Many, many of you should know who Mario is. I'd go so far as to say that if you don't know who the plumber is, then congratulations on waking from your recent 25 year coma. The little 'shroom poppin' handyman is so recognisable, he's more recognisable than Mickey Mouse.

Some of you might know Mario from some other games, but I first got introduced to the Mushroom Kingdom's famous face in the Christmas of '96. I had recently moved to Ireland from America that previous Summer and my parents decided we should get an SNES for Christmas. By this point, the Super Nintendo had been out in Europe for around 4 years, yet I still had never gotten a real chance to play one. I had played games before, and I did quite like them, as did my siblings, so when we were asked what we would like Jolly Old St. Nick to give us, me and my older Brother's response was simply 'a Nintendo'. "Ask and ye shall recieve" because a Nintendo we got. A Nintendo we got.


Awexome.

By this point in the lifespan of the SNES, the 16-Bit powerhouse was beginning to age ever so slightly. Thus Nintendo did something that has now become common in the gaming world, they re-released old games. But not just any games; they released Super Mario Allstars + Super Mario World as a pack-in game with new SNESes. Essentially, if you bought an SNES at the time I recieved one, you got 5 brilliant games included straight out of the box. Some argue that it was a cheap marketing ploy to just spit-shine old games and release them as a compilation in order to boost sales, but I had never actually played a Mario game before, so all was fair by me.

There were actually two versions of Super Mario All-Stars released, one that came with enhanced versions of Super Mario Bros, The Lost Levels, Super Mario Bros. 2 and Super Mario Bros. 3. Then there was the version I recieved which also included Super Mario World. Here's an old advertisement for the 'World-less' version. Try not to have a seizure.


What's the capital of Ohio?
If you enoyed that, here's the same exact thing en español!

Gameplay of the 5 games was almost identical to their independant counter-parts, bar a few cosmetic changes and a few edits to Lost Levels to make it a tad easier. These edits didn't help much. I still can't get past 3:3 on either version. Super Mario All-Stars was well recieved almost universally despite the aforementioned criticism of its marketing. That said, don't excpect to see it hit Virtual Console anytime soon. Unfortunately, the fact that all the main Mario sidescrollers from NES to SNES have been released as standalone games on the Virtual Console, abeit Lost Levels for a limited time. The simple fact that a consumer could get these 5 games with updated graphics for the fraction of their stand-alone selves' price is enough to keep Allstars away from the Virtual Console, at least for the time being. Please prove me wrong Nintendo. Oh how I would love to be proven wrong.


If you live In Europe, I hope you snagged this while you could.

I lost my Copy of All-Stars, along with my SNES when I moved into the house I currently inhabit. Losing things is common when you move however, I still find it strange that I lost it, wehn my former home is across the road from my current dwelling. I've asked my family if they've seen it since the move which took place around 1998, and apparently we either gave away or through-out our SNES. You can imagine my chagrin. Before I end this post, I think its only fitting to put a video of the gameplay of Super Mario All-Stars (now referred by various typists as 'SMAS'):


Do-do-do-do-du-dodo-do-dododo...

And last but not least, because no blog post is truly complete without it, here's a crazy Japanese commercial for SMAS. Oh Japan, you so ca-raz-ay.


This is a lot less seizure-inducing than the American Commercial...

Credits: Thanks to various helpful Youtubers for their videos, and to the various people uploaded images that could easily be found on Google Images. And to Wikipedia for some helpful fact checking. Oh yeah, and Nintendo, thanks for the great game.