Since I wrote 2 extensive posts analyzing the level design o’ Super Mario 64 & Super Mario Sunshine ( not planning on doing the Galaxy games, tho — & I wouldn’t be wasting money on this remake if I were, anyway, since I still have my Wii copies ), it makes sense that I would write ’bout this topic.
I have mixed feelings ’bout this remake remaster port cheap emulator & roms worse than what pirates offer. I remember I had 2nd thoughts while working on my analyses o’ Super Mario 64 & Super Mario Sunshine, since I had read the leaked rumors ’bout 3D Mario “remasters” earlier this year & wondered if I perhaps should’ve waited to play these remasters; howe’er, I was skeptical o’ these rumors @ the time & decided that it’d still be better to play thru the originals in their entirety & maybe after the “remasters” come out unwisely waste e’en more o’ my short time going o’er those & comparing & contrasting. Interestingly, I remember my skepticism was ’cause I doubted Nintendo could put out good remasters in such short time & thought that, @ best, the rumors would be that Nintendo would just release Virtual-Console-style ports — ’cept I expected them to be much cheaper. Since it turned out that I was right, it turned out my fears were unfounded & I, thankfully, ne’er have to play Super Mario Sunshine ’gain & deal with its dumb ass “challenges” o’ waiting on boats & ramming watermelons into walls for several minutes. On the other hand, it would’ve been nice to see Super Mario 64 fixed up, as it definitely needs it, & to see if Nintendo could make Super Mario Sunshine not a buggy, sloppy mess anymo’.
I’m probably the only person as mixed ’bout this release, as everyone else is either mindlessly excited or deeply troubled by the caveats that Nintendo pointlessly added to this release, like their scummy use o’ limited release to create “fear o’ missing out” & pressure gamers, who are notorious for their lack o’ self-control & wise financial practices ( but are oft well-paid, despite this incompetence ). I think the reason is that, as I’ve hinted or said outright in some o’ my analyses, I don’t think the 3D Mario games were all that great the begin with. Super Mario 64 was revolutionary for its time, but has aged poorly; Super Mario Sunshine is just flat-out badly designed & is such a mix o’ low ambition & sloppy, amateur mistakes in terms o’ bugs that it should make such a AAA company like Nintendo blush; & Super Mario Galaxy was essentially the McDonald’s o’ video games — good for a quick, mindless play, but derivative & quite sloppily-designed, as well. There are plenty o’ 3D platformers that are better than the latter 2, including Banjo-Kazooie, the original Spyro trilogy, &, hell, e’en Donkey Kong 64, which was a’least ambitious while being sloppy & incompetent, as opposed to Sunshine & Galaxy which were sloppy & incompetent while just copying Super Mario 64 & failing to understand what made that game work in the 1st place. Hell, e’en Super Mario 3D Land & Super Mario 3D World are better, since they a’least understood how to handle straightforward platforming correctly, while Super Mario Sunshine kind o’ butchered explorative platforming & Super Mario Galaxy couldn’t figure out whether it wanted to be an explorative or straightforward platformer & opted to half-heartedly do both @ the same time.1
The comparison to the Spyro trilogy is fitting, as those games received full remasters a year or so ago, all for $40, with some o’ the most gorgeous graphics there are so far. Now, granted, in my recent playthrus o’ the games I’ve found that these games haven’t aged super well, either, — I would probably rank them all lower than, say, Super Mario 64 or Banjo-Kazooie — & I felt bad ’bout buying this remake, as I feel I was just feeding this remake/rehashing obsession that is starving the artistic world o’ new ideas2. So you can imagine how Super Mario 3D All-Stars has crossed the line into definite no-buy. Still, it’s hard not to be embarrassed to see Nintendo, who were once the greatest game publisher in the world, get their asses kicked by some nobodies called “Games for Bob” & fucking Activision.
Some people may brag that this is a great business decision on Nintendo’s part, & they’re right; but Nintendo fans should realize that this great business decision, like many great business decisions, came @ the loss o’ Nintendo’s dignity & reputation. Perhaps Nintendo has no reason to care ’bout this, but people who invest so much o’ their life dedicated to this corporate god o’ theirs should, as the only thing mo’ pathetic than worshipping a faceless corporation is worshipping a faceless corporation that makes crap now. Granted, Nintendo’s been making crap for the past few decades, as one can see from modern Mario & Zelda games & pretty much every home console since the Super Nintendo, including the Switch, which is so bad, Nintendo was sued o’er its crappiness.
I should point out that, from what I’ve seen, the ports look worse to me than probably to others. While people try to give Nintendo the most pathetic o’ “you tried” trophies for their higher-resolution UI elements in Super Mario 64, while not improving any o’ the other textures, I think having a mix o’ high-resolution & low-resolution textures looks mo’ jarring & cheaper than just sticking to consistently low-resolution textures. I’m also very doubtful that Super Mario 64 will play well on the Switch. The Switch has o’er-sensitive control sticks that make slight nudges negligibly different from full yanks, making everything in every Switch game feel slippery. I don’t know why they would make them that way, as it renders useless the whole point o’ having control sticks with different levels o’ force you can apply, but the N64 & GameCube didn’t have this problem. The Wii-U control sticks were the same, & I played the Super Mario 64 Virtual Console port, which feels way too slippery ’cause o’ that, so I have li’l reason to expect different from the Switch’s version. Not to be that guy, but you truly have to play Super Mario 64 with the original N64 controller to make it not feel like ass. I still think buying a used N64 & Super Mario 64 would be a better deal than this remake, e’en if it comes close in price, since the other games aren’t worth much, anyway.
