and so the story begins,
the birth of remakes -
how I hate remakes
Additional Comments:
First things first, I seriously did not expect another Mario Christmas, but here it is - another Christmas Mario. I decided, very last minute mind you, to clutch out some sort of Mario game. Not exactly my first pick but for the sake of traditions, I knew Super Mario All-Stars was something I could pound through relatively quick, until I realized what I was dealing with and then I began second guessing myself. As Christmas Eve entered the wee hours of the night and I was still pushing through Super Mario Bros. 2, I wondered if I could seriously manage to complete the game while still dealing with, you know, holiday related nonsense - though fortunately for me, and for the sake of Beat All Games, I have very little holiday nonsense I have to deal with these days.
Now on to more serious stuff. Super Mario All-Stars more or less birthed the now shitty tradition of Nintendo and countless other companies rehashing the same material over and over again in the form of remakes instead of coming up with an original thought. Doesn't even have to be an original thought outside of the franchise - keep pumping out Mario games. However, back in the 16-bit era, Super Mario All-Stars was a thing of wonder. We suddenly got to see our 8-bit favorites jump from four color mediocrity to brilliant flash. I remember the first time I beheld Super Mario Bros. with cool new backgrounds, but it turned out to be a passing fad.
To this day, I still like the 16-bit backgrounds that breathed new life into all the levels, but the games lost their charm. Both Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 2j lost their originality and now feel like bad hacks even though they're the original games. Of course, the physics tweaks don't help, but I'll touch on that a bit later. At the time, for sure, the games felt fresh in their new clothes, but over time, I've come to realize Super Mario All-Stars is a poor recreation of the original games. It's the same problem every remake faces, be it games, movies, whatever. Remakes fail no matter what. There are few if any remakes that I have ever felt worked. As far as games go, I don't believe there's a single remake that works. Every remake I've ever played has either been trash or completely unnecessary. They're proof positive that they exist simply for cash. The whole concept depresses me just thinking about it.
But the thing is, when Super Mario All-Stars first came out, I believed in the game, probably not as much as others because I still felt very attached to the NES originals save SMB2j since the game was practically an unknown up until that point in the west. Of course, I was a kid at the time, but I think part of my buy in to the game was because everyone else was bought into it as well, and why like bland 8-bit scenes when we could appreciate these vibrant new palettes? Except, deep inside, I felt like the game was a swindle. Apart from SMB2j, I quickly saw that the game had little to no merit.
Granted, I never owned the game as a kid, but I distinctly remember renting it one time, checking out the updates in each game, spouting child-like rage at SMB2j and then never having the desire to play it again. To me, Super Mario Bros 2j was interesting, but total garbage, not to mention ridiculously difficult, and the rest of the game? Well, I preferred my good old NES carts hands down. To this day, I still prefer my NES carts. If ever I wish to play an NES Mario game, Super Mario All-Stars isn't even remotely an option, because it's nothing more than designer fad.
It's disappointing to talk down about a set of Mario games; the original quartet of Mario games at that. Albeit, SMB2j is a shit game, and SMB2 is questionable at best in terms of Mario-ness, it's still a great platfomer, but SMB and SMB3 are fantastic classics. SMB3 especially, for me, is a top game that can easily outclass most any video game. Fortunately, the SMB3 remake is steeped in relative sameness and only endures graphical enhancements. Though I will say, the king transformations, while cool to see nods to other SMB titles, are a total disappointment. The original transformations are so superior. I mean, come on, a seal flipping his crown around on his nose, and now we have...what? A random SMB2 nobody, a discolored Dino Rhino or a Yoshi with a fat lip? It's the same issue all over again - the utter removal of everything that made the original so quaint and endearing. It's bullshit!
A lot of that, I admit, can be argued as personal qualms over artwork and general distaste towards remakes. Ok. But let's dig a little deeper. Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 2j are a total joke. It's been a few years since I played the original SMB, so perhaps I'm a little rusty, though I played SMB2j a year ago so.... Plus, I've been spending a good amount of time on Super Mario Maker where the general physics have been tightened up across the board so there's a good chance my baseline for Mario physics is greatly skewed in error. However, these two games feel completely wrong. There's a strange meshing of loose physics with stiff rigidity. I can't fully explain it. The much hated ice like physics of Mario is there, but somehow Mario's become prone to wooden awkwardness. I've never felt more uncomfortable controlling Mario. It's like playing a third rate platformer that never garnered any popularity thanks to how awful it plays. I don't get it either. Why did they fiddle with the physics? Thing is, I don't recall this ever being an issue when I was young, and perhaps it was because as a kid, I could easily be fooled. We had no internet to verify our suspicions. Without A/B'ing a game on the spot, shady physics doctoring was all just hearsay. I had both an NES and an SNES, so I suppose I could have tried way back when, but there was no suspicion to begin with because we were so entranced by the new beauty of the Mushroom Kingdom. Dirty tricks were the only thing at play, and we missed it.
Super Mario Bros. 2 and Super Mario Bros. 3 don't really suffer the same effect. In fact, I'd go out on a limb and say the physics are pretty much dead on, except SMB2 did feel a tad sloppy. I don't think such was the case, and it may have been my negative impressions from the first two games playing tricks on me, but it is a possibility. SMB3, however, did show off a bit of the darker side when it came to question blocks, bricks, and the like. Much like SMB/SMB2j, SMB3 suffered from this weird block repulsion that appeared to affect general momentum. As a result, I played most of the game as small Mario - placing precedence on momentum over power-ups. Honestly, the levels played faster and easier this way. The repulsion effect, which basically repels Mario at an incredible downward speed after hitting a block, would completely break my rhythm. This isn't the first time I've seen the effect as I'm familiar with it from my SMW hacking days. I remember coding custom blocks and dealing with this exact issue if I forgot to insert a bit of code that would affect Mario's y speed.
All in all, the game is a joke. I recall enjoying it for what it was as a kid, but always having reservations about it over the years. Even when friends would bring it up in conversation as a great collection that existed on the SNES and how it improved the original games, I'd nod in agreement and offer my praises for including SMB2j, despite hating that game, and the wonderful graphical overhaul each game received - namely Super Mario Bros. It felt wrong to criticize the game not only because it's Mario, but because it was a statement by Nintendo saying they not only respect their roots, but wished to give them a dazzling new set of clothes and set 'em loose upon the 16-bit generation in style. But now, I'll criticize the hell out of the game. It's something that should have never existed. They should have sat on the games and then released them as a collection - not as remakes, but as a collection somewhere down the road, like on the GameCube, like they did with the Zelda games. It's the only acceptable form. Instead, they fucked up four perfectly good games, well, three good games.
And with the SNES sound font, the music is not even worth looking into despite it all being classic video game tunes. I especially hated the sound effects used in these games as it made the whole game sound artificial, almost plastic. Everything has a solid thonk instead of a nice squish. It's wrong. It's more than wrong. This whole game is an egregious mess and Nintendo should be fucking ashamed they ever released it and tricked all of us gullible nitwits into thinking they vastly improved the original gems which were fucking perfect as they were. Fuck you, Nintendo, and fuck remakes!!! What a shitty Christmas....
Rating: 1 giant Bowser portrait out of 5
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