Super Mario 3D All-Stars (September 18, Limited Release; Available until March 2021)

[KHCast]

Quote

“they had to be done by September for the 35th anniversary”

I REALLY hate anniversary deadline mandates.  Especially when it leads to resorting to doing bare minimum to get a product out (a product that will only be out for a measly 6 months to dupe people into FOMO and guarantee higher sales)  This isn’t on the level of Sonic 06, but it’s still disappointing to hear regardless 

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

11 hours ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

This may just be me, but other people have thrown up gameplay videos of the collection, and I'm not noticing any major performance drops.

Although, granted, as I said - I might just not be noticing them. Unless the drops are pretty severe, I don't tend to notice them until I'm playing the game myself. 

It is a peculiar case altogether,  nonetheless. 

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Video by DigitalFoundry, the issues with Sunshine have been confirmed - it's not full on FPS dips, but rather it's frame-pacing issues. 

[Sean]

The color banding is the biggest trigger for me. Looks gross.

[Blue Blood]

On 9/17/2020 at 6:17 PM, Sean said:

The color banding is the biggest trigger for me. Looks gross.

Can confirm that this frankly looks dreadful when playing Galaxy.

I've been fairly non-bothered by the shortcomings of this collection because three original games are solid experiences. But I'm going to speak out a bit on them now.

The emulations are pretty lazy, the games feel rather cobbled together with little thought being given to maintain existing features of the original games and there's absolutely nothing new beyond updated button prompts. Each of these games deserves, at the very least, a good polishing and a couple of bonuses. A select few features from SM64DS should have been carried over to SM64 (or even both games included), Sunshine would have benefitted greatly from general bug and jank fixing with new additions like Blue Coin tracking and a 100% clear bonus, whilst Galaxy just needed some sensible control revisions to account for the different hardware. Nintendo couldn't be bothered to do anything beyond the bare minimum of simply making these games run in the Switch and that's so disappointing. 

I'm playing Galaxy now. As with Captain Toad Treasure Tracker on Switch, I can't get used to using the Pro Controller gyro for the cursor. The game really wants me to physically move the controller left, right, up and down when it would be infinitely more comfortable to just twist and tilt the controller to move the cursor. It works, but not entirely; the cursor won't ever go to the edge of the screen through tilting alone. And whilst gyro for independent Joy Cons works, its pretty crap for left handed people such as myself. When I play Galaxy on my Wii, I hold the Wiimote in my left hand and the Nunchuck in my right do that I point at the screen using my dominant left hand. That's no longer possible Switch, as the Joy Cons aren't ambidextrous and that it's totally killing the previously slick and fluid Galaxy controls. Were there no lefties on the development team or in the play tests who picked up on this?

The collection is functional. It's adequate. It's playable. It's unbelievable just how lazy it is however. When you see the excruciating effort that Nintendo goes to when they're creating big new games (like 64, Sunshine and Galaxy at the time of release for example) and the difference in their approach for the cash grab games, it's really quite remarkable. Nintendo didn't even try to make these emulations on par with the originals. The inverted right-stick axes, colour banding, awkwardly chopped up dialogue in Sunshine's tutorial and unfriendly control schemes in Galaxy really make it feel like these games were pushed out for a quick bank. These games will never be anything less than brilliant, but Nintendo has chosen to them a disservice here. 

People around the Web are still complaining about the fact that Galaxy 2 isn't included in this collection, but I think that @JezMM pointed out a great reason for that earlier in this thread. The cursor control scheme for Galaxy is manageable but awkward using either the controller gyro or the touch screen. Within Galaxy 2 though, many more modifications would have to be made to ensure that Yoshi was usable. You couldn't possibly cope with recalibrating the gyro every time you needed to latch on to an enemy or any other target in Galaxy 2, and using the touch screen for that wouldn't be doable either as you need both hands on the controller too. Thing is, I'm sure that suitable adaptations could have been made if Nintendo were interested. But they did nothing to the games in this collection. They couldn't even be bothered to preserve parity with the original games. There's no way that they were going to devote any resources to adapting Galaxy 2.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

7 minutes ago, Blue Blood said:

