Via Kotaku, Nintendo announced today that they’ll be bringing Super Mario All-Stars to the Wii in the United States. The package will include Mario 1, Mario 2, Mario 3, and The Lost Levels, and absolutely no other games, just like the original Super Nintendo release. This begs several questions, including:
1) Why?
Also:
2) Why should I pay $30 for a port of a Super Nintendo game?
3) Why should I pay $30 for a collection of games I already own 16 working copies of each? (Save for The Lost Levels, but one working copy of that is more than enough.)
4) Isn’t it cheaper to buy the games individually on the Virtual Console, anyway? In fact, wouldn’t doing that cost like half the price of this Super Mario All-Stars?
5) No, seriously—I am literally swimming in copies of Mario 3 right now. Stop releasing it! (Note: This is not actually a question.)
6) Why isn’t Mario World in there, or Mario 64, or any of the Game Boy games? Why isn’t anything included that would make this a worthwhile package?
7) What is the goddamn point?!
And actually, come to think of it…will this even be as good as the Super Nintendo version? I don’t think Nintendo has stated that it’s a literal port of the SNES game—will this just be a collection of the original NES titles, or will it include the updated graphics and savegame feature of the SNES release?
Or, on the other hand, will my worst nightmare come true, and will this just be a collection of the Super Mario Advance series that came out a while back for the GBA? Because those are actually worth negative dollars. Seriously, Toad’s voice in Super Mario Advance 2: Mario Bros. 3 Presents: Mario World for Mario 2: The Reckoning made blood come out of my ears. My G-BASP is now stained red.
If I were a real journalist, I’d be asking Nintendo these questions, rather than you, the GameCola Faithful. I think I’d rather just assume that this is a horrible waste of money, though.
At least it reportedly comes with a soundtrack CD and “commemorative booklet.”
…I mean, they’re not even including Super Mario World, like the cool version of Super Mario All-Stars did! What is the point?!
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Paul Franzen is the founder of GameCola.net and the writer/designer of Life in the Dorms, an actual videogame. Learn more at paulfranzen.wordpress.com. 
According to http://www.ripten.com/2010/10/28/super-mario-all-stars-limited-edition-dated-for-north-america-justin6464/, the versions of the games are the All-Star versions.
Looks a vat of pure wank to me, I’ll be avoiding it.
You’re about right, Paul, but look at it this way:
Super Mario: $5
Super Mario 2: $5
Super Mario 3: $5
Lost Levels: $5
Commemorative Book: $5
Soundtrack: $5
$30 really isn’t that bad of a deal. The SNES version of those games were were well done and no extra fat content so why not? My only concern is the Wii emulates it well, but this isn’t a bad compilation at all.
Oh no, I agree that the SNES versions of the games are great! But I still think it’s lame to re-release this package 15 years later without adding any of the more recent Mario games to it, especially considering how readily available the individual games are on other platforms, and for cheaper. Also, I don’t really want the book or soundtrack, so they’re not worth $10 extra to me personally.
Nintendo’s pretty efficient about that kinda stuff. The GBA SNES-style remakes aren’t widely or cheaply available and neither is the SNES Super Mario All Stars, so they likely didn’t include other Mario games because many of them are already on Virtual Console (Yoshi’s Island I couldn’t find though).
Yeah I agree the package could be better all the way around, but it certainly isn’t bad as is. I might get it sometime.
I guess with all the self-tributes they do it was only a matter of time before they released kind of a tribute to a tribute.
Why wouldn’t they tribute to themselves? They made Mario.