Over in Mario 64, some fixes have been made. The fact you have to use a pointer every time you want to save game is a strange one, though. In-game, the motion element of the controls isn't needed all the time but is also absolutely a required component of the way Galaxy is constructed - so there it makes more sense. Thankfully the Switch has the necessary hardware within its joy-cons to make this possible, but the fact you can't just prod around with the analogue stick feels strange. Take Mario Galaxy, for instance, where menus are still controlled using a pointer, just as they were on the Nintendo Wii. Sometimes that faith even seems a little silly. Hop into the games and it becomes clear that these are faithful recreations. It's the games and the soundtracks - which is fine, but also leaves one wanting.
This is basically the only bonus feature there's no unlockable concept art, retro TV commercials, developer interviews or anything like that. It's simple but slick.Īlso in the menu is the option to listen to the complete soundtracks of each game. If you want to swap games, pressing the minus button brings up a menu where you can quickly hop back to the title screen and into a different game. Get into each game and they're basically unchanged except for minor bug fixes, the occasional art touch-up and tutorial language changed to reflect the Nintendo Switch controls. You can boot into each with a simple press of a button. Boot into the main menu of 3D All-Stars and you'll see the three games collected together. Given this is the big 35th birthday release for Mario, I frankly expected a little more. But the package that binds these three games together into one release is basic to say the least. All three games run as you'd expect, and keep much from their original releases intact, for better or worse. This package contains three of the best 3D platformers ever made - Mario 64, Sunshine and Galaxy.
With Super Mario 3D All-Stars, one particular element is complicated: the paradigm of how much you score the original games versus how much you score the wrapper that brings them to you on a modern machine. Do you score the games as a whole, or just the quality of the repacking? Everybody knows Super Mario 64 is an incredible classic, but do you knock it down for its early 3D foibles or accept them as a part of the game's history and age? How do you review a re-release? This is a question the video games media have had to reckon with an increasing amount in recent years.
The package bundling them together might be a little bare-bones, but Super Mario 3D All-Stars features three absolute classics.