I'm playing Galaxy now. As with Captain Toad Treasure Tracker on Switch, I can't get used to using the Pro Controller gyro for the cursor. The game really wants me to physically move the controller left, right, up and down when it would be infinitely more comfortable to just twist and tilt the controller to move the cursor. It works, but not entirely; the cursor won't ever go to the edge of the screen through tilting alone. And whilst gyro for independent Joy Cons works, its pretty crap for left handed people such as myself. When I play Galaxy on my Wii, I hold the Wiimote in my left hand and the Nunchuck in my right do that I point at the screen using my dominant left hand. That's no longer possible Switch, as the Joy Cons aren't ambidextrous and that it's totally killing the previously slick and fluid Galaxy controls. Were there no lefties on the development team or in the play tests who picked up on this?

This is arguably the worst possible thing I could've heard. My physical copy still hasn't arrived yet, but when it does, I pretty much have to use my Pro Controller to play the collection because the Joycon drift on my Switch makes games nearly outright unplayable. Very disappointing they dropped the ball on the controls of all things.

[Blue Blood]

@Ryannumber1gamer Don't just take my word for it. From GameXplain and Nintendo Life's reviews, they actually find the Pro Controller to be perfectly useable, if not the best control scheme available. If you've played Treasure Tracker on Switch, that should give you some indication of whether or not you'll agree with the control scheme. I personally just can't stand it.

[JezMM]

Played 10 stars in on each game and yeah man what a bummer - none of these are the definitive way to play these games for me going forward.

 

Mario 64 I get some bad input lag - might just be my TV but I'm not sure coz Sunshine and Galaxy felt okay.  But in Mario 64, I just can't get the timing consistent to perform triple jumps which is definitely wrong considering I have played Mario 64 possibly about 64 times throughout my life by now.  If this doesn't occur on handheld, then at least there's that.

Mario Sunshine... good god the controls are horrendous to a veteran.  Actually, everyone has been complaining about the camera inversion from the original games - that's felt natural to me so far, the camera has mostly always done what I want.  What I can't stand is the water spray aiming being inverted from the original.  Every single Goopy Pirahna Plant fight has begun with Mario standing in place and shooting water all over the ground when I follow my natural instincts on how to aim up. I then have to REALLY conciously think about what I'm doing with my hands for the remainder or I'll keep messing it up.  I wonder how long it'll take me to get used to this - longer than 10 stars apparently which is pretty bad.  Finally, spraying styles being spread across two buttons is unfortunately literally the only way they could deal with the lack of analogue shoulder buttons, but the issue is the original control scheme was so smart and intuitive that I'm acting like it's still there.  Since you MOSTLY just use ZR to spray, I keep having moments where my brain is sending the command "I want to stand still and spray" but my hand forgets that I have to use a different button, causing me several times to stand in front of danger, push ZR to stand and spray, move the control stick to aim and then have Mario run into said danger because... I was pushing ZR, not R, wasn't I.

This, in addition to the fact that Sunshine was full of janky mechanical issues with how Mario moves compared to the other games in the series and it's been pretty rough so far.  I feel like I'm playing an unpolished fangame at times, not a gold standard Nintendo product.

Finally, Galaxy.  Yeah the gradient issues are horrendous and ruin a visual style that otherwise REALLY stands the test of time.  Due to my joycons running out of battery, most of my playthrough has been on handheld and it's pretty incredible how I keep forgetting that this game is over 10 years old by how good it looks most of the time.  Beyond that though, again, control is the big issue.  I love gyro aiming in Splatoon and Zelda, and I always preferred the aiming in Skyward Sword to early Wii game pointer-based aiming... so I was surprised by how inconsistent gyro is at emulating the Wii Remote pointer.  I had to use R to reset it pretty frequently, though it might be something to do with how I have to unnaturally hold my joycons in front of me when playing because the connection from joycon to Switch is just terrible no matter what game I'm playing.  Touch screen is alright though so far for handheld, but I am still at the early game.  But yeah, it seems the reason gyro works so well in Zelda and Splatoon is probably because you only use it sporadically.

 

So yeah, due to the above issues, I have to say if anyone is on the fence about this game - only buy it if you've never played these and buying/playing the originals is too much fuss, or SPECIFICALLY if having a handheld version of these games is valuable to you.  If you mostly plan to play on a TV and have access to the originals, just stick with the originals.  They're just fine.  The HD visuals don't make up for the shortcomings, especially since said HD visuals simultaneously unmask distracting visuals you aren't meant to see (64's low-poly Mario, Sunshine's lack of animation on distant NPCs, and Galaxy's new gradient problems).

