odyssey▲ Rising

Cappy the sentient hat let Mario possess a T-Rex, a Bullet Bill, and even a Goomba stack, turning capture mechanics into the freshest platforming gimmick in decades. New Donk City's festival, with its live-action-adjacent inhabitants and the jaw-dropping 'Jump Up, Super Star!' sequence, proved 3D collectathons still had new tricks. It's the modern benchmark for how much joyful invention a single hat can hold.

Year: 2017Critic score: 9.7/10

added by IJRin 8 rankings

Super Mario Bros. 3▲ Rising

The Tanooki Suit, the airship levels, and that overworld map turned a sequel into a full-blown atlas of ideas, each world a themed toybox unlike the last. Nintendo Power practically worshipped it, and The Wizard's mid-movie reveal made it the most anticipated cartridge of 1990. Four decades later it's still cited as the moment 2D platform design hit near-perfect density.

Year: 1988Critic score: 9.7/10

added by IJRin 6 rankings

Super Mario World▲ Rising

Yoshi's debut alone would've made it legendary, but the cape feather's soaring flight and the secret exits hiding an entire shadow map of levels made exploration feel bottomless. It launched alongside the SNES and became the killer app that sold a console on pure design confidence. Star World and the Special Zone rewarded curiosity in a way platformers rarely had before or since.

Year: 1990Critic score: 9.6/10

added by IJRin 8 rankings

Super Mario 64▲ Rising

Mario's first step into 3D wasn't tentative—it invented the camera-controlled analog-stick playground genre in one stroke, with Bob-omb Battlefield's open hillside teaching players how to think in three dimensions. Collecting stars nonlinearly rather than marching level-to-level rewired what a platformer's structure could even be. Every 3D platformer since, Odyssey included, is still answering the question this game first asked.

Year: 1996Critic score: 9.4/10

added by IJRin 10 rankings

It Takes Two▲ Rising

Cody and May's forced-marriage-counseling-via-magic turned co-op platforming into a nonstop invention showcase, swapping mechanics every twenty minutes from magnet gloves to sap-slinging to full-on shooter sections. It won Game of the Year not for nostalgia but for sheer generosity of ideas, never repeating a trick twice across its entire runtime. It's the argument that platforming doesn't need a single hero when two players and a broken relationship will do.

Year: 2021Critic score: 9/10

added by IJRin 4 rankings

Celeste

Madeline's dash-climb up Celeste Mountain is brutal, precise, and never unfair, turning frame-perfect wall jumps into a language for talking about anxiety and self-doubt. The B-Side and C-Side remixes escalate the difficulty into something almost sadistic, yet the game never stops feeling fair, which is why speedrunners and first-timers alike worship it. It proved indie platformers could carry real emotional weight without sacrificing mechanical rigor.

Year: 2018Critic score: 9.2/10

added by IJRin 10 rankings

Shovel Knight▼ Falling

A shovel that pogo-bounces off enemies and treasure alike became the game's whole philosophy: dig for gold, hit like Duck Tales, and never lose momentum. Yacht Club Games built a love letter to the NES era so precise it out-8-bit-ed the actual 8-bit games it was referencing, from the Order of No Quarter's boss gauntlet to Propeller Knight's blimp. It kickstarted (literally) the retro-platformer revival that's still paying dividends across indie gaming.

Year: 2014Critic score: 8.7/10

added by IJRin 3 rankings

Cuphead▼ Falling

Run-and-gun boss rushes wrapped in hand-inked 1930s rubber-hose animation, Cuphead turned brutal difficulty into an aesthetic statement, every parry-able pink object a tiny act of care from artists who painted each frame by hand. The Devil's contract and King Dice's casino gauntlet became instant iconography. It's the platformer that proved indie budgets could out-craft Disney's golden age on pure obsessive style.

Year: 2017Critic score: 8.8/10

added by IJRin 8 rankings