This is my first review. Don’t expect the quality of someone who’s been here since 2005.

This is a demake of the original Super Mario All-Stars. I’ve always been a fan of demakes – Super Mario World NES and Donkey Kong Country 4 are my personal favorites.

So you start this multicart up, and what do you get?

A cute little intro featuring every character that moves – already a step up from Ninty’s official offerings. As an 8-bit remix of the Wii Shop Channel plays in the background, these characters come out of an oversized pipe in the left and go into the one on the right as a crowd of those angel babies from the end of Mario 2 goes wild. It ends whenever either you press Start or Mario 3 Bowser ground-pounds the floor halfway through his intro.

Then you’re brought to a menu where you can choose from five games in the style of the three-pack known not-so-simply as Super Mario Bros. + Duck Hunt + World-Class Track Meet. However, you’re only gonna see the four main attractions as classic arcade Mario Bros. is hidden away, only found by holding A and pressing up at Super.

I do have some gripes with the menu, most notably Lost Levels and Mario 2 are designated by which country calls them Mario 2. You could’ve just as easily called Lost Levels “Kaizo Mario Bros.” or “SMB Lost Levels” and kept our name for Mario 2. Another one is one of the channels is missing from Mario 3’s rollover music. (You know, the part that goes “blap, blap, blap, blap”?) Now, let’s talk about the games. One neat feature added to all of them was a save feature. Not just a save feature, but a save feature that saves for every stage, like Lost Levels on real All-Stars. Maybe now I can finally beat World 8 on Mario 3.

Speaking of Lost Levels, it has an FDS-like bootup screen. Nice touch, Infidelity.

Classic arcade Mario Bros. was also a neat edition, but I don’t see the point of it when Super Mario Bros. 3 already has the 2-player bonus game.

This collection is also good for those of us who like softlocking our games, because not only has 0% of the glitches been fixed, you can even save in the Minus World!

So do I recommend this hack? Well, if you need an excuse to play these games again, or if you want to get into the series (in case somehow you haven’t played one of the over 150 Mario games), I can’t recommend this enough. If you already have Super Mario All-Stars on the SNES (especially the one that comes with World) or Wii, however, this collection features no improvements besides a cool intro and the original form of these games, so why bother?

And how would I improve it? Well, for starters, I would change Mario 3’s rollover music. The World 1 map is much more fitting than what transformed into Zelda’s fairy fountain theme. I would also have the Lost Levels title restored and replace Mario Bros. with something that isn’t already a bonus game. Maybe Donkey Kong Classics?

So that’s my first review. See you somewhere else.