What makes this remake’s timing e’en worse is that it came out so soon after the unauthorized release o’ the disassembly o’ Super Mario 64 into C code ( made easier thanks to Nintendo’s incompetent failure to apply optimizations on their C compiler, which caused slowdown in areas, such as “Dire, Dire Docks”, where there wouldn’t be with the optimizations ) & the proliferation o’ ports ( including a PC port, which I regret not using when I made my analysis o’ Super Mario 64’s level design, as I could’ve had widescreen screenshots ) for just ’bout every system & mods — including the switch already. Nintendo fans had beaten Nintendo’s own port months ago. These ports have many extra mods, including texture upgrades, that you could only dream o’ getting in the “official” release.
This leads us to a particular anomaly: here we see superior versions o’ works made for free that are forced into the underground — effectively censored — ’cause they were not “officially” sanctioned by the “owner”, while only the mo’ imperfect product is legally allowed to be bought & used. ¿Does this not go gainst both our artistic & economic goals to encourage efficiency, to encourage the production o’ the best products? & yet here the law is outright preventing the best work o’ art from succeeding — trying to prevent it from existing. But someone well-versed in economics could easily find the answer: the cause is a monopoly — to be specific, a government-sanctioned monopoly known as “copyright”. ’Cause Nintendo owns the game, they don’t have to compete in making the best version; they only need to legally outlaw any competitors.
Thus, rather than creating an environment where works are refined to their best, most consumer-pleasing version, consumers are left with nothing but imperfect versions competing with each other, as the only way to compete with an imperfect work o’ art is not to refine it, as would be the rational way to make it better, but to make a completely different work that trades imperfections for other imperfections. This is also inefficient in that it forces people to “reinvent the wheel” & recreate art slightly different to avoid being struck down by the government rather than work on the parts that need to be improved. Hence why we have such absurd bootlegs like Yooka-Layley, rather than a new Banjo-Kazooie game. ’Course, programmers who are familiar with how open-source software would recognize this all too well: it’s the same reason why proprietary Windows & OSX users have to tolerate the quirks in those OSes while copyright-free Linux users can change anything they don’t like ’bout their OS or download from the variety o’ competing options.
’Course, pointing out the simple fact that, yes, copyright has elements that are simply bad for the world o’ art & the economy, would enrage ( which is odd, since it’s not as if we’re @ risk o’ the law changing, so they should be feeling very safe ) worshippers o’ their favorite corporate gods, who have produced much propaganda in defense o’ copyright, much o’ which is inaccurate3, but which has nontheless latched into people’s minds. This is probably ’cause the extreme version o’ copyright that currently exists in the US doesn’t have much to stand on, logically: e’en economists, who tend to be pro-ownership, can’t keep themselves from cynically calling it the “Mickey Mouse law”. After all, while one could maybe argue that if Nintendo didn’t hold a monopoly on a new game they make, they wouldn’t be able to make money & continue funding development o’ new games ( tho this makes one wonder how so much great open-source software was funded ), ¿will Nintendo fans be so delusional to argue that Nintendo could not produce games if they couldn’t keep gouging people for games they had already spent their money making decades ago? ¿Were artists not perfectly able to make a living creating art with only 14 years to profit off a work o’ art centuries ago? ¿Why do owners suddenly need mo’ than 90 years now?
Still, I’m less angry than some people, not only ’cause these games aren’t that good to begin with, but also ’cause Nintendo’s attempt to sell this game in a corrupt way is so self-defeating, I can only laugh, & that ungenerous part o’ me kind o’ thinks that the people who fall for it are so dumb, perhaps the world is better with them having less money. For instance, I might be mo’ horrified by Nintendo trying to exploit “fear o’ missing out” if we weren’t talking ’bout decades-ol’ games that people have already missed out on. & while Super Mario 64 was revolutionary for its time, Super Mario Sunshine & Galaxy’s impact on the industry is minimal. The only game I can think o’ that Sunshine influenced was some indie game called A Hat in Time, & the only game I can think o’ that Galaxy influenced were bootlegs, like the illustrious DuLuDuBi Star. The truth is, when these games came out the rest o’ the industry had far mo’ interesting games to pay attention to, like Grand Theft Auto, Halo, & Resident Evil in 2002 or… Actually, looking it up, it seems 2007 was a very dry year, as well as 2006. In hindsight, I’m no longer so sorry that my poverty made me miss out on the newest games in the late 2000s — it seems they were mostly crap, anyway. Anyway, I can bet almost anyone who hasn’t played these 2 games hasn’t played other games that are far mo’ significant & better.
In fact, I would go far ’nough to say that while Nintendo is gouging players for these half-assed ports o’ rather half-assed games, they slipped thru much better games for close-to-free ( well, so long as you’re already paying for Nintendo Online ): the original Super Mario All-Stars. My recent playthru o’ the 3D Mario games ( I played Super Mario Galaxy 1 & 2 round the end o’ 2017, so it wasn’t that long ago ), I’ve come to the conclusion that they’re not nearly as good as the classic 2D Mario games. While 64 hasn’t aged well & Sunshine & Galaxy weren’t that great when they 1st came out, the original Super Mario Bros. & Super Mario Bros. 3 are still excellent & make me remember after decades o’ mediocre Mario games how Mario came to fame in the 1st place.
Also, it’s not as if Nintendo’s the only company in the world to o’erprice outdated work simply ’cause it has a well-known brand’s face on it: Apple’s been gouging people on computers with outdated specs fore’er. I could e’en see someone who is rich ’nough that they can’t be bothered to care that they’re o’erpaying paying $60 to try these games. Hell, I wasted $50 on that new Zelda game wherein you just wander thru empty forests, fight the same generic fantasy monsters with sticks, & wait every few minutes for Link to catch his fucking breath ( I guess that’s where it got its name ); compared to that ol’ games that are a’least actual games & not inferior simulations o’ wandering thru the local forest looks pretty good.
