Super Mario 3D All-Stars (2020)

3D All-Stars provides EXACTLY what you'd expect from the cover: a direct port of Mario 64, Sunshine, and Galaxy. Unfortunately, these games pretty much look exactly the same and generally feel a bit worse to play since their controls don't translate particularly well when taken from their original consoles. 64 felt fine enough, but losing the GameCube's fantastic analog triggers takes away a lot of the charm from Mario Sunshine's controls, and the lack of the GameCube control stick's 8-directional notches also makes movement just feel worse to me somehow. Don't even get me started on the reproduction of the wiimote pointer in Galaxy. Combine that with the full-price $60 price tag that Nintendo slapped on this game along with the FOMO-driven limited time release, and you have a title that I just can't defend to anyone who has access to the originals in any way.

Simply put, if you don't have an alternative way to play these three games and you can get your hands on a cartridge, sure. Give it a go, have fun, they're still all great games. But if you have alternative options, ESPECIALLY if you have the original games, there's just no reason to pick this one up.

This is a fun selection of games. Super Mario Galaxy is the strongest of the bunch, with tight controls and impressive cinematic cutscenes, but all three are great in their own way. Super Mario Sunshine is perhaps the weakest as it contains some odd gameplay choices and there are a few glitches here and there, but it doesn't detract too much from the gameplay experience.

There clearly hasn't been much effort placed into this release by Nintendo though. The games are basically just simple ports, upgraded into HD visuals.

Now as some may already outlined, this isn't a review of the games themselves per se. All of these games are established classics, well sunshine may be debatable, but all are great games. However, this is a shameless cash grab and I don't advise anyone to purchase.

For someone like me who never got a chance to play these games when they released, the upgrades are piss poor. Mario 64 isn't even 1080p and it's letter boxed. The camera is still shit which makes the game unplayable. Nintendo should have fixed these issues to preserve the game for future generations to appreciate.

Sunshine looks beautiful but again is held back by camera issues. Fixes to that would have gone a long way. Of the three, this one is probably the best to me.

Mario galaxy...ehhh, I'm not feeling it. It's too easy and feels very tied to the wii's controls. It runs the best of the three but I'm not feeling it in this package.

For the little they did to package this, it's def not worth $60. I read that it is basically running on emulation. Nintendo played the nostalgia card and it worked beautifully. However, it's going to make me hesitant to buy similar collections in the future.

THIS IS NOT A REVIEW OF THE GAMES OF THIS COLLECTION! THIS IS A REVIEW OF 3D ALL STARS AS A COLLECTION AND HOW MUCH IT INCLUDES

MY REVIEWS OF THE GAMES ARE LINKED HERE

MARIO 64

MARIO SUNSHINE

MARIO GALAXY

With that out of the way, This is my review

Super Mario 3D All-Stars is a weird one. It was created to celebrate Mario's 35th Anniversary and is a Compilation of 3 (Very great) Mario games which are Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Galaxy. I'm happy these games are on here but I feel like there should've been more...

Most video game collections will have more than just games. They will have music, art, trailers, etc.

Super Mario 3D All-Stars only has the 3 games with brief summaries on them and the 3 soundtracks of these games. No artwork (Unless you count the loading screens), no trailers, etc. There's not much here.

These games are also simply ports. They aren't changed all that much (apart from some minor changes in Mario 64 such as the removal of the Backwards Long Jump and "So long gay Bowser".)

The games have all gotten new controls for the Switch (Which you can't change by the way), Are all bumped up to HD which makes games like Mario Galaxy look incredible and made Mario Sunshine widescreen. Mario 64 weirdly doesn't have widescreen.

The controls I've heard bothers people. But I didn't really mind apart from a few times.

Nintendo has also seemed to just pretend that Super Mario Galaxy 2 doesn't exist as it isn't on here.

It's also full price at 60 dollars and is a limited release. The game should be 40 dollars and if they wanted to make it limited, they could've just made the physical release limited rather than both.

Super Mario 3D All-Stars is a fun experience that takes you through the history of Nintendo's Red Italian Plumber... But the price, limited run, and lack of features hurts it...

If you have a Switch, please buy... But don't expect a whole lot

Happy 35 Years Mario

Would Lightly Recommend

3/5

Ok, blasted through 64 and Sunshine this weekend in about 4 hours each. Going to tackle Galaxy now. I've never played it, so I'm excited for that.

Beating both 64 and Sunshine for the third time each, and doing both as fast as I could with the bare minimum stars and sprites, made me reposition both games on my lists. I think I actually like Sunshine more than 64...

