Impressions: Super Mario All Stars 25th Anniversary Edition

I recently imported the new 25th Anniversary edition of Super Mario Collection (All-Stars here in North America) and spent substantial time digging into this retro classic.

Nintendo deciding to re-release Super Mario All-Stars in this format took a lot of people by surprise. Though the original NES versions of the games have been a part of the Virtual Console library for some time now, the SNES remakes of these classic titles were not expected to be released at all – much less on a disc. For those unfamiliar with Super Mario All-Stars, the collection contains graphically-enhanced versions of the original SMB, Japanese SMB2, SMB2, and SMB3. What is more surprising (and somewhat disappointing) is that despite all the space available on the disc, the game is exactly as it was when it was released on cartridge in 1993 – no more, no less.

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Put simply, this version of Super Mario All-Stars is a pixel-perfect ROM dump of the SNES original. Not even the controller images on the Game Select screen have changed to represent the Wii format. This is the SNES version of Super Mario All-Stars – no graphical updates, Advance versions, or additional games are a part of this release. Wii owners with widescreen HDTVs should take note that Super Mario All-Stars will display in 4:3 with black bars when the Wii console is set to 16:9 mode. This actually improves the look of the game without the need to fiddle with TV settings (similar to the Masterpieces in Super Smash Bros. Brawl). I may be in the minority, but I prefer the 4:3 format to the sloppy stretched format the Wii uses for Virtual Console titles.

The games still look good for 16-bit titles, and play just as well as they did when Super Mario All-Stars was first released on the SNES. The fact the game has a limited production run, is budget-priced, and contains a soundtrack and artbook certainly makes the purchase attractive to Nintendo fans, though it would have been nice to get a bit more content in this re-release. That said, there’s a ton of classic Mario hop-n-bop gameplay here. The expanded audience of the Wii all but guarantees that there are going to be a lot of people who are playing these games for the first time, especially the (original Japanese) Super Mario Bros. 2.