What makes me truly feel bummed out ’bout this release is how excited everyone is ’bout it & how much it reveals how li’l standards & self-respect video game fans have — admittedly not a new epiphany, since “gamers” have been flaunting their cultural & general intellectual paucity ( as well as corporate servility ) for decades; I mean, we’re talking ’bout a demographic with such fragile egos that they feel the need to give themselves the label “gamers”, as opposed to fans o’ any other art medium, who don’t embarrass themselves so. Immediately after I had read ’bout the Nintendo Direct ( the only time I have e’er given a shit ’bout these corporate advertisements, since, as mentioned earlier, I had an actual interest in these remakes beforehand ), my YouTube recommendations — as recommended by the robotic equivalent o’ that friend 1000 IQ points lower than you who thinks quoting ol’ video games is funny & whom you wonder why you e’er associate with them in the 1st place — was inundated with the most embarrassing selection o’ videos o’ corporate fellatio ( if you want proof that capitalism has usurped Christianity as the dominant religion in the west for the moronic masses, just gaze ’pon the zeal o’ worship so many people cast ’pon their divine made-up legal entities — while these same hypocrites who demand that video games be respected as art have so li’l respect for the actual flesh-&-blood artists who did the actual work that they could probably ne’er name a single programmer if their lives depended on it ), accompanied by thumbnails with bearded young white male #13892 mugging the camera with some wacky expression.
’Cause I’m drunk & surly, I’m going to spend the rest o’ this article breaching online etiquette & make fun o’ these goons:
For instance, the 1st video I found was titled “Nintendo Just Won 2020 With their Mario 35th Anniversary Direct”, whate’er that’s s’posed to mean — I guess that Nintendo’s better than rival game development companies. Keep in mind that this is the same year Sony & Microsoft are releasing new consoles. I haven’t played a Sony console in decades & probably haven’t played a Microsoft console e’er4; but e’en I have to admit that if you think new consoles by Sony & Microsoft are less impressive than half-assed ports o’ ol’ games, you must have drunk the Nintendo Kool-Aid & have given up all independent, critical thought. Imagine how sad it would be that you think regurgitating out shit Nintendo made decades ago is the best thing o’ 2020. If I thought this rehash was 1 o’ the best things video games had to offer, I would just dislike video games, period.
& I don’t know why YouTube keeps recommending me videos o’ Grover from Sesame Street talking ’bout Mario games, but he’s apparently obsessed with Paper Mario. Well, now he’s talking ’bout Super Mario 3D All-Stars with a video titled “The Mariosplosion Was REAL”. The only explosion I saw was Nintendo shitting themselves in the pants, & then offering their fans to buy it for $60, which they gladly did — proof that Austrian-schoolers’ “mud pie” argument gainst the labor theory o’ value is backward, as only in a capitalist society could you succeed by selling people mud pies.
Amusingly, IGN, 1 o’ those sites who throws 10s like candy5, is being surprisingly nitpicky, with its title, “Super Mario 3D All-Stars: Mario 64 Speedruns Won’t Be Nearly As Fast”. O’ all the problems a remake could have, “speedrunners can’t exploit a glitch anymo’” is far down the list o’ relevance. Usually people praise companies for fixing bugs, not criticize them for failing to leave them in.
Perhaps the silliest video is the video by Nintendo’s own channel called “We Played Super Mario 3D All-Stars!”. No shit you played it, dipshits — you made it.
Our next video features a gamer dude so generic he’s wearing a Star Wars baseball cap. This as well as his very creating channel name, “Geeks + Gamers”, let’s you, fellow gamers &/or geeks know that he is, also, what you humans call “gamers” & “geeks”. He doesn’t show his face, howe’er, as he’s facepalming next to the title, “People Are Still Complaining About Nintendo Despite Super Mario 3D All Stars Announcement”. ¿Can you believe that the peasants have the audacity to criticize our great Lord & Savior Nintendo, e’en tho they gifted us with 3 games they already made decades ago ( 2 o’ which were ne’er that great, e’en for their time ), when they should be bowing down & giving themselves up to the sheer sacrifice Nintendo’s stockholders have done to sell fanboys 3 half-assed ports @ an inflated price that are worse than what fan hackers have made for free?
Gainst all good reasoning, I took the time to watch the video & had to laugh near the beginning when I heard him say that, “[T]ime has been very good to Super Mario Sunshine”. Yes, time has been good to that game where I just randomly clip thru floors, blue coins clip thru walls, Mario randomly spazzes out while on ledges, minigames handle failure in inconsistent ways, cutscenes have Mario in 2 places @ once & 1 cutscene has Peach with her own eyeballs as earrings, — & those are just the unquestionable bugs, much less the mo’ subjective sloppy level design — says man who has clearly only read other fawning praise o’ the game & has ne’er played it himself.
His whines are nothing mo’ than that Nintendo has made limited releases before, so that means it’s OK now. Give this man an A+ in philosophy. Personally, I couldn’t care ’less that this is limited release, since it’s not worth the price it costs @ any time. I would love to hear someone give a reason why it’s a good idea. Granted, as someone who has actually studied economics watched that Jim Sterling video where he complains ’bout this game’s limited release & knows such concepts as “false scarcity” & “FOMO”, I know all too well why it’s a good reason for Nintendo’s wallet & a bad reason for consumers — which is why smart consumers will avoid buying this garbage, thereby pressuring corrupt businesses like Nintendo to either stop being corrupt or go out o’ business. ’Course, pro-market economists are wrong that consumers in market economies are smart, so I expect to see plenty o’ idiots gladly throw their money ’way to corrupt corporations, thereby causing scam artists to flourish — ¡just like how these scummy YouTube channels thrive on their cheap clickbait titles! It’s like that joke from The Simpsons wherein Lisa does that experiment on a hamster & on Bart, but with Bart replaced with gamers: while the mouse learns to stop trying to eat the electrified cheese, gamers while go after that electrified muffin time & time ’gain.
& then we have a billion videos by GameXplain & Nintendo Prime. Nintendo Prime I am almost certain are paid shills, with their switch giveaways & pathetic jabs gainst Sony as if Nintendo Life are elementary schoolers still babbling that “Nintendo Does What Genesisn’t”.