I beat Bowser with the absolute minimum number of Stars this weekend, and had a great time revisiting this game. It has some of the most memorable and imaginative level designs I've ever seen and, even though the controls are wonky sometimes, I still feel like it holds up as a lot of fun.

I'll probably come back and get 120 Stars for the first time later, but for now I'm moving on to Sunshine.

Last year, immediately after beating Super Mario Odyssey I went and played some Mario 64 on my crt tv on original hardware. I was surprised to see that Mario 64 felt so much better to control! It felt like there was a lot more momentum and snappiness to his movement on 64 (I'd deffo be happier with a bit uglier graphics, if it meant less input lag on Odyssey btw. Also I was tired of doing that hat combo by the end).

Curious to see how well will Mario 64 play on the Switch, seeing that the N64 controller was actually designed around it. Seeing some people complaining that if feels clunky on the switch got me a bit worried that Nintendo didn't bother to emulate the very specific N64 analog stick sensitivity on the new collection. Would be a shame if newcomers couldn't properly appreciate the magic of this masterpiece!!

To people who already got it, how does it feel to play? Has anyone compared it to playing on original hardware with minimal input lag?

Let me start by saying that I am loving this collection. I just played Galaxy recently (of course), and I grew up on 64, so I went straight for Sunshine.

Now, I have a very checkered history with Super Mario Sunshine, in short: I bought it when Gamecube was current gen, sold it after it annoyed the shit out of me, then re-bought it used a few years later, sold it again, then when I got into collecting retro stuff (and Gamecube was at that point considered retro) I bought it a third time, convinced I was going to finally get through it, then sold it a third time.

Then last year, my buddy donated his collection to me. Among it was Super Mario Sunshine. You can probably figure out how that attempt went - but I didn't actually sell it. Just stopped after an hour or two of gameplay.

Here's the thing - something about the control scheme is just terrible in this game. Mario's moveset has so many contextual variables, ex. speed at which you're moving, direction you suddenly move to, if you are around something you can slip on, or grip to, etc. I find this game INSANELY difficult to control. Mario Galaxy, a game based in 3D (literal) space, with freaken multiple gravitational sources in close proximity, is somehow easier to control than this nightmare. Now, add imprecision with the Joycons and I pretty much need an anti-anxiety prescription to get through this. (Instead, I only play it with the Pro controllers)

I played Mario 64 probably 50 times in my life; it's one of the greatest games ever made IMO and I grew up with SNES, then N64, so let's just say 3D platforming is what I grew up on in the same way other kids grew up on breast milk or formula, but I feel like I'm a hundred years old when I play Sunshine.

I've fallen off every ledge probably a dozen times in the first level, in just several hours of gameplay. There are shadows, so projecting where I'm going to land should be easy, and yet I miss time and time again. The camera fights me, and it does this thing when you're floating around with the water jet, it zooms out which screws with your perception of where you are in 3D space. What results is constantly falling off of things.

I'm sure I'll get used to these slippery controls, and I've already gotten farther in this playthrough than the preceding four attempts spanning nearly two decades, but there's no way in hell I'm attempting anything resembling completion.

What prompted me to write up this rant was this article on Nintendo Life which basically reaffirms my position that Sunshine was and still is a glitchy mess at times. It's great fun, and I'm trying to channel my inner peace when I fall off a platform or miss a jump and land in the water for the 400th time, but I cannot be alone in this.

No, I cannot be alone in this.

Super Mario 3D All-Stars is the game many of us knew was coming, but with Nintendo being more secretive than Willy Wonka and his Chocolate Factory, we just never knew when. Well, it's here, and while the complaints people have for the game are legitimate, such as the limited release window, few bonus features added to the game or the minor upgrades in graphics and gameplay, you are still getting three of the greatest video games of all time in one package, playable either on your TV or on the go. That, in my mind, is worth the $60 price tag.

As for the games themselves, remember these are games that are now at least 13 years old. The age at times shows up. Super Mario 64, a game I loved as a teen when I had the N64, still has that awkward camera that I hated back then. Super Mario Sunshine still has that "black sheep" aura about it, even if the game itself is more fun than people made it out to be. Galaxy is absolutely gorgeous and looks like it could be a Switch era release. No longer forcing players to use the motion controls and allowing you to play the game with a pro controller makes it so much more fun than when I tried it years ago and quit because I hated having to use the motion controls.

Overall, are there nitpicks? Yes. Are the games still legendary? Yes. I highly recommend picking this up, sooner rather than later.