Nintendo spent 1993 selling the same four games twice, and it worked. Super Mario All-Stars collects Super Mario Bros. (1985), Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels (1986), Super Mario Bros. 2 (1988) and Super Mario Bros. 3 (1988) onto one Super Nintendo cartridge, rebuilt with 16-bit graphics and sound.
The compilation came out of Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development after that team finished Super Mario Kart in 1992. Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto suggested the project. The pitch was simple: the NES versions were built on 8-bit hardware, and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System was not.
Four Games on One Cartridge
Each game keeps its own story and its own structure. Players still control Mario and his brother Luigi through themed worlds, collecting power-ups, avoiding obstacles and hunting secrets. The difference is what surrounds them.
The remakes add parallax scrolling, so backgrounds move at their own speed behind the action. Music and graphics are redone. Game physics are modified. Bugs from the originals are fixed. And for the first time, the cartridge saves progress, which matters when you are looking at four full games.
The updated designs draw on Super Mario World (1990). The team’s stated goal was to keep the feel of the originals while losing the limits of the hardware they were born on.
The Lost Levels Finally Cross the Ocean
The headline addition is Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels, released in Japan in 1986 as Super Mario Bros. 2. Western players had never seen it. Nintendo deemed it too difficult at the time and kept it off the NES in Western territories.
All-Stars is its first release outside Japan. The source material describes these courses as “super challenging.” The Lost Levels is the hardest thing on the cartridge, in this paper’s view, and its presence here is the strongest argument for buying a compilation of games most players already owned.
Super Mario Bros. 2, the 1988 Western release, is a different game entirely, and All-Stars includes that one too. Two games called Super Mario Bros. 2 sit on the same cartridge, from two different lineages, and the compilation never blurs them.
Battle Mode and the Save File
Super Mario Bros. 3 gets an addition the other three do not: a “battle game.” It is extra content bolted onto the strongest game in the set, and it gives two players a reason to keep the cartridge in the slot after the main courses are done.
Multiplayer and split-screen play carry over across the collection. Single-player runs are intact.
The save feature is the quiet structural change, to our mind. Four games that originally demanded you finish them in one sitting, or leave the console running, now hold their place. That single addition reshapes how the set is played. You can move between Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 3 in an evening without losing ground in either.
What Holds Up and What Doesn’t
Super Mario Bros. 3 remains the best game here, and it is not close. The battle game widens it further. Super Mario Bros. 2 (1988) is the odd one out, a game with different rules and a different feel, and the remaster does not smooth that over. It sits in the set as a curiosity rather than a centerpiece.
The Lost Levels is the reason to own this. Nintendo’s old judgment that Western players could not handle it looks worse every year, and All-Stars is where that judgment got reversed.
The physics changes are the one place the package asks for trust. Modified physics on games this well known can go wrong, and the source material does not say how far the changes reach. What it does say is that the goal was to retain the feel of the originals. On the evidence of the set, that goal holds for Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 3, the two games where muscle memory is deepest.
This is a remaster collection that adds rather than replaces. The save file, the parallax backgrounds, the fixed bugs and the battle game are all additions on top of games that were already finished. Nothing essential was taken out to make room.
Release Schedule
| Year | Release | Contents |
|---|---|---|
| 1985 | Super Mario Bros. | NES original |
| 1986 | Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels | Famicom Disk System, Japan only |
| 1988 | Super Mario Bros. 2 | NES original, Western release |
| 1988 | Super Mario Bros. 3 | NES original |
| 1992 | Super Mario Kart | Nintendo EAD’s prior project |
| 1993 | Super Mario All-Stars | SNES compilation, worldwide |
| 1994 | Super Mario All-Stars rerelease | Super Mario World included |
Key facts
- Released: 1993, worldwide, on SNES
- Rereleased: 1994, with Super Mario World included
- Games included: four
- Critical score: 8.9/10 (IMDb)
Nintendo’s 1994 rerelease, with Super Mario World folded in, makes the 1993 package look thinner by comparison. Buyers in 1993 got four games. Buyers a year later got the same four games plus Super Mario World. That is a real difference, and it is the only knock against the version under review.
Everything else holds. The save feature turns four separate commitments into one library. The battle game extends Super Mario Bros. 3 without diluting it. The graphics and sound updates are the kind of change you stop noticing, which is the correct outcome for a remaster.
Super Mario Bros. 2 (1988) remains the weak link. It is still worth having here.
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