Like “Gamers + Geeks” ( who, now that I think ’bout it, is probably also a shill, since certainly no genuine fan would be so generic ), or whate’er that clown called himself, the 1st video I found from them was 1 wherein they whine ’bout the existence o’ people who s’posedly don’t like this remake. Hilariously, the pinned comment o’ the video is Nintendo Prime admitting that they utterly fucked up understanding what the original Super Mario All-Stars was: they claim in the video that ’twas just ports o’ the original NES games, rather than remakes with totally new graphics &, in the case o’ Super Mario Bros., completely reprogrammed from the ground up ( not for artistic reasons, but ’cause Nintendo lost the original source code6 ).
But my favorite argument by Nintendo Life is in a comment farther below, wherein they demonstrate that they completely fail to understand what reviewing is:
However, that doesn’t change what this is, factually. It’s a collection pack, and it should be judged for what it actually is, rather than what you would rather wish it was. That’s where I have an impasse with some reviewers, they are knocking it for not being something else entirely rather than just judging it purely based on it being a collection pack.
Critiquing a work is nothing mo’ than comparing a work to what is expected o’ it & evaluating whether or not it has met or exceeded those expectations. If we take this argument to its logical conclusion, reviewers should just rank any work o’ art with the binary “good” for being what it is, while with this philosophy it’d be impossible to rank a work as “bad”, as “bad” would be defined as a work not being what it is, which is a paradox. “Yes, Bubsy 3D is ugly, sounds like the computer is constantly burping, & has cumbersome controls; but people need to respect Bubsy 3D as a game that is ugly, sounds like the computer is constantly burping, & has cumbersome controls, rather than judge is based on what it is not, a game that looks good, has music a sane human would find pleasing, & actually responds to your button presses in a way any reasonable person would expect”.
& most people I’ve seen do judge this game as a collection pack: they judge it as a bad example o’ 1 that’s beyond the normal market price o’ collections. They also judge it’s price as the outcome not o’ a fair market, but o’ false scarcity & monopolistic behavior.
’Course, we couldn’t have clickbait without a li’l bait-&-switch title that hints @ an audacious claim that is obviously wrong, & Nintendo Life dutifully delivers that with their “Super Mario Galaxy 2 Teased By Nintendo for 3D All-Stars”. In the top pinned comment, ’course, they admit that they think the chance o’ Galaxy 2 being released as DLC is “20%”. What formula they used to calculate that seemingly arbitrary chance is a mystery.
But the most horrifying video Nintendo Life unleashed on us is this 1 titled “That Mario Nintendo Direct Was Superb (If Predictable) – Super Mario 3D All Stars” showing bearded man with creepy jack-off face while the somewhat less horrifying Super Mario 64 Mario face with its crusty polygonal eyelids gazes @ the viewer like a banshee. All this surrounded by the big, bold text, “A SUPER MARIO DIRECT ACTUALLY HAPPENED”. ¡Holy shit! ¡A glorified advertisement… for a Mario game? ¡Such an event happens only in a blue moon!
GameXplain is a bit less clickbaitty ( just a li’l, tho ) & a li’l mo’ obsessive, offering dozens o’ videos obsessing o’er the different title screens & menus & the version differences for the opening cutscene in Super Mario Sunshine, which GameXplain themselves admit is pointless, since the Switch version is using a crappy, compressed video from Twitter that looks worse than the GameCube version ( also, spoilers: in the Switch version Mario is still in the clip o’ Bianco Hills they watch in the airplane, before they 1st take foot on Bianco Hills, just like those Superfriends episodes wherein Aquaman joins the others in going out to rescue Aquaman ).
They don’t offer any analysis, which would require some intelligence on their part, but just show every clip they can find. It’s 1 thing when fans obsess o’er footage from an upcoming game in development; but this is shit we’ve had for decades. & it doesn’t look any better. It’s the same shit. ¿What kind o’ neurotic fucking idiots get obsessed o’er ol’ shit being released with a few textures looking slightly less blurry?
That’s not to say that GameXplain doesn’t have clickbait, such as the blatantly false “Super Mario 3D All-Stars Go Beyond “Simple” Ports – Here’s the Evidence!”. People have already looked into the game & found that Super Mario 64 & Super Mario Sunshine are emulated ( Galaxy’s main code is recompiled to native Switch, but GPU & audio are emulated, for some reason ). This reminds me o’ when Polygon so slovenly asserted that the models in those new Pokémon games were totally not rips from the 3DS games ’cause the developers said so as if they were the New York Times parroting the US military, only for many hackers to actually compare the models & prove that the models are so similar that if they weren’t ripped, the developers wasted their time plagiarizing their own work. But one should ne’er let reality get in the way o’ one’s mindless worship o’ their favorite corporations.
As expected, this video has a huge pinned comment by GameXplain wherein they try to move the goal posts by redefining “emulated” as “not done by Nintendo”, making this an ad hoc argument, since the whole argument is whether Nintendo’s doing better than unofficial sources ( which GameXplain for some reason calls “public domain”, which is inaccurate, since they involve copyrighted material ). GameXplain actually shows mo’ ignorance regarding the “public domain” work than 3D All-Stars ( which is no surprise, since there’s no money in it for GameXplain to shill for nobody hackers ). For instance, they claim that Galaxy’s recompiled source code is something “you wouldn’t see in the public domain”, e’en tho recently hackers were able to disassemble Super Mario 64 into C code, allowing it to be recompiled into many different ports without any form o’ emulation — a case wherein, bizarrely, the hackers have mo’ resources than Nintendo themselves, since Nintendo did have to emulate it. GameXplain also claims that Nintendo was able to update textures from sources that only they had, which has 2 problems: looking @ the video, only a tiny minority o’ the textures are improved ( which, as I said, looks worse than if none o’ the textures were changed ), so they clearly didn’t keep most o’ them ( which is no surprise: the fact that Nintendo had to emulate Super Mario 64 implies that they lost its source code ). But this is also untrue as many o’ the textures were stock, which hackers have been able to find, such as the backdrop to “Wet-Dry World”, not to mention how fans have been able to make all-new custom high-definition textures for the whole game ( which, granted, are mixed in quality to the point o’ uncanny valley — that Peach, uh… needs a bit mo’ work ).
