As The Super Mario Galaxy Movie storms the box office, it also invites a look back at some of the most unusual corners of Mario’s long history. Nintendo’s famously enduring plumber has spent 45 years at the centre of pop culture, appearing in some of the best-selling video games ever released, from Donkey Kong to Super Mario Bros Wonder and Mario Kart World.
That kind of longevity inevitably comes with a few misfires. Not every Mario project has matched the appeal of the mainline platform games, and some have become curiosities remembered more for their oddity than for their quality. Among the best-known examples are Hotel Mario, a puzzle game built around closing doors on the doomed Philips CD-i console, and Mario Teaches Typing, a 1992 PC educational game that sent players through the Mushroom Kingdom by entering words correctly.
But the Mario archive contains more than just punchlines. Alongside the awkward experiments and forgotten spin-offs are some genuine gems that never received the attention they deserved. Some were inspired by block-stacking puzzles such as Tetris, others borrowed ideas from Lemmings, and one even takes a surprising cue from vitamins.
A long history of experiments
The Mario series has been a reliable source of hits for decades, but it has also served as a testing ground for ideas that drifted far from the familiar run-and-jump formula. That willingness to experiment produced a wide range of games, some clever and inventive, others simply strange. In the process, a few titles slipped into obscurity even though they offered something distinctive.
Those forgotten games are the focus here. They show how broad the Mario brand has become, stretching from blockbuster console releases to niche releases that many players may have missed entirely. Some belong to the category of misguided spin-off, while others deserve to be remembered as inventive side roads in Nintendo’s history.
Forgotten but not necessarily bad
It is easy to laugh at the more infamous examples. Hotel Mario and Mario Teaches Typing have long occupied a place in gaming folklore because of their unusual concepts and awkward execution. Yet they also reflect a period when Nintendo was willing to place Mario in almost any kind of format, no matter how unlikely it seemed.
That openness helped produce games that were more than just novelty items. Even when a Mario project did not become a mainstream hit, it could still be inventive, charming or surprisingly durable. The best of these overlooked games may not be as famous as Super Mario Bros or Mario Kart, but they remain part of the character’s broader legacy.
With a new movie drawing attention to the franchise, it is a fitting time to revisit those lesser-known titles. They are reminders that Mario’s history is not only about the most obvious classics, but also about the strange detours, forgotten experiments and hidden favourites that accumulated along the way.
And while the latest film may be the headline act, the wider Mario story is still full of surprises. For every giant bestseller, there has been a quirky side project waiting to be rediscovered.
