Since buying a SNES and all its accessories online this past month, I’ve finally got my first SNES game, and a
fine one to start the system with. Super Mario All-Stars contains the first three Super Mario Bros. games
and The Lost Levels- really Super Mario Bros. 2 in Japan. I know, I know, it’s that dreaded word- a remake- but remaking NES games isn’t bad since they’re very fragile and hardly work. Plus, so much is updated and made better. So much, in fact, that the best game ever is improved, and added to two of the other greatest games of all time, along with The Lost Levels, an unproven game I had been dying to play all week long. Everyone who has talked to me knows that I very strongly say that Super Mario Bros. 3 is the best game ever. But after playing this game, my opinion changed, with part of that being because Mario 3 is part of the game, but there’s more than that. I’ll explain below...

This game is reviewed on my usual 0-4 star scale, and for even more detail for three of the games, see my
Mario 1-2-3 Comparison. This will mainly cover the updates to the games.

Graphics: Mario 1: **1/2 Mario 2: **1/2 Mario 3: *** Lost Levels: **1/2

The graphics are better now, with moving backgrounds. You’ve got to love the dripping pipes in the Pipe Land background and the lightning flashes on the doomships. The SNES’s power is fully demonstrated by making Mario 1 have the graphic quality of SMW. A huge plus over the NES games.

Sound: Mario 1: ***1/2 Mario 2: *** Mario 3: **** Lost Levels: ***1/2

This game made Mario 3’s music better, which I didn’t think was possible. New music was added in coin rooms in Mario 1, while Mario 2 sounds like it did in Super Mario Advance. In fact, this entire game seems like it’s not a 16-bit game, and I don’t know if the GBA version of Mario 3 will top this version, especially in the sound department, where all the tunes have remixes and little additions to them. The songs sound... how can I put it, real. This is another huge plus over the NES versions.

Difficulty: Mario 1: **** Mario 2: *** Mario 3: * Lost Levels: ****

Okay, now I know why the Lost Levels were never released over here. Mario 1 gets four stars for difficulty because I felt it was the hardest game ever to beat. Well, I’m wrong, and The Lost Levels needs more stars than 4. Maybe 6. Consider this: I haven’t seen a single Fire Flower in the entire time I’ve played The Lost Levels. Mario 2 is so much more difficult than the way it was on the GBA as Super Mario Advance, because SMA made it nearly too easy. Mario 3 remains easy. I still can’t figure out why everyone says that’s a hard game. That’s the only downfall to Mario 3, that it’s an easy game.

Characters: Mario 1: *** Mario 2: **1/2 Mario 3: **** Lost Levels: ***

These are the classic characters. No game ever will beat the collection shown in Mario 3. Mario 1 and the
Lost Levels have the very first ones, and the Lost Levels have a flying Bloober and a red Piranha Plant who doesn’t care if you’re standing on his pipe; he’ll come right out. Mario 2’s characters aren’t true Mario characters, except for maybe Bob-omb, Snifit, and Shy Guy. Still, no matter who the heck those losers are
that made it to Super Mario RPG and the even worse-looking characters that are going to be in Super Mario Sunshine, always remember that the Mario 1 and 3 characters are true, vintage Mario characters, the best ever.

Controls: Mario 1: ***1/2 Mario 2: *** Mario 3: **1/2 Lost Levels: ***1/2

The controls are simple to follow. A little deduction is taken off Mario 2 because I was too used to the SMA
controls on the GBA, and Mario 3 gets the lowest grade because I sometimes accidentally use items or enter a board before I use an item. Why? Because I have the controller configuration changed so that B is Dash,
but it’s still used as an A substitute on the board maps. Nothing serious, unless you lose your last life because of it.

Jumping: Mario 1: 1/2 Mario 2: ***1/2 Mario 3: ***1/2 Lost Levels: 1/2

You may remember how difficult it was to jump in Mario 1, and it remains that way. Mario 2 and 3 both give
great ways of jumping, with Mario 2 having the choice of characters, while Mario 3 has the Raccoon Suit and
Tanooki Suit to add flying and slow descent to the jumping skills Mario owns. So Mario 2 and 3 are the exact opposite to Mario 1 and The Lost Levels.