But these videos can’t compete with Metacritic in terms o’ gallons o’ jism being flung on you like Nickelodeon slime by so many “critics” stroking Nintendo’s long, hairy dick. Granted, now’s an unfair time to do this: the only reviews out are by critics given advance copies by Nintendo in return for giving Nintendo easy high scores — which is to say that none o’ these “critics” have any credibility, anyway. Luckily, Metacritic has no standards for whom they count as a “critic”, so we don’t have to miss out on the sugary cum.
For instance, Cubed3, a website I’ve ne’er heard o’ with such bad web design that I think it’s being run by a Russian who has ne’er played a video game before, starts by praising Nintendo for doing “the utterly expected”, as opposed to doing what was just expected. ¡This was utterly done! Unfortunately, if I complained ’bout every way this writer twisted the English language into the equivalent experience o’ eating scorpion tails, we would end up with a section longer than the review itself. Let me just point out that this wordsmith called the game the switch’s “rectangle of delight”. This is why critics should stick to just mentioning important elements in the game & analyzing how they effect the experience o’ the game — you know, what readers came for — rather than subject them to their shitty attempts @ poetry.
I must admit I almost missed how idiotic the opening line is: “Why are you looking at this? Go and play Super Mario 3D All-Stars now!”. This review came out before the game was released — your readers can’t play it yet. I don’t think you could find any better proof that this reviewer didn’t put an ounce o’ thought into what they were writing.
I’m most amazed that this review is only a few paragraphs, but still wastes its time saying the same things, such as asserting in as many ways you can that you should buy this game, while barely analyzing the game itself. This reviewer, who has apparently ne’er played any other game in the universe, is astounded that Nintendo put so much sweat & blood into making an opening FMV. No other video game has e’er accomplished such a feat. Clearly Super Mario 3D All-Stars is the real Schindler’s List o’ video games.
Also, this:
Menus are bright and filled with titbits [ sic ] that any information-hungry fan is going to lap up and appreciate every time they start up one of the three titles included. [ Emphasis mine ]
@ 1st I was going to make fun o’ how this reviewer apparently has ne’er heard o’ Mario Wiki or thinks their audience is too dumb to have heard o’ it ( considering what that audience is willing to read, that’s a fair assumption ); but then I noticed that typo & realized why Mario fans are so excited now. As they say, “sex sells”.
A lovely addition that nobody would hold against Nintendo leaving out of the package is the addition of each soundtrack.
Nobody would hold it gainst them ’cause you can find this music on YouTube & this is the stupidest way to deliver music to people. Nobody’s going to be lugging their fucking Switch round like a boom box just to hear Mario music. If Nintendo wanted to actually be useful, they would’ve just given buyers FLACs they could put on their phones or music players ( or hell, put it on Spotify — ¿why don’t game companies try to make a deal with streaming services so they can make extra money off their soundtracks rather than do nothing & watch as game fans just upload their music to YouTube for free? ) — you know, how real human beings listen to music.
After admitting that they got lost choosing ’mong the jungle o’ 3 whole games, — ¡that’s 1 mo’ than this reviewer has learned to count up to yet! — the reviewer offers a whole 2 paragraphs spewing cliches ’bout these games without a breath o’ real analysis. E’en then, this reviewer finds a way to waste words on irrelevant shit, like the SNES Super Mario All-Stars, ’cause this reviewer is truly hopeless @ formatting their thoughts & has ne’er graduated high school.
What’s funniest is that this reviewer goes so far in praising this remake that they outright contradict themselves in praising it, claiming that Super Mario 64 is “all represented here pixel perfectly”, when obviously it isn’t — ¡Nintendo improved some o’ the textures! Apparently this remake is so great that it has broken the laws o’ logic & is both improved & exactly the same.
’Course it wouldn’t be a bad review without getting basic facts wrong, — proof that this reviewer didn’t really play these games that are apparently God’s own golden vagina juice — claiming that in Super Mario 64 Mario “still relies on the standard hop, skip, and wahoo to get the job done”, when Mario can do many mo’ things, like punch, kick, dive, carry things, swim, grab chains & climb round them, fly… Also, Mario doesn’t skip in this game — tho if Nintendo did change it so that he did, I would bump my view o’ this remake a point or so higher.
Master these here and it becomes a lot simpler to grasp the level design and approaches for the rest of the journey through the Mario vault.
No it doesn’t, ’cause as anyone who has actually played these games knows, Super Mario 64’s level design is radically different from Sunshine’s & Galaxy’s — that’s why there are such strong arguments o’ Super Mario 64 vs. Galaxy, etc.
With its excellent level design, infinite replayability, and perfect soundtrack, it’s easy to get lost in Mario 64 for months and never want to leave.
“Infinite replayability” — that’s not ridiculous hyperbole by a reviewer with Nintendo’s cock so high up their throat it’s reaching their kidneys. This reviewer might as well claim that playing this game will cure blindness while they’re @ it. ¿& “perfect soundtrack”? Don’t get me wrong, the Bowser theme is 1 o’ the best Bowser themes e’er, & “Bob-Omb Battlefield” was such a good song that it’s e’en the best song in Galaxy 2; but we’re talking ’bout the same game with that obnoxious “Slider” song — ’cause I love my clock & rainbow castle levels sounding like a fucking hoedown.
& don’t bother going into any detail regarding said level design, since it’s not as if different people have different opinions regarding what makes certain level design bad or good — which is important to note, as despite what this reviewer thinks, Super Mario 64’s level design is actually controversial. No, I’ll just take your word for it, reviewers so unprofessional you didn’t e’en bother to get a security certificate for your website that is probably bloated with ad JavaShit.