[KHCast]

Yikes, I begrudgingly convinced myself to buy this due to the whole scarcity thing, and limited time shit, but even expecting these to not be definitive, hearing all this has my jaw dropping. Well, we can safely say Skyward Sword port probably isn’t happening, and if it does, it’ll more than likely be a massive disappointment.

[Sean]

I don't think it's necessarily indicative of how Skyward Sword on Switch would turn out. Nintendo has almost always given Zelda re-releases the royal treatment compared to Mario. They might actually give a shit.

[Blue Blood]

Yeah, I don't quite get what this has to do with Skyward Sword either. Skyward Sword used the gyro instead of the sensor bar for pointing the cursor and everything else, and that worked a million times better than the the cursor in this version is Galaxy. I think you can expect more from Nintendo when they're porting a single game than churning out a cheap package of emulators. Skyward Sword would be unplayable if it controlled like Galaxy does on Switch. They literally couldn't get away with such a half arsed effort with that. It simply wouldn't work.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Plus, it also tends to help that Nintendo know full well they can get away with selling a single remaster of Zelda for full price. Hell, they already got away with it with both Wind Waker and Twilight Princess HD. Both were great remastering jobs, don't get me wrong, but doesn't change the fact they still charged premium price for a single one in an era where these remasters were being bundled into trilogy collections.

[Sonicka]

I would like to think if Zelda SS does come to Switch as Rumoured, then they’ll do that game a solid with the remastering like Wind Waker and Twilight Princess before it. Considering the game pretty much runs around the Motion controls of Wiimotion Plus they need to put in a lot of effort and tweaking to make the game fun for portable play or with an optional non-motion controls mode.

They just cannot half arse a job like that considering how integral the WiiM+ was to that game. Actually I’m not sure I’m convinced it would even be fun without it. By the end of SS I felt there was no way I could go back to playing Zelda with the old control scheme as I had too much fun... but then BOTW happened, and obviously the scheme set up for SS definitely would not have suited that open style of game.

Still, hopefully that and a dual pack of ports for WW/TP HD will get a Switch release next year anyhow. They certainly can’t be worse than this Mario collection at least. 

5 hours ago, JezMM said:

So yeah, due to the above issues, I have to say if anyone is on the fence about this game - only buy it if you've never played these and buying/playing the originals is too much fuss, or SPECIFICALLY if having a handheld version of these games is valuable to you.  If you mostly plan to play on a TV and have access to the originals, just stick with the originals.  They're just fine.  The HD visuals don't make up for the shortcomings, especially since said HD visuals simultaneously unmask distracting visuals you aren't meant to see (64's low-poly Mario, Sunshine's lack of animation on distant NPCs, and Galaxy's new gradient problems).

Whilst this is bad... I’m glad to have read this as I was very close to purchasing day one on announcement. 

I only decided against it because the limited edition scare tactics mentally stressed me out.

For me personally on a month where buying a £50 game wasn’t an affordable option, and Nintendo throwing out this collection I REALLY wanted on a silver platter. It sucked. 

Worse still is baiting the consumer for it’s “limited run” nonsense. And digital is limited as well? Why? Digital is infinite. It’s a crummy marketing practise. This is something that ultimately I would have put aside as a purchase for next year...  but can’t, even if I wanted to buy it now I can’t... I prefer physical over digital, but would go digital if absolutely last resort if they run out of physical copies next year... and still can’t... It just made me feel sick.

No game publisher should be making me feel ill over considering a panic purchase. I was still worried I’d made the wrong choice for a while after by not preordering - but later realised it wasn’t worth any more of my consideration. 

At the end of the day, I own Mario 64 a dozen times already, so I was only really in this for replaying Sunshine and Galaxy in HD. Even then I own the original games and have completed both many times... but was up for a definitive HD version if it was worth it. 

But Nintendo couldn’t be bothered, so I suppose why should I? I’m not even sure I will get these if they do end up separating them for single releases after March 31st. 

