10 Video Game Franchises With The BEST Spin-Offs

It couldn't be any other series, could it? Frankly, Mario Kart alone would have been enough to blue shell any other competitor off the top spot.

And really, what more could be said about Nintendo's iconic Kart game? Since the series launched on the SNES back in 1992, Mario Kart games have been flagpole releases for each successive generation of Nintendo hardware. And with good cause -  Nintendo have spent three decades refining a formula that they almost perfected first time round, with the result being that the latest Mario Kart sold a staggering 70 million copies.

But while Karting may be Mario's most famous extracurricular activity, it's by no means the bedenimed plumber's only sporting endeavour. The owner of gaming's most famous moustache has tried his hand at tennis, golf and football over the years, with each excursion resulting in at least one excellent game (Mario Golf on the Game Boy Colour is factually the most under-rated RPG of the nineties). 

Oh right, the RPGs! Mario's recent RPG outings may not have reached the heights of their predecessors, but that's chiefly because those older games set the bar up in the stratosphere. The original Mario & Luigi trilogy were at the very peak of handheld gaming back in the noughties, and Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door is so damned good Nintendo gave up trying to better it and simply re-released it last year so modern gamers can enjoy Mario's most entertainingly subversive adventure.

Put simply, if a genre exists than Mario has likely tried his gloved hand at it, and done it better than most (with the exception of typing, where Mavis Beacon remains queen).