Leave you must, however, in order to jump into one of the most unique7 platformers Mario has ever headlined…
This reviewer is talking ’bout Super Mario Sunshine, which those who have actually played it know is just Super Mario 64 but with a water pack. I can think o’ plenty o’ games with Mario in it mo’ exotic ( & just generally better ), such as Yoshi’s Island, Super Mario Bros. 2, Mario vs. Donkey Kong, Mario Pinball Land, Mario Party Advance. This is why I hate Sunshine fans: they’re like rock fans who think they’re super avant-garde ’cause they listen to Pink Floyd.
Nintendo, in its infinite wisdom, was always going to mix things up and this left many players a bit wary.
If you think Super Mario Sunshine “mixed things up”, you have clearly ne’er played a game other than Super Mario 64 & Super Mario Sunshine.
Yes, Nintendo ( a company, who are not real organisms, & thus cannot have thoughts @ all ) has “infinite wisdom” & has ne’er made a mistake — that’s why they got their asses kicked hard during the GameCube era, ’cause the people playing PlayStation 2 & Xbox were all thinking, “¡Whoa! ¡Mario with a water pack! ¡That’s too radical for me! ¡I’m going to stick with my dumb 1st-person shooter that radically redefined how 1st-person shooters play or that dumb car-theft game that redefined the open-world genre Super Mario 64 created & with which Super Mario Sunshine did nothing new”.
Having never taken the plunge first time round, owning a GameCube but getting a dungaree fix from Mario Kart: Double Dash instead, it is interesting to come at Sunshine with fresh eyes.
OK, ignoring the hilarious dangling participle implying that the abstract concept o’ “coming @” ( a very accurate malaprop — this reviewer is, indeed, cumming @ Sunshine ) Sunshine with fresh eyes played Mario Kart; ¡this person talks ’bout the history o’ Sunshine as if they’re an authority, & then admits that they didn’t e’en play it when it came out, e’en tho they had the perfect opportunity! ¿Why? Probably ’cause they didn’t want to waste their money, ’cause they knew back then deep down how crappy it was. But now that it’s hip to love the game, now they have to go out & pretend they love it like all the other drones.
Also, I tried looking up “dungaree fix” & Google just stared @ me in confusion & Duck Duck Go told me to Go Fuck Fuck myself. All I know is that dungarees are a type o’ pants.
Much like the popper trousers of the time, it now ranks as one of the biggest regrets missing out initially.
¿Why is the reviewer so obsessed with pants & can they keep their creepy fetish ’way from our discussion o’ Mario games?
It should never have been in doubt, going by the triple A standard of Nintendo, but Super Mario Sunshine is superb.
“Nintendo is defined as making good games, therefore this game that they made must be good. I have very independent thought”.
Tasked with cleaning the island of Delfino, using Mario’s new sprinkler-cum-best-friend, F.L.U.D.D., exploration is a delight.
I’m in awe @ what a mangled mess this attempt @ English was. I think my favorite part is that they call it “the island of Delfino”, rather than its actual official name.
F.L.U.D.D. brings with him a whole new traversal scheme and allows for what would easily have been the most innovative level design that had ever been seen at the time (more on how it was topped later).
Nintendo’s most innovative level design was when they put that blue coin in that random place in the water or when they put 4 blue coins on 4 underwater pillars that all look the same.
Also, your attempt @ a cliffhanger would work better if there wasn’t just 1 game left to talk ’bout. “Duh, clearly ’twas Mario Tennis for the GBC that tops it”.
After mo’ faux-poetic superlatives that do not offer concrete details & could easily be written ’bout any game, it’s so generic, which includes such amazing accomplishments as “platforming over multiple levels”, which no platformer has e’er had the technology & brilliance to achieve before this Citizen Kane o’ video gaming, the reviewer — hold on…
It all proves to be never frustrating
Not e’en Sunshine fans would say something so blatantly untrue.
and is frequently overshadowed by other outings for the digitally rendered Bob Hoskins
¿What the fuck is this s’posed to mean? ¿Does this reviewer think every other Mario game is just an adaptation to that crappy Super Mario Bros. movie? No wonder they have such a lofty view o’ Sunshine.
Interestingly, in the reviewer’s single-minded obsession to give nothing but praise for this remake, the reviewer starts bashing Galaxy 2:
The decision to leave out Super Mario Galaxy 2 was always going to raise a few eyebrows but, as mentioned, it’s arguably not as good – don’t worry, just move on.
( Note: this wasn’t mentioned before in this review ).
It’s “arguably” not as good, but we don’t need to actually bother arguing. Just move on, guys, & just accept what I say without question.
Nintendo has also taken the time to simplify the Wii controls and allow for easier planet-hopping by mapping the often-frustrating star spin to the Y button. The Joy-Con set is the control scheme of choice, however by utilising the gyroscope in the Pro Controller, Star Bit collecting mid-galaxy hop is just as comfortable with all control schemes.
So, using motion controls is frustrating, but the best way to control this game is… motion controls… but it’s just as comfortable using any control scheme.
Galaxy also has the esteemed honour of introducing easily the best female character to ever grace a Mario game, in the form of Rosalina.
Rosalina is a hurt-fic character who does jack shit ’cept warp me ’way from the level I want to go back into to collect mo’ stars so they can tell me some stupid bullshit I don’t care ’bout despite s’posedly being a god that would get you laughed out o’ any creative writing class. That’s much better than characters like Goombella or Bow, who have actual personalities & volition. Truly Nintendo’s bootleg Disney princess who does nothing is the apex o’ feminism.
By the way, I just noticed this reviewer is italicizing video game titles, something that most people don’t bother doing, tho it technically makes sense to, since that’s the recommended way to style book, movie, & TV show titles in pretty much every style guide I’ve e’er read & is what is usually taught in school. That this typo-ridden article that barely managed to accomplish coherent English sentences manages to get this pretentious detail right only confuses me mo’.