It’s a crying shame really, and not something I’d typically expect from Nintendo to do considering the usual quality of their 1st party titles. Let alone the consideration of their customers (even if they are behind the times). 

 

[Wraith]

As sloppy as this port turned out to be it's largely an exception. The Zelda remasters are all good ways to play the games aside from MM and other rereleases like the New Play Control series on the Wii  or the Metroid Prime Trilogy were a lot more carefully put together. I'd be more concerned if a trend started to form. 

[JezMM]

A little direct example from yours truly of the issues I've been having with gyro control for the pointer.  It works 90% of the time, but obviously a 10% failure rate is pretty unacceptable and takes you out of the game when you want to do something precise.  This was using detached Joycons - haven't tried to see if a Pro Controller or Joycon Grip setup works better (though I don't actually own a Pro Controller so can only test the latter).

 

Oh, also I've now confirmed that Mario 64 plays fine and input lag-free on handheld, so it was just my TV.  If playing handheld is preferred, I can at least say this is the definitive version for Mario 64's case.

[Blue Blood]

It's been the better part of a decade since I've played Galaxy in any form, so what I'm saying here may apply to the original. But seeing as it's an issue here in this version, I'm going to mention it anyway. Mario's controls keep bugging out. It's infrequent, but totally annoying and potentially dangerous when it does. Sometimes Mario will just start running in small circles no matter which direction you move the analogue stick in, and he'll only stop when you completely remove all analogue stick input for a second. Don't know what I mean? You've probably run into a similar issue in SA2's Mad Space where Rouge just gets stuck on the poles of one of the planets. I initially thought it was a glitch with the sphere-walking  that Galaxy uses for individual planets, but I've have it happen on plenty of flat surfaces where gravity is normal (i.e. the starting planet in Honey Hive Galaxy or even the Observatory).

If this bug occurred in the original, and I'm pretty sure it did, it's happening to me way more now. And even if it's no different to the original, these kinds of problems are why a collection of half-arsed emulations doesn't warrant a full £50 price point. Let's ignore things like the ugly colour banding, botched gyro, camera/FLUDD controls inverted over the original for no reason for a second and focus just on how nothing was done to improve these games in the tiniest easy. Widescreen and upped resolutions? That's nothing. It's a basic function of the emulator shell doing something they original hardware can't. This collection is incredibly lazy 

 

[JezMM]

16 minutes ago, Blue Blood said:

It's been the better part of a decade since I've played Galaxy in any form, so what I'm saying here may apply to the original. But seeing as it's an issue here in this version, I'm going to mention it anyway. Mario's controls keep bugging out. It's infrequent, but totally annoying and potentially dangerous when it does. Sometimes Mario will hear start running in small circles no matter which direction you move the analogue stick in, and he'll only stop when you completely remove all analogue stick input for a second. Don't know what I mean? You've probably run into a similar issue in SA2's Mad Space where Rouge just gets stuck on the poles of one of the planets. I initially thought it was a glitch with the sphere-walking  that Galaxy uses, but I've have it happen on plenty of flat surfaces where gravity it normal (I.e. The starting planet in Honey Hive Galaxy).

If this big occurred in the original, and I'm pretty sure it did, it's happening to me way more now.

I had this happen on the tiny glass sphere planets in Space Junk Galaxy where you have to collect star chips to move on (and while you're free to run all around them, the camera stays fixed looking at them from a somewhat 2D perspective), but I remember that area being pretty wacky with how the control stick moved Mario around a spherical object from a fixed side view camera in the original game too so didn't think anything of it.  I'll look out for it in more sensible places too.

[Shade Vortex]

I gotta be honest here. This was one of the most disappointing results to one of the most shockingly "too good to be true" rumors. I remember hearing these games were getting remade a long while back, thanks to internet rumory/leakery... but the fact that these are not remakes- 2 of them straight emulations and the third a recompiled (but still pretty much the original) game, for 60 dollars? Activision gave us 2 trilogies- Crash and Spyro, in HD, both for less than full price, and those were full remakes. Now you have of course people who take issues with certain creative decisions/changes in those remakes, but I personally felt those were the definitive versions of those games and I was glad to have them.

But these? Nah. Sorry Nintendo, being lazy and cheap might work for most people, but not me. Especially since I don't LIKE the original 64 or Sunshine, so I'd only be getting this for Galaxy and even for a 1080p 60fps experience, Galaxy by itself is certainly not worth 60 dollars.

