Two months ago was the 25th anniversary of Super Mario Bros. and Nintendo has been promoting it little by little, but the main dish of their campaign is a a release of Super Mario All-Stars on Wii. Instead of a Virtual Console release, they went the extra mile of putting out a disc version of the game along with some bonus materials in honor of Mario's milestone with a booklet about the main games of the series and a soundtrack CD for 30 dollars. All of this seems like some last minute decision Nintendo made to put something out and call it a day, which is indeed the case. All-Stars is good and all, but as a 25th Anniversary package, they could of done way more considering how much Mario content has been around since 1985.
For those who never played Super Mario All-Stars, Nintendo pretty much ported the game untouched the game on a Wii disc as the it is the original Super Nintendo version to even having the button layouts on screen. The compilation contains the three NES Super Mario games and at the time for the U.S., the debut of The Lost Levels, or Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2. All four of these games received a 16-bit graphical facelift along with recycled sound effects from Super Mario World. Besides those changes, the games were the same ones from the NES from beginning to end and still a blast to play in 2010. On the Wii, the controls are NES style with the Wiimote sideways as advertised on the back of the box, but there are other control options to choose from if you feel like playing it with the Classic Controller or even a GameCube controller. While the original three are still absolute classics to this day, The Lost Levels are the true test of your Mario skills and it is still as hard as advertised requiring skills that go beyond your imagination at the time when they debuted. Even though the original All-Stars is a fine package, Nintendo could of done more to the game than just shove it to a disc being that it is Mario's 25th Anniversary.
The booklet is pretty much a basics look of the Mario games from the original Super Mario Bros. to this year's Super Mario Galaxy 2 with one sentence quotes by Mario's main creators such as Shigeru Miyamoto and composer Koji Kondo. The same goes for the soundtrack CD that goes with this package in terms of a basic approach by putting the games' main themes and iconic sound effects into one disc. Even though all of this feels like a bare bones offering for the 25th Anniversary, it is still worth it as a collector's item being there is a limited run of copies around and 30 bucks for All-Stars is questionable, but they are still fun to play. For those that skipped the originals' Virtual Console releases, All-Stars on Wii is worth getting, but if you have the original SNES cart around, then just bust that one out instead of buying this package.
Score = 7.5/10
