Super Mario 3D All-Stars Review: Classic Mario, But Not How You Remember It

I have never lived on a planet without Mario.

The Super Mario series star turns 35 this year. I am 31 years old.

That makes him, and the dozens of Super Mario games he stars in, convenient checkpoints for my life. When I was 5 years old, I pissed off my pants playing Super Mario World. Super Mario 64 was shared between my brother and an unexpected new challenger vying for valuable playtime: a stepbrother. Super Mario Sunshine, on the GameCube, was something I played when my friends couldn’t come after school for rounds of Super Smash Bros. Melee.

Mario is so persistent throughout my 31 years that, worryingly, I have dreamed of his mustache on other people’s faces.

On Friday, Nintendo will release a new Super Mario game that doesn’t a new Super Mario game: Super Mario 3D All-Stars. The collection, for Nintendo Switch, features three of the most acclaimed 3D Mario titles of all time. Our sister site, GameSpot, reviewed all of them favorably when they first launched. Super Mario 64 earned a 9.4 in 1996, Super Mario Sunshine, the black sheep of Mario’s 3D games, earned an 8 in 2002. Super Mario Galaxy, for the Nintendo Wii, received a 9.5 in 2007.

That kind of sheet music is the reason why there is so much publicity surrounding the collection. And I understand why people are excited to play All-Stars, even if it doesn’t include Galaxy 2. Solo, they’re a trio of great video games. Impeccably designed. Highlights of your generations. They mark important milestones in Mario’s 3D life. And my life.

But here, in the cold light of 2020, they are simply an exercise in memory.

Memories are fickle things. They blink to life and then disappear before you can fully grasp them. There is a tendency for the best parts of video games like Super Mario Galaxy or Super Mario Sunshine to ossify in your mind and the worst parts to fade away. Sometimes you forget something. Eventually, you forget that you forgot about the thing.

All-Stars is a nostalgia box where you poke around for a few hours, trying to bring out the fleeting feelings locked deep in your lizard brain. During a pandemic, It seems as if this is “the game we need right now”. But when you leave command, you face a harsh reality: your memory of these games is the best of them.

Perfect for the Switch

Galaxy is not as good as I remember. In fact, in 2020, I would say no a very good game. Before 3D All-Stars was released, I read some of the Galaxy speeches from 2007. In my head, it’s an absolute masterclass. Did my memory play tricks on me here? Or have I changed?

And then there’s the goofy, goofy Sunshine, who doesn’t have any of the traits that made Super Mario 64 great and is too absorbed in being different that he loses sight of what really makes Mario… Mario. That sliding long jump in Super Mario 64? Funny. Sticky. Organized. It’s not even in Sunshine, but your brain is sure to try anyway.

I am not going to relieve here all the arguments for and against each title. However, I want to make some technical notes.

When you go through the loading screen, the game takes you to a simple menu where the three titles are displayed along with the three soundtracks. The presentation is drab. It gives a short overview of the title, the year it was released, and … that’s it. Click A to begin.

All three games provide slight graphical improvements over their originals. If you can remember playing those games, All-Stars will want to put on a pair of prescription glasses. Everything seems a little sharper, a little less blurry, a little more magnified. The colors pop a bit more.

But the oldest of the lot, SM64, comes from the era of CRT TVs. It is played in a box with nice thick bezels around each edge. It is aged badly.

And there are also setbacks related to control. Movements and button presses lost in translation. As beautiful as Sunshine is to look at (Delfino Plaza is so bright and sunny in All-Stars), the camera and hover flight don’t serve you well with Joy Con, no matter how much they have been “optimized.”

The motion controls of the Wii were a central element of the game in Galaxy. You used the Wiimote to spin or grab “Star Shoot” or jump between planets. It feels like a drag here. Adding touchscreen functionality in laptop mode is very difficult to handle. And I know it’s probably not fair but it feels incorrect touching the screen with your bare hands in 2020 (before adjusting your mask and rubbing hand sanitizer on the straps between each finger).

It’s these little issues that are really at the heart of what this collection is about. Whether you’ve enjoyed the originals or not, the collection ignites the Perfect for the Switch meme. These Mario games aren’t perfect for the Switch. They are products of their time, ripped from the past and thrown into the present without much thought.

The perfect Mario game for Switch already exists. It’s called Super Mario Odyssey and it’s a damn masterpiece.

Money printer

Nintendo is going to make a lot of money with Super Mario 3D All-Stars. It is already the second most popular game on Amazon for 2020, behind only Animal Crossing. It is a guaranteed success. And Nintendo has upped the ante a bit by making this collection a limited release. It cannot be purchased after March 2021. Why? Well, there is no real explanation. With the pre-launch reveals all of these games being emulated, Nintendo almost certainly has other plans to distribute these games to the Switch in the future.

What’s fascinating about this collection is how obvious the Nintendo game is here. Marketing materials are a long list of empty topics. Nintendo, the Japanese gaming giant famous for being fiercely protective of your IP, is happy to release a Mario collection with slightly smoother polygons and finish it off. He is happy to make the package feel like a product that you will not be able to get in the future. These games are supposed to be a portal to The Good Old Days.

But playing these games feels like a chore. The high comes when you turn them on for the first time. I remember this. A goofy smile, some “wahoos” and then … nothing. The high is gone.

I’m getting older? Perhaps. Are these games really not for me more? That is also a possibility. Has 2020 reduced my capacity for joy to fine dust and blown it away? Well yes, but I’m not sure how relevant that is here. I will have to contact you in 2021.

What frustrates me even more is me. The human being who loves these video games and grew up with these video games. When I think back, I can’t recall the frustration of Galaxy’s spinning attack or its mindless hub world. Super Mario Sunshine didn’t feel all that unwieldy or decidedly anti-Mario. Super Mario 64? In my head, it’s pure joy. I can’t help but haunt these memories. I’ll probably even buy Super Mario 64 on my Neuralink augmented reality brain chip in 2034 for the low price of $ 69.99.

Because I haven’t lived on a planet without Mario. And as sloppy as Super Mario 3D All-Stars is, I’m not sure I want to.