[KHCast]

At this point I’m only looking forward to being able to have a soon to be rare game collection (until they inevitably just cynically sell them piece meal on the Nintendo shop for like 10-20 bucks each, and get easy praise for it)

[SupahBerry]

I intend on getting it either way do to the portability, but I won't deny the flaws of it that I had long expected. From the beginning I knew they weren't gonna be remakes (or even remasters under certain definitions), no matter the demand, no matter how many other competitors do it. It's not in Nintendo's nature to unless it's Zelda or Pokemon, or a cheap excuse to show off the tech of a new console in the case of GBA or DS. 

In the case of SM64, I know it was Dead On Arrival from the instant the PC port and content leaks arrived-

Spoiler

They tried taking it down, but the damage arguably was done. Though I accepted Nintendo wouldn't dare take their official port to that level, even I can't excuse what they're charging people to buy the same old games, especially with the lack of basic QOL improvements here. Even back when the Wii U had it's SM64 port, Nintendo couldn't get the emulation right. Now, where as they eventually near-perfected NES and SNES emulation by the time the Switch arrived, they're N64 emulation remains faulty, never mind how the games emulated from later consoles fair.  All while emulators like Dolphin continue running circles around official Nintendo emulation for about a decade. 

 

[Nathan]

I was so excited when it was revealed but know it’s just has no special features will be discounted for no reason and is just emulate and not built from the ground up cheep move

[Iko]

I've got it, mostly for collection value.

Though, I'm having a lot of fun replaying Sunshine. I know that a lot of people are hating it, but I like it, no matter how much they ruined the controls in the port (yes, they did an horrible job with the controls and the inverted analog axis is annoying). I don't know why, I just love that game, can't stop playing it.

I only played one level of both 64 and Galaxy. 64 is nice but I finished it too many times and now I'm tired of playing it again; Galaxy always bored me to death, and it still bores me... I don't like it.

I've purchased this collection because of Sunshine and I'm glad I did, I'm enjoying every little bit of it so far and I know that I will replay it multiple times in the future (or mess around in an already finished savefile just for fun).

I still have the original gamecube game, though being able to play it handheld is something I was waiting for years.

All the ports though are very low effort and full of flaws, and I kinda feel bad for giving money to Nintendo for this game... if it didn't have Sunshine in it, I would have never got it.

[Conando]

I’ve only played two of the games so far. I can say 64 is arguably the definitive LEGAL way to play it now (it depends on whether you care that much about BLJ. Also, I actually find it controls better than the PC homebrew port). Sunshine is...Sunshine. They did nothing to fix what was wrong with it, so it’s still my least favorite 3D Mario. Looks nice, though.

[VO.SUPER]

I've only played Sunshine so far. It's been years since I ever played the game, and I don't have the original, so the inverted controls don't get in my way thankfully. I've gotta say, I'm really enjoying myself. So far I'm at 70 shines and really enjoying the adventure as a whole. The controls for Mario are definitely weird and loose, but you can adjust to them, and there's something to respect with how much freedom they give you for platforming.

So far the infamous missions of Sunshine haven't given me too much trouble aside from the poison lake and the Yoshi waiting. That's a mission that really earned its rep.

• The pachinko machine only took me three tries, and I found it surprisingly cooperative when I decided not to move the camera from the front at all.
• The watermelon festival was an easy one try, albeit pretty dull.
• I did the sand bird in only 2 attempts. Jumping as little as possible and using the clouds for more steady ground made it pretty easy for me to just sort of cruise this one.

Yeah, the collection is pretty barebones, and just lacking in necessary upgrades, but in all honesty I can't say I'm disappointed. I'm really just glad to have these games again in a state I can play and share with my younger family members. That doesn't mean Nintendo couldn't and shouldn't have done better. But at the least I'm glad that these games are in a good enough state for a casual scrub like me. This isn't something like the Silent Hill 2 remaster where just everything is broken, but it could still be better.

I guess I don't feel bad giving Nintendo my money for this. I don't feel like there's any lesson they'd learn from this either way, as I'm sure they know they could have done better.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Someone compiled a lot of the issues found in 3D All-Stars.