Super Mario World

I suspect I am fairly biased about this game, as I got it with my SNES for my 5th birthday, and it dominated my gaming for years afterward.

The entire Mario series is a shoe-in for video game classics, and Super Mario World is no exception. This platformer is perfect in nearly every way. It is amazingly executed and plays perfectly. Not mind-numbingly easy or impossibly hard, the game has the right difficulty for a platformer- not much of a challenge, but not a laugh, either.

Only one game surpasses this in my favourite platformers- Super Mario 64. I still love this game and play it all the time on my Xbox. If you've never played this game, make sure you give it a try, though an emulator may ruin the fun.