Levels: Mario 1: *** Mario 2: ***1/2 Mario 3: **** Lost Levels: ***1/2

Mario 3 showed the gaming world how to make levels. Mario 2 was the start of “adventure” gaming, which is what you’ll see in games like DK64 today, huge but fewer levels with big bosses coming back for revenge.
You see them in games today, now you know where they came from. Of course, Mario 1 gave us the basic
“platformer” format, with The Lost Levels improving on that with complex levels. So really, two different
types of games come from the first two Super Mario games, although it may not seem that way. But if you
really think about it, you’ll discover how innovative these two games are, and why the non-Japan version of
Super Mario Bros. 2 actually was very important to gaming today. And to think these two are in one cartridge?

Items: Mario 1: * Mario 2: *1/2 Mario 3: **** Lost Levels: **

I hate to give low grades here, but you know that Mario 1’s item selection was very poor to begin with, and the fact that you go down two powers when hit while having a Fire Flower makes this rating worse. The same would go for The Lost Levels, but it has the Poisonous Mushroom to change things up and make its
rating higher. Mario 2 had tons of veggies, but little in the way of powering up. Mario 3, of course, has the
seven items that are the pattern for all items today: Super Mushroom, Fire Flower, Super Leaf, Frog Suit,
Tanooki Suit, Hammer Brothers Suit, and Starman. If you think about it, every item in every game today has
some resemblance to at least one of these seven items. And you wonder why I complain about Super Mario
World’s lack of items!

Game Changes:

This isn’t a graded section, but I’m listing a few semi-important changes in the games, ones that make this game different from the NES versions, besides the obvious graphics and music and sound effects
improvements.

Saving Feature: All games can be saved, keeping all your items and lives and putting you at the first level of the world you were on. Defeated fortresses stay ruined, while all else is back to normal. The Lost Levels even saves the level in the world you were on, so you could start out at 8-3 instead of 8-1.

World 5-7 Non-White Block: Possibly the biggest change in gameplay is in Mario 3’s World 5-7. If you go down
the Piranha Plant pipe, you’ll go to another area. On the right side of the area, where you start to climb up to go back in the second pipe, there used to be a white block, which you could duck down on and become invincible to all enemies for some time. It’s not white anymore. The same may be true for World 3-9’s
White Block, World 1-1’s White Block, and World 7-8’s White Block as well. World 1-3’s important White Block (the Whistle one) is still white.

Desert Hill: All of the names of the worlds except for Grass Land are different in the Mario 3 ending scene.

DK Jr.?: All of the creatures kings have been turned into are different, all being characters from other Mario
games.

There are other numerous, unimportant changes, like Toad Houses being quicker to get through as you don’t have to wait for the whole message to be read before moving. Also Mario or Luigi flashes the peace sign after Mario 1 and Lost Levels wins while entering the castle, and the coin rooms in Mario 1 have new music and a Mario peace sign in the background. But let’s get back to business, with the last three categories being general.

Replayability: ****

How can’t I give it this rating? It’s got four games waiting to be played, and four save slots each, meaning
you can try a different way at beating the game every time. Try the P Wing trick in Bowser’s Castle in Mario
3 yet? Beat Bowser with hammers in Mario 3 yet? Have you beaten Mario 3 without gaining a single coin? Have you beaten Bowser with no time left in The Lost Levels for maximum points? Have you made it to World 9 in The Lost Levels? Interesting scenarios, to be sure, ones that will require more time, but all just for fun, which brings us to...

Fun Factor!: ****

Well, what did you expect? If Mario 3 got this rating in the earlier Comparison, then how couldn’t the whole
game? It’s so much fun, even for someone who’s beaten it so many times. Those of you who have a SNES need to buy this game, or you’re not having any fun at all. That brings us to...

OVERALL: ****

The best game ever. Need I say more?

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