Super Mario All-Stars (Wii - 3rd completion)
I've always wondered how Nintendo would go about releasing Super Mario All-Stars for the Wii or if it was even going to be in their plans. Given that they have released all of Mario's 8-bit games on the Virtual Console, I would have guessed that they would release this game as a download but for 2000 Wii Points ($20) to compensate. Instead they have released almost exactly 2 years ago Super Mario All-Stars 25th Anniversary Edition in disc form for the Wii. This collection is to commemorate 25 years of Mario's debut on the Nintendo Entertainment System. This collection was originally released in 1993 for the Super NES and contains all four of Mario's best-selling games on the NES. All games are given a face-lift in graphics and the music redone in 16-bit glory. The gameplay is virtually unchanged - all the levels are exactly the same and so are the controls. Some minor things like glitches and bugs were taken out so the infamous "Minus World" from Super Mario Bros. is no longer present for example. A couple of awesome features in this game collection is the ability to save your game at anytime and begin at the start of a world plus start the game with a default of 5 lives instead of 3. But the biggest selling point is the inclusion of an unreleased-in-North America Mario game: Super Mario Bros. The Lost Levels.
Since last week and until two nights ago I completed each and every Mario game. It's been years since I last played this compilation though I originally beat the games when it first came out in 1993 when I rented it one weekend. One of my best friends growing up, who got his Super NES in the summer of 1994 actually got this game for free as Nintendo was promoting it at the time for those who have bought a brand-new Super NES. I borrowed the game and beat it again sometime later. This Wii edition is exactly the same as the SNES version and does not include any extra content so you are playing the exact same compilation as it came out in 1993. Included in this edition is a small booklet detailing some of the history of the games and also a CD soundtrack that contain the theme songs of many Mario games though, you'll wish they would include more music tracks. To be honest, all this doesn't really justify the purchase price. Besides All-Stars, it would have been nice to include the Game Boy, SNES, and N64 Mario games. I should also point out that Nintendo eventually gave away this compilation that also included Super Mario World on the same cartridge so that's 5 Mario games! Pretty recently, Nintendo released Kirby's Dream Collection and it contains games from the NES all the way to the N64 so, there isn't much excuse for this compilation to have more Mario games.
Instead of a comprehensive review of each game, I'm just going to add my opinion and some information about each game. The review scores reflect my feelings back in 1993 and show how well these games have become so timeless.
Super Mario Bros.
Graphics/Art-9
Sound/Music-10
Control-7
Gameplay-10
Fun/Story/Misc-10
Music Samples:
Overworld Theme (1985 NES / 1993 SNES)
Underground Theme (1985 NES / 1993 SNES)
Underwater Theme (1985 NES / 1993 SNES)
Bonus (only in the SNES version)
Total: 46/50 (Grade level: A)
This was the game that got me hooked on Nintendo. I remember first seeing this game in 1986 when my family lived in Richmond, BC when our next-door neighbour brought his NES over to our house. When my older brother and him were gone from the house I picked up the controller and started playing the game. I was having fun but was making them lose all their lives and got Game Over quickly, LOL! About that same year or the following year my uncle also got his NES and whenever I went to my grandparents house (he wasn't married yet) my siblings and I would play his NES to death! Around that time, it was the cartridge that had both Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt. We managed to beat Super Mario Bros. but I managed to beat it myself just after Christmas of 1988 when my parents bought us our NES - my one Christmas gift that I wanted so badly (I love you mom and dad!)! I've been able to beat it pretty easily throughout the years and what was actually hilarious is that my two best friends and I - Nintendo fanboys that we are, were the only kids in Elementary school that could beat the game. I remember in the fifth and sixth grades I would play the game in front of my friends and wow them when I showed them the ending. They thought I was some kind of gaming god to beat a game that was so difficult for it's time. Over 25 years later, it is still one of my favourite video games ever and also in my top five favourite Mario games. As for the 16-bit remake, the graphics have been given more color and there are detailed backgrounds which look nice. The music's the same - albeit remade in 16-bit and never gets boring. The same classic gameplay exists though the controls are kind of stiff and have not aged too well. I can't say this also applies to the NES version as I would have to replay it someday. I have died a lot due to some cheap deaths and the controls not responding at appropriate times. The controls get better in subsequent games thankfully. Story was simple for its time and would be recycled in many other games: Mario must rescue Princess Peach of the Mushroom Kingdom (she used to be called Princess Toadstool here until Super Mario 64 gave us her correct name) from the King of Koopas, Bowser. I beat every level but when I played the second quest, I warped as I didn't feel like replaying every level again.
