Super Mario All-Stars
12/17/10
Donald Ploth
First off I want to explain my feelings for the super Mario bros series. My first gaming experience was with “Super Mario Bros.” on the NES. I spent a ton of hours in front of my nes playing super Mario bros. 1-3 in all their 8 bit glory. (well except for smb2 there is no glory in that game) Nintendo has always held a soft spot in my heart and always will. That being said, when I heard about the 25th anniversary of super Mario bros I was amazingly excited. Nintendo has a plethora of amazing artwork, music, and original drawings that they could package in a booklet and give them to the people. I had heard before me buying the game that it would include a soundtrack and the game itself. When I saw the packaging I was actually very happy with it. The cover looked really nice and the package all together was delightful to look at. After un-boxing it to reveal the two disk boxes I realized there would be no extensive collection of great artwork or a decent booklet entailing Myamoto’s creation of the game. (for anyone who is interested they did a really amazing piece on Nintendo.com for the “Iwata asks” section which ill link) There was a small book that had a timeline and a extremely brief write up by some key players in creating Mario but that's it.
The difference between the 8 bit and 16 bit
Id like to break the review down into the packaged parts, starting with the game. Well the big N failed to produce here and I’ll tell you why. IT’S A PORT OF A SUPER NINTENDO GAME! They added nothing to the game. Like most people I bought SMB and SMB3 on the virtual console. Do not buy this if you have done so. The only thing I gained from this is “Super Mario Bros. 2 the lost levels” which is an amazingly difficult game. Nintendo could have pulled out all the stops on this one. In my mind I wouldn’t have even cared if they had bumped the price to 50 or even 60 dollars in order to put in Super Mario World, Super Mario RPG, or Super Mario 64. Any two of those added to the bundle and I would be thoroughly satisfied. Something I have regretted through my entire gaming career is that I never owned a Super Nintendo, and adding Super Mario World to the bundle would have been amazing. The game “Super Mario All-Stars” is a super Nintendo remake of the original nes games. Meaning they are re-done with the Snes’ 16bit technology. I have no problem with this because its essentially the same game but it would have been cool if Nintendo added a feature where you could play the games in either 8bit or 16bit, But what else can I say Mario is Mario and I will always play the heck out of it. Now on to the soundtrack. Mario has a fantastic array of music spanning 5 systems. Everyone knows these tunes and I think one would be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t enjoy them. Nintendo gave us 10 good songs and a whopping 10 sound effect, and by sound effect I mean five second clips of Mario collecting a coin or going down a pipe. They could have done so much more with the soundtrack and they came up short. Overall the package itself is not as big of a bargain as it my appear. I love Mario as much as the next guy and possibly even a bit more. The game-play is just as fun and it looks pretty amazing in 16bits. For the package itself I would give it a 6.5 just because I expected so much more and was so let down. Nintendo I hope you realize that the fans see this as a cash cow for the holiday season. Please deliver something better for all us Mario fans out there.
http://us.wii.com/iwata_asks/super-mario-all-stars/vol1_page1.jsp
http://us.wii.com/iwata_asks/super-mario-all-stars/vol1_page1.jsp