Su­per Mario 3D All-Stars Com­ing Soon, But Not for Long

MISHAWAKA – Mario fans re­joice, as the col­lec­tion of three of the most pop­u­lar 3D games are ported onto Nin­ten­do’s most suc­cess­ful con­sole. 

I did not grow up with Nin­tendo. My first con­sole was a PlaySta­tion 2, and what­ever hodge-podge col­lec­tion of games I could scrounge up for it. My sec­ond con­sole was a Wii, but due to the finnicky na­ture of mo­tion con­trols and the hy­per­ac­tive hands of a child, I did not fully en­joy it. This is all a pre­lude to why I am so ex­cited for this col­lec­tion; I never got to play the orig­i­nal Su­per Mario 64, named af­ter its home con­sole, the Nin­tendo 64, be­cause I never had one. I never got to play Su­per Mario Sun­shine on the Game­cube be­cause I never had one. I never got to play Su­per Mario Galaxy, be­cause I was a child and ask­ing my par­ents for a new game to play when­ever I got bored was ba­si­cally killing any prospects for my birth­day or Christ­mas. 

En­ter Su­per Mario 3D All-Stars. This game is a col­lec­tion of the three afore­men­tioned games, brand­ing them as the best the 3D Mario games Nin­tendo has to of­fer, and that state­ment is not ex­actly false. Mario 64 de­fined 3D plat­form­ers and is still an ex­tremely pop­u­lar ti­tle to­day; Mario Galaxy is one of the pret­ti­est Mario games with in­ge­nious level de­sign and stun­ning, at­mos­pheric (haha, space joke) sound­tracks; and Mario Sun­shine is the best one. My per­sonal opin­ions aside, this game is the per­fect op­por­tu­nity for gamers like me who missed out on some of the stone-cold clas­sics of yester-year. 

It is im­por­tant to note that these games are not re­mas­ters, like Xenoblade Chron­i­cles: De­fin­i­tive Edi­tion; they are ports. This means very lit­tle from the orig­i­nal game has changed. Aside from a few graph­i­cal tweaks, like pump­ing up the qual­ity of the old games by a tad and con­trol re-map­ping, not much will change from the orig­i­nals. No graph­i­cal over­hauls, no re­mas­tered mu­sic, nor any new con­tent will be added to these games in this state. Some fans have crit­i­cized the no­tion of port­ing three com­par­a­tively ar­chaic games with lit­tle to no change and still charg­ing full price, but there is an even big­ger con­tro­versy with this game. 

Nin­tendo has made a lot of de­ci­sions dur­ing the pan­demic that have not re­ally been in line with their modus operandi of the past. The most im­por­tant part of that sen­tence is “dur­ing the pan­demic”; con­sid­er­ing the cur­rent state of af­fairs, it is en­tirely un­der­stand­able that Nin­tendo and hun­dreds of other com­pa­nies have had to change the way they op­er­ate. Even with that con­ces­sion, the choice to make this tril­ogy port a lim­ited-run blows not only my mind, but the mind of just about every Nin­tendo fan in the world. Su­per Mario 3D All-Stars will be avail­able from Sep­tem­ber 18, 2020 to March 31, 2021. For the non-math ma­jors out there, that is just shy of six months and two weeks. Come April 1, 2021, Su­per Mario 3D All-Stars will not be avail­able to be bought phys­i­cally or dig­i­tally, nor will it be pro­duced ever again. Any­one who does not have a copy of the game by that point ei­ther must dig up the orig­i­nal games or pay the ex­or­bi­tant fees of on­line scalpers to have a hope of see­ing the games on their Switch. 

De­spite the rather harsh time limit play­ers will have to get their hands on such a great col­lec­tion, Su­per Mario 3D All-Stars promises to be a trip to Nos­tal­gia Land on a mod­ern con­sole, and I, for one, have al­ready pre-or­dered my ticket.