Review: 25th Anniversary Edition of Super Mario All-Stars

[CrystalShadow]

Spoiler: Stuff that was said

Lol. $30?

That's not even so bad.

The UK price for this was £24.99

And the 4 games seperately on the Virtual console comes to 2100 points.

Now, from memory, if you buy them on the Wii shop channel, you pay £7.99 for 1000 points.

That means, the total cost of buying all 4 titles is £16.97

So, you're paying an extra £8.02 here... For...? (that's $12+ if you want a conversion)

Not to mention the fact that the entire SMAS is about five hours of gameplay.

Wait, what? Have you actually played any of these games? Without taking the shortcuts that is?

OK, this isn't in this collection, but Super Mario World serves a decent example.
If you take the shortest route to the end game, you can finish it in <30 minutes.

If you play it through though...

The same logic applies to the older games.

Super Mario Bros - taking the warp to world 8 will cut out 90% of the game. But how does that count?

OK, there are about 24 stages, and they're designed to take 2 minutes to play if you can do them flawlessly.
But I doubt anyone's going to be that good unless they've played it a lot already.

Anyway... 5 hours. Huh. That just seems unlikely for all but the most inhumanly good players.

Actually now that you mention it my playthrough on 1 was less than 30 mins, so I must have used warp pipes, I honestly don't remember. I completed the lost levels in less than two hours, same with SMB3... I don't actually remember SMB2 all that well TBH.

So a full play through is probably about 7 or 8 hours. As each on can be completed in about 2 hours.

Anyway, I should clarify. My problem isn't that this is just a collection of old games. It's that this is an overpriced bad collection of games. All Stars was already a compilation. Why not do a newer version or even take All Stars and SM 64 and Sunshine. $30 dollars for a game where all the coding could be done by one guy in minutes.

Oh, I agree, this release is pretty sad. I just found that one comment a little weird.

Then again, these are old games that rely on their difficulty to keep them going, rather than their actual length.

Somehow, I get the feeling actual game length peaked somewhere between Between the late SNES period, and Early N64/Playstation era.

Before that time games were quite short because the teams were small and the budgets even smaller.
After that period, the development costs were getting to the point that making anything of even a moderate length with any kind of attention to detail took forever and cost a small fortune.

 

[Idocreating]

I'd have to agree 100% with the reviewer on this one. It's a SNES game on a Wii disc with nothing new. No graphical update, no extra games, nothing.

Cash in is cashing in.

 

[therandombear]

Not good enough to do the mario

Blasphemy!
It is always a good reason to do the mario. There should be a vid showing people of the escapist "Do the Mario" =D

To be fair, it sounds like a reasonable price tbh for such a compilation even if nothing new is done with them.

 

[Worgen]

Really no 2.5d upgrade, bad form nintendo, bad form

I would have been happy if they just threw in a few more games like mario world and mario 64 or even just added some cool behind the scenes stuff on the game disk, but just being a port of all stars really bugs me but I still cant decide if I want to trade it in since its still mario

 

[SenseOfTumour]

yeah, needs more mario to convince me I'm afraid, for the price of that rehash, I could probably find the original SNES cartridge and an old SNES to play it on.

now, a DVD with 'Nintendo - the SNES years', all Nintendo's first party releases for the SNES on one disc, that would be worth the cash.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Ya know......... you have a 2.5D thing just bring the default games up to that visual level, bring all in Mario land,Wario land bring in princess peach do it under the newest mario 2.5 engine like the others sell all wif swag for 60$ and as DLC for 5 a pop(55-70 in all) and call it a day. Nintendo... you suck.... its bad enough the wii is still a joke precision wise but this is just sad.....

 

[CaptainCrunch]

Not good enough to do the mario

Blasphemy!
It is always a good reason to do the mario. There should be a vid showing people of the escapist "Do the Mario" =D

If only we had something like that....

Spoiler

[video=1724]

 

[Razhem]

What a huge waste of a chance. They could have added super mario world, yoshi's island, super mario 64 and maybe even sunshine and you would have had all the core mario tittles from all the previous consoles in a single package. THEN it would have been a really compelling package even if it didn't receive any tweaks.

 

[Unhappy Crow]

I don't care if it's the same as the SNES version excluding SMW. I never played All Stars on the SNES during my elementary school years. I'm actually glad I got this as a Xmas gift. 30 bucks is not a big deal, especially when you get it 10 bucks off from Best Buy (Reward Zone holiday discount ftw).

 

[BehattedWanderer]

If it had included Super Mario World, at least, I'd have considered it. You know, if I didn't actually own a working cartridge and SNES that has the exact same things on it. But, it's not like the games are any less fulfilling. We are talking about some of the most played games in gaming history, with secrets, tricks, misses, deaths, items, and koopas out the wazoo. Just the shear number of them that we still remember is testament to some of the greatest examples of the evolution of gaming. Which, coincidentally, is the same thing I'm discovering with New Super Mario Brothers Wii.

 

[JediMB]

Personally I think the music CD and art booklet are worth the $8 difference.

But then I also happened to come upon a great deal that got me All-Stars and the Wii Sports Resort pack for under ?40, so I finally have my Wii MotionPlus.

 

[therandombear]

Not good enough to do the mario

Blasphemy!
It is always a good reason to do the mario. There should be a vid showing people of the escapist "Do the Mario" =D

If only we had something like that....

Spoiler

[video=1724]

I forgot about that one, I feel sad now for forgetting it =(

 

[WaderiAAA]

I think you can safely drop the "trying to". This game has sold pretty darn well, particularly considering it is just a lame rerelease.

 

[Vault Citizen]

I have thought about getting this but I still have the version that came with Super Mario World on my SNES and it works perfectly.

 

[Burgertime]

I'm going to pick the game up, because if what I hear is actually true, all the copies made right now are the only copies made. So as a collector, I like the idea of having the game in my collection. If the interest was there for this, maybe it could of done what Force Unleashed Ultimate Sith Edition did. Go out of print and skyrocket in price.

 

[Electrogecko]

I agree that it sux. If they had put SMW, 64, and Sunshine on it, it would've been the greatest thing ever, but.....

I'm still gonna get it.

 

[Stackle]

No Super Mario World? Or SMW2? Come on Nintendo. This is hardly an 'all-stars' for today.

 

[Tim Latshaw]

I don't care if it's the same as the SNES version excluding SMW. I never played All Stars on the SNES during my elementary school years. I'm actually glad I got this as a Xmas gift.

YOU WEREN'T SUPPOSED TO KNOW YET!! D:

Seriously, the compilation does seem sadly bare-boned for such a grand occasion. I think it would've been great if they packaged the Mario character figures they gave as Club Nintendo Platinum awards this year with it.

 

[khaimera]

Not good enough to do the mario

Blasphemy!
It is always a good reason to do the mario. There should be a vid showing people of the escapist "Do the Mario" =D

To be fair, it sounds like a reasonable price tbh for such a compilation even if nothing new is done with them.

Just want to say thanks for posting that video. Such fond memories with that one.

As for all the whining about the game existing, don't buy it if
a. You already own these games
b. you don't have enough money
c. you are not a collector or superfan
d. you are not a confused parent or grandparent that will buy this because Mario is the only videogame character you have ever heard of, and you think the whippersnappers will like it.