Steel Drums Now in Glorious 16-Bit Stereo (Super Mario All-Stars (N64))

Member Name: Frankingsteins

Product:	Super Mario All-Stars (N64)
Date:	25/06/05 (392 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Value for money: 3 great games, 2 average, Colourful and suitable for all ages, Save features are essential

Disadvantages: Not so impressive today, Saved data can wipe without warning, Mario 2 is a bit rubbish

In a time before emulators allowed geeks to store thousands of their favourite 16-bit games on their hard drive, fitting more than one game onto a cartridge was a rare event. Firstly because it detracted money that young idiots like me would otherwise spend on buying every game individually (although thankfully it was never money we had properly earned or worked for, and it’s our parents who are the idiots after all, just like we always knew), and secondly because cartridges were really rubbish. Those plastic things you slot into your antiquated game console that don’t work until you blow in them used to seem so valuable, but are now not seen as fit to wipe our bottoms on. (Mostly because of the unaccommodating shape).

Super Mario All-Stars remains one of the most memorable generosities by the otherwise greedy, corporate, child-greed-feeders Nintendo. All four Mario games from the original 8-bit Nintendo, updated to 16-bit (and done properly, with faces and new graphics and sound and everything), PLUS (for those lucky enough not to buy it until the re-release), the best Mario game to date: Super Mario World. All games can also be saved to the cartridge, unless you cough near to it or something and accidentally wipe the memory, or simply let your brother play it, which always leads to the same result.


SUPER MARIO BROS.


Okay, this is pretty much the original Mario game with the word ‘Super’ added to suit the Super Nintendo, or SNES (/snez/) as me and my friends cleverly called it, before realising that, in fact, it was what the whole world was inevitably calling it. This is a fun and possibly timeless game, the annoying right-side-scrolling being more than made up for by the brilliant synthesised steel drum tunes. Players can play as Mario or Luigi, which still only means switching colour from red to green; there is an alternating two-player option also.


SUPER MARIO: THE LOST LEVELS


Previously little-known, this cheap cash-in involved reworking levels of the first game and adding some new, similar ones, the distinction being that this game is much harder. Mario All-Stars rectifies this a little (and cheapens the game as a result) by allowing the state of each level to be saved, rather than the player resuming at the start of the world. i.e., saving on any level of world 7 on the first game will start the player at ‘7-1,’ while here a save on level 4-4 will mean play can be resumed at 4-4. I realise I have now probably alienated the few people who had the patience to read this far.


SUPER MARIO BROS. 2


The weakest link, Mario 2 always seemed like a bit of a stupid idea. Taking the franchise in a strange but thankfully short-lived direction, this game is partially a puzzle-solver, but is actually quite hard. The bosses are repetitive, but the levels are reasonably varied and fun.


SUPER MARIO BROS. 3


A classic game, and the first true sequel to the original game. Mario 3 innovated the map system and introduced a host of new items to turn Mario or Luigi into increasingly unnecessary guises, including a frogman, Hammer Brother and ridiculous but somehow rare Tanooki suit. Vexing but intensely playable levels throughout, the only problem is that the daft cheating whistle thing is still in place, pretty much removing worlds 2 through 6 from most gamers’ playtime. There is a video on the internet of someone completing this game in eight minutes or something. My brother sat through the whole thing, but then he also sat through ‘The Matrix Revolutions’ which is much the same as watching someone else play through a video game.


SUPER MARIO WORLD


The most expansive and entertaining game on the Super Nintendo, Mario World had all the addiction of an RPG without the player having to remember boring statistics. The introduction of Yoshi and the logical extension of the world maps to form a huge, free-roaming map of the entire game that can be backtracked to find even more power-ups and secrets. The only real problem with this game is that extra lives, although not saved with progress, stack up so easily and so quickly that it’s impossible to stop playing through anything other than boredom, and this unfortunately does not rear its head too often when playing this colourful electronic masterpiece. I’ve already written a review of it somewhere if you’re really interested. Other people have too, but it’s obviously best if you read mine because it’s ace.

Super Mario All-Stars is one of the most classic game cartridges in existence, rivalled only by Sega’s ingenious but underused multi-cartridge system introduced with ‘Sonic & Knuckles’ in 1995, the year everyone moved onto CD except for Nintendo with their silly 3D blasphemies of the Mario legacy.

‘All-Stars’ (plus Super Mario World) has taken many cumulative months from my life, and shall continue to detract the years as I stubbornly handle the uncomfortable SNES joypad while everyone else flies around on jetpacks playing Microsoft’s mind-operated console monstrosities.

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