A decent re-release of the Super Mario All Stars game... but could have been improved.
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Super Mario Bros: Who hasn't played this? This has to be the most popular game in history, everyone knows who Mario is. Really, there isn't much that hasn't already been said about this game.
Super Mario Bros The Lost Levels: Pretty much a copy of the original Super Mario Bros game but extremely hard. The difficulty level can be so ridiculous at times and even the most experienced gamers will feel challenged. Interesting to note is that this was actually released in Japan as Super Mario Bros 2.
Super Mario Bros 2: Everywhere else, this game was the sequel everyone was waiting for and is a lot different to Super Mario Bros The Lost Levels. However, it is a really great game and what I consider an underrated Mario title, overshadowed by Super Mario Bros 1 and 3.
Super Mario Bros 3: Considered as one of, if not the best game in the NES library. A really great game to play back then and still a great game to play now.
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So as you probably already knew, Super Mario All Stars contains a great package of Mario games with graphical improvements to match the 16-bit era at the time and a world select screen so you don't have to replay the entire game when it is game over. As a game, it is pretty great for it's value, but as a package it does feel rushed.
The package does include a booklet and this booklet is pretty awesome, no complaints here. It contains a bit of history about the Mario games plus some artwork and game design drafts which are interesting to look at. It is a little disappointing that it is short but for quality of the booklet is commended.
Another item included in the package is a CD which includes songs from all the Mario games (not including spin-offs of course). The CD has one song from all the Mario games hand picked by the designer of the CD, I assume, and most of the sound effects used in the original Super Mario Bros game. This is an item I am pretty disappointed about, I know that they couldn't have possibly include every track used in every game, but only one? A couple would have been great, I would have been happy with 3 hand picked songs from each game. Also, I really don't know why they included the sound effects from the first game? Why would anyone want to hear the sound when Mario collects a coin or 1-up?
Also, I think that it would have been nice to include Super Mario World and Super Mario 64. The whole point of releasing Super Mario All Stars on the SNES many years ago was to give people a chance to experience the previous Mario games from the previous generation. Not only that but they also enhanced the graphics to fit the 16-bit era, wouldn't it be awesome to enhance the graphics up a few notches to fit this era of graphics? Of course, the price would have increased, but I think it would have been well worth the effort. Instead, it is just a direct port that could have been put up as downloadable content if they wanted to.
To give the game credit, considering the cost and the value you are receiving, it is a decent package. However, it could have been done a lot better and feel that not enough thought was put into the production of this collectors item.