The very first game I was ever introduced to, Super Mario All-Stars did much more than simply bring NES games to the SNES.
Being a retro video game collector nearing my 30th birthday, gaming has been a true constant in my life, with many of my earliest memories being connected to my early experiences with video games.
With my father already a dedicated fan of the Super Mario series during its original NES heyday during the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, the rest of my family had picked up Mario fever as well, with knowledge of the games in the original Super Mario trilogy seemingly universal at family gatherings.
The familial interest in Mario even extended to my grandmother, who was introduced to the game by my father and became a pretty damn good player in her own right. While the rest of my family got the first taste of the games on their original NES versions, my introduction came in the form of Super Mario All-Stars, a remastered compilation of the original Super Mario trilogy in addition to Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels, which was originally released only in Japan as Super Mario Bros. 2 in 1986.
By the time I was born in April 1996, my family had an SNES and Super Mario All-Stars, with me likely taking my first attempts at playing the game just a couple of years later.
With this being the iteration of the games I was introduced to and accustomed to, I never realized just how impressive the compilation was as a kid, only having fleeting memories of playing the games on the NES.
As my gaming obsession reached a new level in the summer of 2007, I convinced my dad to buy me an NES from a local retro game store, which was purchased for $50 and came alongside a copy of Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt. After just messing around a bit with the original Super Mario Bros., it became abundantly clear that All-Stars was much more than a port to another console – it was a complete reimagination.
From quality-of-life improvements and a better controller to more impressive graphics and music. All-Stars reinvented the games to the extent that playing them on the SNES feels like a distinct experience than what players would get out of the original NES games.
Although I’ve spent countless hours on three of the four games included in All-Stars (sorry Super Mario Bros. 2), there’s no question that my love for the Super Mario series and gaming as a whole was inspired by Super Mario Bros. 3, which remains my favorite video game of all-time.
Already known as a technically impressive and difficult game that pushed the limits of the NES in every matter at the time of its 1990 North American release, the game took on an entirely new life when remastered on the SNES just three years later.
Maybe that’s another part about what makes this game feel so revolutionary – not only was it an updated, more accessible version of classic games, the revamp was done in a remarkably short amount of time. Hell, at the time of the August 1993 release of All-Stars in North America, the NES was still over a year away from releasing its final game in the continent, with Wario’s Woods hitting shelves in December 1994.
In the modern video game landscape where there’s typically a period of at least 15 years between originals and remakes, the incredible speed and accuracy in which All-Stars was made remains mind-boggling, even when taking the relatively limited technology into account.
Perhaps the most significant quality of life difference from the original NES games to All-Stars is the ability to save your game, a feature that frustrated NES players had long yearned for as the original games had to be completed in a single sitting (unless you’re leaving your console on for days on-end, which I have certainly been guilty of in the past).
Players are able to save after completing a world in Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 2, while saving opportunities open up after completing a fortress or world in Super Mario Bros. 3. As for Lost Levels, the game’s extreme difficulty is somewhat nerfed by the ability to save after every level, which was certainly paramount to me eventually completing the game. Each game allows up to four save files, creating an impressive capacity of 16 total files between the four games.
Although all of my childhood experiences were on the primary Super Mario All-Stars cartridge, I have yet to mention that Nintendo upped the ante again just a year later, re-releasing All-Stars with the addition of Super Mario World, the acclaimed SNES launch title, in December 1994.
The most obvious improvements from the NES to the SNES in All-Stars games clearly centers around graphics and music, with an incredible amount of detail added in the backgrounds of levels while the 16-bit capabilities of the SNES brought more life to the minimalist 8-bit sound of the NES.
While I’m under the belief that these improvements are the most noticeable and effective in Super Mario Bros. 3, they’re also readily apparent when playing any one of the four remastered titles.
An argument can certainly be made that the original Super Mario Bros. had the biggest jump in quality however, especially owing to the obvious limitations the NES and game development were dealing with at the time of the console’s launch in 1985.
