Super Mario 3D All-Stars is a frustrating collection of great games. Super Mario All-Stars was a historical document, a tribute to Nintendo’s history and creative achievement in 2D. This, on the other hand, is some games bundled together. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bv84q8/super-mario-3d-all-stars-review

Super Mario 64, a towering achievement in game design, shows its age here. It’s no longer fun to watch the camera get stuck because Nintendo is still imaging there are yellow C-buttons. It demands a full update, and that’s not present here. It’s hard to play.

Weirdly, a company like Activision has shown the path forward in balancing nostalgia with modernization. See: Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. Super Mario 64 deserves the…Activision treatment? 2020 is strange.

That said, I’m really glad to finally have an opportunity out myself as a Super Mario Sunshine stan. That game is weird, it rules, and the controls suck. It was true in 2002 and true in 2020! I’m so glad more people will have a chance to experience it.

But it remains odd that Nintendo is celebrating Mario’s 35th anniversary with some tweaked versions of three important games by releasing them alongside soundtracks that can’t even be played outside of the game. Maybe that’s COVID-19, but it’s a disappointment.

This all stands in contrast to the recent “gigaleak,” a trove of stolen documents and files, which exposed Nintendo’s development history. You’ll learn more about how these games were made by scrolling through the gigaleak than by loading up this collection.

Can you tell I *really* give a shit about Mario? Because all this caveated, I’m going to spend 100 hours collecting everything in Sunshine and Galaxy all over again this fall—while dreaming about Nintendo giving Mario 64 the respect it deserves.