To see the complete game, go here or below:
Click to viewSuper Mario Bros. The Lost Levels
Graphics/Art-9
Sound/Music-9
Control-7
Gameplay-10
Fun/Story/Misc-10
Music Sample:
Ending Theme (1986 FDS / 1993 SNES)
Total: 45/50 (Grade level: A)
This game was released in Japan for the Famicom Disk System as Super Mario Bros. 2 a year after the first game and is the official sequel. At that time Nintendo was debating bringing the game to North America but due to its very high difficulty, they felt it would hurt the Mario brand and American gamers just couldn't stomach something like this - hence why in All-Stars it is referred to as The Lost Levels. Perhaps it was for the best because... good gravy is this game hard! People think the first game was hard - this one really tests your skills to the max! The gameplay is virtually the same including all graphics, sound, music, and controls though with some added tweaks. They've added some new things in the gameplay. Instead of there being only Super Mushrooms and Fire Flowers for Mario to get that are helpful, this game introduced the Poison Mushroom. Touch it, and you are demoted to regular Mario and if you touch it as regular Mario, you die. You can start the game as either Mario or his older brother, Luigi which means the 2-player option that the first game had is not in this one. This actually brings on a whole new challenge as the brothers have different speed and jumping abilities. On the one hand, Mario doesn't jump as high but controlling his speed is easier. Luigi on the other hand, can jump higher and longer than Mario but controlling his speed is more difficult. For this playthrough, I chose Mario the entire time. There is also warp zones that will put you back instead of forward and even windstorms that attempt to push you off ledges or under/over shoot jumps. If you use a warp zone to progress in the game, the game ends at World 8-4 but if you beat every level without warping, you get to go to World 9 and then Worlds A to D and truly beat the game. Thankfully in All-Stars you can save your game in any level and restart at that level instead of at the beginning of the world. While I've died hundreds of times in this game, I still had a lot of fun and beating it gave me a good feeling of satisfaction.
To see the complete game (the player makes it look easy but trust me - it's very difficult unless you spend hours practicing every level!) go here, or below:
Super Mario Bros. 2
Graphics/Art-10
Sound/Music-10
Control-9
Gameplay-9
Fun/Story/Misc-9
Music Samples:
Overworld Theme (1988 NES / 1993 SNES)
Wart (1988 NES / 1993 SNES)
Ending Theme (1998 NES / SNES 1993)
Total: 47/50 (Grade level: A)
Because the original Super Mario Bros. 2 wouldn't be published here, Nintendo instead chose another Japanese FDS game and converted it into a Mario title. This game was called Yume Kojo: Doki Doki Panic (Dream Factory: Heart Pounding Panic) and was developed by Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto. You play as these 4 mascots from Fuji Television though they would be replaced by Mario, Luigi, Toad, and Princess Peach in the American release. The game would be released in Japan as Super Mario USA in 1992 and still be part of the canon of Mario games. I got this game for my 7th birthday from my parents and didn't even know it existed. I had a few friends over after our visit to Chuck-E-Cheese's in Burnaby (sadly, which has been gone for around 15 years now) and I popped it into my NES and couldn't believe how radically different the game was from the first one. The game takes place in the dream world of Subcon which you must free from the evil Wart. The setting is mostly Arabian which Panic was too, though Mario 2 replaces some of the Arabian content with Mario-type content. Like I mentioned above, you can select one of four characters to battle their way through a level. In the NES version, the person you pick stays with you throughout the level and you can't change them unless you get Game Over and continue (in Panic you truly complete the game when all 4 characters beat every single level!). In All-Stars it's more forgiving as you can switch to another character when you lose a life. Mario has average jumping and is the second fastest character to pluck vegetables, Luigi is the highest jumper and the third fastest plucker, Toad is the worst jumper but the faster plucker, and Peach is the longest jumper because she can float though she is the slowest plucker. If you hold "down" on the control pad and keep them in a duck position, they start flashing and you can perform a super jump. There are also two major differences in gameplay compared to the first Mario game. You have energy in this game that starts off as two hearts in each level but you can increase it to four for the duration of the level if you manage to find a Super Mushroom in "subspace". Jumping on enemies no longer defeat them but you can pick most of them up and throw them at other enemies or in pits or whatever. It can be fun to chuck enemies around and try to hit a lot of them. This gameplay element would pass into Super Mario Bros. 3 though it only applies to Koopa shells. Some enemies like Shy-Guys would reappear in other Mario games. Warp zones still exist but completing a level nets you a slot machine bonus chance for extra lives. Comparing our Super Mario Bros. 2 to Yume Kojo: Doki Doki Panic, it turns out our version is better as I played Panic via emulation. The characters in Mario 2 can dash and the music is better with some tracks more extended in their compositions. Going through every level, I switched to a different character in sequence whenever I died or beat a level. During the ending, both Mario and Princess Peach were the highest contributors with a tie of 6 each while I think Luigi had 5 and Toad 3.