The game’s legendary first level helps set the stage for what to expect throughout all of the games in the compilation, turning solid color backdrops into immersive blue skies with scattered clouds.
This obvious difference felt especially noticeable to myself after playing Super Mario Bros. 3 on the NES extensively for the first time. The background changes were perhaps the most pronounced in underground areas, where a scattered-star black background and cyan rock formation were transformed into a brick red underground cave with detailed rock patterns in the background.
I’d be remiss not to mention the improvements to the characters themselves, which may feel extremely obvious when playing Super Mario Bros. Beyond the clear aesthetic improvements to just about everything the player sees on the screen was the addition of an important distinction that has persisted in the series since.
After the NES games merely utilized a palette swap for the appearance of Mario and Luigi, Super Mario All-Stars moved to give the characters a distinct figure – with Luigi appearing as the taller, more slender brother for the first time in the series. This also matches up with their slightly different attributes, with Luigi achieving higher jump height but lower traction when running.
The SNES controller also makes the games a bit more comfortable to play for longer periods of time. Abandoning the rectangular shape the NES controllers took on, the SNES controllers featured rounded handles and a second pair of action buttons, allowing players some freedom in how to configure their hands more naturally on the controller. The angled orientation of the action buttons also aids with comfort, as opposed to the horizontal B-A layout on the NES controller – something that was alleviated late in the console’s lifespan with the release of the dogbone controller.
As a dedicated fan of the Super Mario series all of these years later, playing All-Stars is still my favorite way to enjoy the original Mario trilogy by a country mile – while also standing above many of the other remasters I’ve acquainted myself with over the years.
The ground-up remakes of Crash Bandicoot: The N. Sane Trilogy, Spyro Reignited Trilogy and Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled serve as modern examples of remasters done right, properly upscaling every aspect of the game to create an experience that still feels novel, even for those that are deeply familiar with the original games.
Unfortunately, the Super Mario series has struck out on this in a big way multiple times, first with the 2020 release of Super Mario 3D All-Stars for the Switch that turned out to be nothing more than a set of direct ports for the console in high definition. After excluding Super Mario Galaxy 2 in that compilation, Nintendo went on to release a Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2 bundle for the Switch in October 2025, once again without many discernible changes to the game’s appearance.
This flop has occurred outside of the Super Mario series as well, with 2023 remasters for Tales of Symphonia released for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Switch turning out to be disappointing ports with few graphical upgrades and no new features.
While it’s certainly fun to imagine what a true HD, 3D upscaling of the original trilogy would be like, the SNES version of the titles brings them to life in a way that seemed unimaginable in the early 1990’s, doing so in an incredibly tight timeframe.
With the expansiveness of the Mario series at-large, the opportunities for future remasters are seemingly endless. Yet for those that love and enjoy the original game, a remaster should be enough to provide a new, memorable experience for even the most seasoned players.
Although I didn’t have the prior experience with the NES trilogy when I first played All-Stars, I can recall the feeling I had as a kid playing the Sunny Villa level in Spyro: Year of the Dragon for the first time – only to be gifted with that same exact feeling of euphoric anticipation when playing Spyro Reignited Trilogy for the first time 17 years later.
After all, that’s what a remaster should be about – doing things with an existing work of art that were either impossible or far too expensive/time-consuming to have been done the first time around. In what was merely a three-year span, Nintendo not only knocked it out of the park with Super Mario All-Stars, but set the standard that all developers should continue to adhere to for remastering a classic game.
In many ways, Super Mario All-Stars had the same impact on me with video games that Sammy Sosa had on me with baseball during his prime with the Chicago Cubs in my early childhood. If not for them, I may not have ever cared about video games as an art form, or baseball as a lifelong pastime.
Differing from the experience of playing a brand-new game, remasters serve as a powerful tool to unite gamers of different generations – just as All-Stars bridged the gap between the older members of my family and myself.
When a work of art has the potential to transcend generations and ignite a passion in a new group of people, it’s best to not just simply regurgitate what has already been done – with Super Mario All-Stars setting the perfect example of how to do it the right way for the rest of the gaming world.
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