12. Super Mario Bros.
Yeah, yeah, weve all seen the meme; Thank you Mario! But our princess is in another ca- yadda, yadda, heard it all before. Still, it bears repeating that Super Mario Bros. basically recounts the most poorly planned hostage retrieval operation imaginable. Mario jumps, stomps and fire-flowers his way through
seven worlds, inflicting untold suffering on innocent denizens of the Mushroom Kingdom before happening on the actual location of his missing monarch. By which time, the emotional and physical suffering endured by Princess Toadstool at the hands of her captors will no doubt have left nothing but a ravaged, bitter shell to rescue. Death would have been kinder.