At the end of this week, on September 18, 2020, to be exact, Super Mario 3D All-Stars will be released on Nintendo Switch. It feels a little strange since Mario fans were waiting months for Nintendo to officially announce the collection, followed by just a two-week wait between that announcement and its release. The buzz surrounding its release proves that gamers old and new are eager to play the three classics included in 3D All-Stars despite its lofty price and limited availability.
Super Mario 3D All-Stars will retail at $59.99. Not only that, but Nintendo has also revealed it will be subject to a limited release. Once March 31, 2021 rolls around, which will be here quicker than you think, that’s it. New copies of the game will no longer be sold and anyone who missed out will have missed out forever. This is a tactic used by Disney that people aren’t too happy about Nintendo employing here.
Are They Really Even Remasters At All?
Now, $59.99 is a lot of money for any game, let alone one that has required minimal effort from Nintendo. Some have labeled the versions of Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Galaxy that will be a part of the collection as remasters. However, they haven’t really been changed, altered, or improved upon. The trio of titles will run and look a little smoother and have been altered to better fit the resolution of a Switch, but that’s pretty much it.
When compared to other remastered collections from different developers, it really does make Nintendo look pretty bad. The Crash Bandicoot N’Sane Trilogy, for example. In 2017, Vicarious Visions completely remastered the first three Crash games and released them as part of a collection on current-gen platforms. The games weren’t just tweaked, they were rebuilt from the ground up. It felt like playing brand new games in some ways but didn’t sacrifice any of the nostalgia needed to fuel its sales.
Toys for Bob did the same via the Spyro Reignited Trilogy the following year, and both trilogies were published by Activision. Aside from the amount of hard work that went into both of these collections, the key point here is the price. Both hit the market at a very reasonable $39.99. That’s right, a full $20 less for a collection of games that required a lot more work to bring together and re-release on modern-day consoles than 3D All-Stars.
Nobody Cares, TheGamer. Nobody Cares.
The takeaway from all of this is that 35 years on from his first appearance, Mario still sells. He is the most iconic video game character of all time and probably always will be. Throw that plumber’s face on something and people are going to buy it. Bring a collection of three of his best games from across three consoles together in the present day, and it would seem that $60 isn’t much to ask for, at least not for most people.
