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SUPER MARIO ALL-STARS Company: Nintendo Released: August 1993 Genre: Side-Scroller Graphics: 8.5 Control: 9.5 Sound/Music: 9.0 Storyline: 8.0 Review by: Corbie Dillard ©2008 SUPER-NES.COM

What do you do if you've had 3 multi-million selling games on your previous game system? If you're smart, you bring them all over to your current system complete with updated music and graphics. Then for good measure you throw in another million-seller that was never released here in the US and you bundle them all together into one fantastic Super Nintendo game cartridge. It seems Nintendo was pretty smart. And you won't find a more complete game collection than Super Mario All-Stars. Graphically the Super Mario Bros. games have never looked so good. Each game gets a big graphical update and I have to say the original Super Mario Bros. looks fantastic. Not only is the annoying flicker found in the NES versions of these games gone, but backgrounds, enemies, and even the characters themselves all have a great amount of detail that just wasn't present in the 8-bit games. You'll also notice a much larger use of the Super Nintendo's color palette which gives the games an even more vibrant look than they had before. Overall Nintendo did a fantastic job of updating all of these games and they all look better than ever. By now there shouldn't be anyone reading this that hasn't played at least one of the games on this cartridge. And you should also know all of these tunes by heart by now. Just as they did with the graphics in these games, Nintendo also updated all of the music in these four games and they all sound great. I liked all of the updated music except the main track in SMB3. Although it was still a good music track, I seem to still prefer the NES version of the song, but that's probably just because I squeezed so much time in on the original NES game. Fans of the series should like the updated songs as Nintendo didn't change them much other than adding a little more melody and different instrument sounds to them. Overall as big a step up in sound as graphics. Nicely done. I could spend a month in this paragraph describing everything that's great about all of the Super Mario Bros. games when it comes to play control. In Super Mario Bros. and The Lost Levels there's not too much to play control other than the standard run, jump, and shoot fireballs. Most of the action in these first two games was left mostly to stomping on your enemies and some serious pinpoint platforming. In Super Mario Bros. 2, Mario was given the power of not only his previous moves, but could also pick up objects and enemies and then hurl them. It added a little playability to an already outstanding series of games, although because it wasn't developed as a Super Mario Bros. game it does have a very different feel to it control-wise. Super Mario Bros. 3 continued the tradition of Super Mario Bros. 2 in that it also added new areas of playability to the game. Now you could collect powerups and suits that gave you special abilities. The Frog Suit was one of the more popular ones as it allowed you to swin more efficiently in the water. The Tanooki Suit changed Mario into a raccoon and allowed him to be able to fly in the air as well as change into a stone statue that allowed him invisibility so that enemies couldn't see or hurt him for a short period of time. It was little things like this that made it one of the greatest side-scrollers of all time and one of the most beloved video games ever created. You really can't go wrong when you take four of the greatest side scrollers of all time, update them both graphically and musically, and then package them all into one amazing cartridge for the Super NES. The game would have been a bargain at even $100 and is a game that should be in every Super Nintendo owner's collection. As the old question goes, if I was dropped onto a deserted island with a Super NES and could only have one game, it would be this one without a doubt.