Nintendo is never going to be accused of not taking innovation to another level […]
Yes, they are: I do it all the time.
[…] but it’s here that sends the company into the outer atmosphere (excuse the pun… no, don’t actually – it was great!)
Go fuck yourself.
Every galaxy explored offers a unique challenge […]
Yes, that Bowser lava level is totally different from that other lava level.
with even groan-worthy additions like the Bee Mario Suit being used to good effect…
Wait, ¿why is the Bee Mario Suit o’ all things groan-worthy? ¿’Cause it’s annoying to use? ¿Then how is it used to good effect? By definition, if it’s groan-worthy, it has a bad effect, ’less you think groaning is — you know what, let’s just hurry up with this shit.
I am baffled that this 1 detail that I could not e’en bother to qualify as good or bad I was so apathetic to it is the 1 flaw in what is s’posedly an otherwise flawless gem. Not pachinko or those dumbass boat rides with Yoshi in Sunshine; not e’en the Spring Mario power-up, which e’en people who love Galaxy regard as uncontrollable.
After saying nothing o’ substance ’bout these 3 games they s’posedly love so much, the reviewer mentioned the “giant Goomba in the room” regarding the limited release:
In truth, if this was any other company then there is no way this would be accepted […]
That’s ’cause they people who like those companies actually have standards, unlike Nintendo fanboys, who would buy a jar o’ toenail clippings if Nintendo plastered Mario’s face on it.
[…] yet when you objectively look […]
You haven’t looked @ anything objectively, you twat.
[…] as well as really thinking about whether or not consumers are going to pick this up […]
“If it sells well, it’s good”. Most reviews are written with the goal o’ encouraging or discouraging sales, so this is some circular logic here.
It shouldn’t have happened […]
It shouldn’t have happened, but e’en people with “infinite wisdom” sometimes make mistakes.
[…] but anyone who has an interest in this collection is likely to pick it up as soon as it’s released
Imagine how stupid this argument is: anyone who is interested in games that were released decades ago will only be interested in buying them immediately after they’re re-released. I mean, sure, people have been interested in playing Super Mario 64 for 24 years; but after March 2021, nobody will e’er have any reason to want to play this game.
Just be sure to not get taken in by scammers looking to charge over-the-odds when expecting a shortage. There won’t be one.
& this has been proven to be false.
Sorry for how long that went on, but that was the worst review I have e’er read in my life — perhaps e’en worse than that review o’ a video game book wherein the reviewer just complained that the writer was fat & was sad that his grandparents died. It still astounds me that there exists… some creature as stupid as this writer. You may bring up some alt-righter who pretends the world is flat or something, but they have a cynical motive for that shit, & they actually oft do the best they can with what terrible material they decide to work with. ¿How can you do such a shitty job selling 3D Mario games? ¿Did Nintendo pay this guy? ¿Why? ¿Who would look @ this review & think it’s worth money? ¿Did this guy do this by his own volition? Then that means he was trying to be completely genuine, which means they are genuinely this stupid. ¿Was this a 12-year-ol’? ¿Why would a review by a 12-year-ol’ be on Metacritic? ¿& how would they have the sophistication to set up so many Google Ads? I genuinely have trouble believing a human like this exists & that this isn’t some social experiment I don’t comprehend.
It’s hard to top that review, but I must carry on. Our next target is a li’l mo’ professional: a newspaper called The Sydney Morning Herald.
Mario defined the rules for the era of 3D movement in games, just as he defined the rules for the previous era of 2D sidescrollers […]
Well, this is partly true: Super Mario 64 defined 3D platformers, but Sunshine & Galaxy didn’t define shit. By that point nobody gave a shit ’bout 3D platformers, & if they did, they probably took mo’ influence from Banjo-Kazooie & Rare’s games. & Grand Theft Auto III had taken leadership for open-world games a year before Sunshine came out & underwhelmed anyone who might expect a Mario game on the same level o’ quality.
[Y]ou might find them eccentric by today’s standards, but the charm, craft and imagination on display is timeless and undeniable.
If their timelessness is undeniable, then why do they look eccentric by today’s standard. This is basically a tone-deaf way o’ saying, “If you think these games haven’t aged well, fuck you, they have. So there”.
For the uninitiated, 1996’s Super Mario 64, 2002’s Super Mario Sunshine and 2007’s Super Mario Galaxy are the red-capped everyman’s first 3D adventures.
No they’re not. Technically, Super Mario 64 isn’t e’en, since Super Mario RPG was arguably 3D. Mario had many 3D “adventures” thruout the N64 era, before Sunshine came out.
In the next sentence, this professional newspaper makes a typo & spells “depsite” “despite”. Remember this next time newspapers try to brag ’bout how they’re so much better than blogs & deserve their bloated subscription fees.
Compared to the previous trainwreck, this review looks downright decent in comparison. It a’least gets the facts right, & e’en acknowledges the wonkiness in Sunshine & its rushed development & mentions the inclusion o’ elements from the obscure “Shindou” release in the Super Mario 64 port. ’Course, they could have just researched that; but it would’ve been a miracle if the previous reviewer had bothered to do any semblance o’ research. Granted, I’m confused how they could claim that Galaxy, which is probably the most repetitive o’ the trilogy, has much slower movement than Super Mario 64, & is bloated by e’en mo’ pointless, unskippable cutscenes than the others, “makes the previous games look slow and repetitive by comparison”. This game you have to 100% twice, but as a green character the 2nd time, just to complete & which expects players to do many missions a 2nd time, but with only 1 hit point the 2nd time, sure isn’t repetitive @ all.
But I think my favorite part o’ this review is the way they had to qualify their main thesis ( buried in the middle, for some reason ):
but as it stands these are the best officially available versions of three incredible games [ emphasis mine ].