To see the complete game, go here or below. To see ALL (and I mean ALL - every level of the game with all 4 characters EACH!) of Yume Kojo: Doki Doki Panic (fan-translated into English) go here.
Super Mario Bros. 3
Graphics/Art-10
Sound/Music-10
Control-10
Gameplay-10
Fun/Story/Misc-9
Music Samples:
Overworld Theme (1990 NES / 1993 SNES)
Athletic (1990 NES / 1993 SNES)
Fortress Theme (1990 NES / 1993 SNES)
Ending Theme (1990 NES / 1993 SNES)
Total: 49/50 (Grade level: A+)
Super Mario Bros. 3 is the one Mario game that gives me mixed feelings. Around the last day of school in June 1990 my brother managed to rent the game at Phase One Video, a video store that we rented a lot of games from in our early NES and SNES days when we lived in North Delta. Given it was pretty new and the popularity very high at the time, I was excited to play the game as I read about it in Nintendo Power magazine. For those who don't know, we in North America basically didn't even know about this game unless you were Japanese or someone told you that it was released around 2 years prior in Japan. When the December 1989 movie The Wizard came out in theatres, it showed footage of Super Mario Bros. 3 and it was the very first time people got to see and know about it (to see the Nostalgic Critic's fucking hilarious review of that movie, go here). Gamers were excited and anticipation grew. The game was released in 1990 and became the best selling NES game ever. My folks bought me the game at a Toys R' Us in Portand, Oregon during summer vacation. I spent some of my time off school working on the game. I eventually beat the game by using the warp whistles to skip ahead and... started to get bored with it. The ending wasn't that great and thought that if I beat all 8 worlds, I might get a better ending. So I did that and... the same damn ending. How lame! So regardless of the time and effort you put in the game, you get the same ending? I know that the previous Mario games did this and I could accept it at first but given the size and content of this game, I expected better. I thought, "What's the point of completing every level if they don't reward you for taking the long and hard path?". I didn't play the game as much through the years and my opinion of the game was that it was probably the most overhyped Mario game ever. I did enjoy playing it in All-Stars back in 1993 however. Graphically it is the best of the four games and the controls are a definite improvement over the first game. I didn't much cringe playing this game after all these years of avoiding it. I actually had a lot of fun playing this game and I beat every level! I forgot how great the level design was though I remembered where things were and what to expect. Super Mario Bros. 3 was known for its original ideas and new power-ups for Mario. Touching a Super Leaf would turn you into "Raccoon Mario" so you could smack enemies with your tail, fly for a short amount of time when you dashed, and slow your descent by continually wagging your tail. There was also the Frog Suit which made Mario swim much easier in water but made him slow out of water. Probably the most popular was the Tanooki Suit - it's the same as being Raccoon Mario except you can turn yourself into a statue for some seconds and be invulnerable to damage. Finally there was the Hammer Bros. Suit in which you could throw hammers at enemies and also be protected from small fireballs if you ducked and exposed the shell on Mario's back. A gameplay first in the series was the inclusion of a world map plus you could carry some items with you in an inventory! You could carry the traditional things like Super Mushrooms, Fire Flowers, and Starmen plus the new stuff like Super Leafs and the three Suits. Some other new items are: P-Wings; which allow you to fly through one entire level without the need of dashing - provided you don't get hit and after the level is complete; you become Raccoon Mario, Hammers break rocks on the world map, Music Boxes put the Hammer Bros. on the world map to sleep temporarily, and Jugem's Cloud allows you to skip past a level on the world map but if you lose a life in the next level, you'll go back to your last point on the map and have to work through the level you tried to skip. There is one rare item, the Gooma Shoe (also known as Kuribo's Shoe) which only exists in World 5 Level 3 that allows you to stomp on enemies and hop through spikes no problem. Sadly, you cannot take it with you after the level. It's a shame that a game of this caliber doesn't have a remake with more levels that take advantage of these new power-ups. After this full playthrough, I have a new appreciation for this game.
To see the complete game, go here or below:
There is no Super Mario All-Stars website and Gametrailers.com video review but the Wikipedia article is here.
Next Game: BioShock 2 (Xbox 360)
Currently playing: Dissidia: Final Fantasy (PSP)
