Nintendo Selects: Super Mario All-Stars

Thank you, Nintendo Selects, March 23, 2016

When Super Mario All-Stars was first ported to the Wii almost six years ago, there was a rather divisive reception; on one hand, it’s the original Super Nintendo collection, serving as a special limited edition Wii disc, but on the other…It made for a vastly underwhelming 25th Anniversary celebration for the Super Mario series, and the games included could be bought on the Wii Shop Channel for less than its initial $30 price point. Leave it to an unexpected revival of the budget branding of Nintendo Selects to knock the price down to the much fairer $20 tag! Not only is it slightly cheaper than the Shop Channel offerings in total, but it’s also the most inexpensive release of Mario All-Stars to date (You can’t even get a copy of the Super NES cartridge at this price)!

Super Mario All-Stars in itself was the greatest game collection of its time! It took all of the main NES Super Mario installments and superbly upgraded the graphics and sound for each, and even added four save files for each. As a result, it manages to be a showcase title of what the Super Nintendo is capable of whilst also being the original games everyone knows and loves, and there has yet to be another game collection to accomplish such a feat on any other platform. Admittedly, I would have liked to see more games be included if there had to be a new Mario All-Stars, but in the grand scheme of things, bringing the SNES classic(s) over the Wii is welcome anyway, especially with the Nintendo Selects label.

The original Super Mario Bros. features the most obvious NES-to-SNES gen upgrade, as the backgrounds are crisp and well refined, and the characters convey more personality. Probably my favorite thing about this is that Toad’s thanking Mario for saving him becomes increasingly humorous as the player keeps beating Worlds in the game, due to how Toad’s trapped in a bag, and that the World number matches the amount of Toads trapped in the bag (and they pop out appropriately enough for those situations)! While the timeless gameplay is as intact as ever, I do see that some people don’t quite like how Mario doesn’t bounce straight off from hitting brick blocks in this port. Personally, I don’t see it as a game-changer by any means, because I would always have too much fun with everything else about the game to care.

I cannot say the same about The Lost Levels (Japan’s Super Mario Bros. 2), however. This formerly Japan-exclusive game is the only thing I don’t like about Super Mario All-Stars that much anymore. I initially appreciated it as a historical curiosity and novelty, but as I now am capable of thoroughly explaining what I like and dislike about a video game, The Lost Levels has become more of a bother than anything else. At first, it’s Super Mario Bros. again, with the same graphics and gameplay as its predecessor. However, despite that this game is touted as being “For Super Players”, I simply cannot appreciate the difficulty regardless of whether or not I have the patience to beat it. I like a good challenge, but The Lost Levels purposely throws the player off in several different ways, from having a power-DOWN item to despicable enemy placements to BACKWARDS WARP ZONES!!

Meanwhile, I’ve developed opposite feelings for the Super Mario Bros. 2 we Americans ended up getting; I already have loved the game as is, but thinking about this, using other-Japan-exclusive Doki Doki Panic (which was originally conceptualized as a Mario sequel anyway) as an installment in this series was a fantastic decision that paid off well! Even in this day and age, there’s hardly any other game that captures the spirit of SMB2. Having four playable characters, each with unique traits, traverse Worlds that include places like a desert and snow world, picking up and throwing objects at/or enemies along the way was all completely awesome! There was simply a lot more to this than Super Mario Bros. 1, and that’s what made it awesome.

But that’s likely not what is the center of attention when it comes to the original Mario games. What people most likely are hollering over instead is the almighty Super Mario Bros. 3! What Super Mario 2 did, Super Mario 3 did EVEN MORE of, and to the original formula that made the very first game such a masterpiece to boot! The enemy and World diversity, the power-ups, the general scope and scale, and even the local multiplayer – All improved on greatly! While I did say the other Marios in All-Stars have benefited masterfully from the jump to Super NES, Mario 3 was one to fit the console like a glove; if it weren’t released on NES and instead was released as its own game on SNES, I doubt anyone would suspect it was once intended for NES. After all, there’s a reason or a million why so many people declare this as the greatest Mario game of all-time (even if I personally prefer Mario World).

If you have yet to play any of these classics, then…What is the matter…

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