E’en they can’t lie & pretend this remake hasn’t gotten its ass kicked by what fans have done.
Metro.uk.co demonstrated Newgrounds-level scoring dissonance, providing plenty o’ examples o’ how flawed this remake is while ranking it 10/10. 10/10 is “as important a cultural achievement as Citizen Kane or Ulysses”. I don’t like to insult people for liking things, but the socially-responsible part o’ me has to say that if you think Mario jumping round galaxies & collecting stars is as culturally important as Citizen Kane… well, you’re the reason nobody takes video games seriously as an art form. Their logic is that Super Mario Galaxy is so great that it by itself merits this collection a 10. Spoiler: they don’t go into any detail ’bout why this is the case, save that “the movement and controls are so crisp you can almost taste the salt and vinegar”, which doesn’t make any sense. What they don’t mention is that e’en speedrunners who constantly play Galaxy games admit that Galaxy’s controls are finicky & that the physics sometimes just outright bug out, like sometimes making you go down when you hold up.
This is in contrast to their claim that “every jump in Mario Sunshine feels like a leap of faith”, which e’en I think is hyperbole. I mean, you have a jetpack for most o’ the game: e’en if you miss a jump by an inch, just hover the rest o’ the way. O’ all the complains I had ’bout Sunshine, not being able to land on platforms was not 1 o’ them. Well, ’cept for rope on poles; but that’s just ’cause if you try to hover after you grab it, Mario does some dumbass spin-flip that serves no purpose. But that’s rare & is offset by the fact that these ropes have hit boxes so buggily generous that they just warp you on top if you get close to them.
’Course it wouldn’t be a wank-fest for Galaxy without mentioning “the patented Nintendo magic”, which is the elusive way to say, “I have irrational nostalgia for this game & have no critical reason to like it”. That’s cute if you’re just a normal person, but makes you unfit as a critic for a video game, where having critical thought & being able to actually analyze the game with concrete points is a necessity.
The closest they come to concrete examples is when they bring up rolling on a ball or a level assembling itself as you move round ( which isn’t a real gameplay gimmick, just a visual effect that’s distracting & detrimental to gameplay ), which they claim “other developers would make the basis of an entire game”. ’Cept, no, they wouldn’t, ’cause these gimmicks are lame. If they’re impressed by these, I can only imagine they would explode if they saw a game with actual creative gimmicks, like, say, Donkey Kong Country 2.
Also, this review gets some facts wrong. For instance, they claim that “That wasn’t organised in a couple of months from someone’s bedroom”, when, in fact, it has been proven that this game took only 6 months to develop.
I do have to give them credit for having spine ’nough to admit Sunshine was a shitty game.
in Mario Sunshine we rarely felt anything other than mild irritation and frustration.
In the game’s defense, I would personally add “amusement @ such bad design & programming”, but I think I just have that taste for crap that other people can’t tolerate ( as these reviews o’ bad reviews demonstrate ).
1 thing all these reviews have in common is that none o’ them actually try to prove their point with examples & are so scant with details that anyone who has ne’er played or seen these games would have no idea what kind o’ games these are. This is typical for game reviews. I remember when I considered trying out Witcher III, ’cause I heard ’twas s’posedly great, but could not find any information on what kind o’ game it is — including what its genre was ( my best guess is that it’s an RPG, which means it’s probably as fun as spending a whole day sitting by an ant hill & smashing my thumb down on each o’ the million ants that come out ). The only hint I received was that it seems to have some cliché fantasy schlock writing that would get you laughed out o’ a speculative fiction writing guild — which is to say, typical video game writing. All I’ve e’er been able to learn ’bout The Last of Us games is that its story involves people zombified by mushrooms ( basically, an idea ripped off from EarthBound, ’cept its writer was smart ’nough to realize that this is a silly idea unworthy o’ drama ). This plot you’d find in a cheap airport novel in literature is considered 1 o’ the best video games e’er written, as said by a gamer community whose idea o’ “literature” is Star Wars Expanded Universe novels. No one e’er says what the actual gameplay is. ¿I guess you shoot people? That’s ne’er been done in video games before. It’s amazing to think that video games have such huge artistic opportunities, & yet all anyone wants to do is make shooter & platformer games ’bout genre-fiction schlock or make VR shit so people can stare up anime girls’ skirts. ( Incidentally, Anime Girl VR is the next Casablanca o’ video games ).
I want to just point out that in my asides ’bout these games I have delivered mo’ concrete information ’bout these games than these reviews do. If I only knew Galaxy by what these reviewers say, I’d only know that it had “big bosses” & a woman character that some random person thinks is the best woman character written, but apparently doesn’t care ’nough ’bout them to give any details, including their fucking backstory & that this game looks beautiful in the opinion o’ the reviewers. Considering the # o’ game fans who think barren wastelands that look like everything got peed on are gorgeous next-level visuals, I wouldn’t e’en take this assertion for half a grain o’ salt.
Super Mario 3D All-Stars has already outsold all other games on Amazon, which is to say that despite gamers’ complaining, they still couldn’t keep themselves from buying it, e’en tho there’s millions o’ better games out there for cheaper, ’cause they’re just that stupid. Look forward to the 40th Mario anniversary when Nintendo sells a limited-edition disk o’ Donkey Kong that has stains on it ’cause the intern used it as a coaster for his drinks during the months before release. I can’t wait for the GameXplain videos detailing how these pixels are extra pixellated & are 2.8% mo’ saturated.
But ’cause you’ve suffered ’nough thru this longwinded article full o’ cyberbullying & soapboxing irrelevant political opinions ( ’less I cut those parts out — if so, pretend I ne’er brought it up ), I offer you some actually great YouTube videos I found on the subject:
Here we have the best summary o’ Super Mario 3D All-Stars. Just look @ what amazing comedic timing there is, with the long drawn-out pause, just the right length, & then the switch movement @ the end. That’s slapstick worthy o’ classic Tom & Jerry.
