Super Mario Bros 35th Anniversary Direct

The 3D ports are kind of disappointing with M64 not being a full remake being the biggest offender I feel but I did like (some of?) the All-Stars games getting 16-bit visual upgrades. The game and watch looks cool but not sure if the shimmering in the direct screen footage is indicative of the quality emulation, I might still get one depending on the price. What do you think of the ports and will you be rushing out to get any of the bizarrely limited timed releases?

Edit: Actually it’s just the SNES All-Stars lol, for some reason I never realised smb and lost levels were updated back then

1 Like


4980yen, not bad

1 Like

I’ll grab it just because I’m a huge Super Mario fan. Heck, if Super Mario Bros. didn’t exist, I probably wouldn’t be posting here right now.

As it is, I’m a 33 year old man in Super Mario pajamas posting this right now, even though I had no idea the direct was today. The franchise is synonymous with my childhood and my love of the medium in general.

But with that said, I still have a pixel-perfect setup for playing all of these old games, and I prefer to enjoy them on original hardware. And I was a little miffed that Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island and Super Mario Galaxy 2 were not even included in the montage at the end. They also skipped NSMB2, Super Mario Land 2, and Lost Levels in the montage. Kind of bizarre when you think about it.

I think the most exciting part of this direct was the Battle Royale version of SMB, and the inclusion of new content in NSM3DW - one of the biggest issues I had with that game is that it ended far too quickly.

My biggest gripes though are the fact that some of these titles are only available for a limited time. This is TERRIBLE. Why even do this? It makes no sense. Especially the battle royale game - why take this offline in a few months after launching it? Leave it up at least a few years Nintendo. MAN.

I’ve never been so bummed by a Nintendo Direct before. Giving fans limited time content is absolutely my biggest pet peeve as a retro-gamer.

3 Likes

I really hope this isn’t the start of a trend of forced scarcity. It makes no sense, especially for the digital releases.

Can’t understand this only available until March nonsense, I logged in for pre-order on nintendo (UK) only the digital version of 3D all stars can be pre ordered, I would imagine many people like me will want the physical version especially as it’s a limited run.
It appears the physical version is only available from Nintendo selected retailers, the scalpers will be loving this! very disappointed as I wanted 3 copies for my kids for Christmas.

I have a feeling that after March each of those games will be available digitally separately for like 30 bucks each.

I wish the Game N Watch would go up for pre-order some where in the US already.

I’m very disappointed by Super Mario 3D All Stars, the games deserve better than what really is the bare minimum.

Super Mario 64 in particular looks like it’s running under (inaccurate) N64 emulation, doing a disservice to its visuals due to incorrect rendering and upscaled/artificially sharpened 2D assets.

Everything else was cool - particularly the battle royale Super Mario Bros remix. If they just gave Super Mario 64 the attention and care it deserved I’d be happy to shell out for it, alas I think I’ll have to pass.

Wish Mario 64 had the DS graphics + extras as an available option… I mean they already remade the game!!

I’m terrified that the SMB G&W has a “CRT filter” on it that you can’t take off!

Hope Galaxy is completely playable w/o detached Joy Cons waggle, and bummed Galaxy 2 isn’t on there too (what the hell!).

I want the G&W really bad though… SMB is an unbelievable game IMO.

The AR Mario Kart looks super cool that I at least want to play a few times!

Pre-orders for physical copies of 3D all stars now up on Nintendo UK, managed to order 3 copies (no restrictions on amount per household, scalpers dream!)
The new game & watch is also available to preorder at ÂŁ44.99 (Was hoping its would be more like ÂŁ40, based on the Japanese pricing)
I’ve ordered one anyway.

Two things stood out from the g&w segment.

  1. There was actual tearing in the footage at least once.
  2. The horizontal scaling is definitly non-integer, and the blending looks pretty agressive/bad.

Looking at the white letters on the blue background, you see a row of grey pixels that is pretty much right in between color wise. They should have gone with a 640x480 display to negate this, but by the looks of things, Its pretty obvious they went with 320x240. Since the NES games run at 256x240, that leaves 64 pixels to work with for filling in the gaps, or 20% of the horizontal space. Thats just not enough to work with to make it look nice no matter what algorithm you throw at it.

2 Likes

Mario 64 is nearly a perfect game for me so am fine with no change. I hope for accurate emulation, but I know hope is a mistake. Only things I would have done to it are widescreen, and 60fps. Also the only actual addition I would have liked would be getting Koji Kondo to make two new tracks for it for the final 2 worlds. Always seemed like the one thing that felt rushed in that game. I certainly didn’t want changed visuals or the 64DS stuff. A port of 64DS would be nice as a separate things, with actual analog movement, but not as a replacement for 64.

Sunshine, all I hope for is being able to adjust camera controls. Would have liked some blue coin changes and 60 fps. Also cut scene skipping, but who knows if that or the camera controls there.

No Galaxy 2? Looks like they worked out a way for the cursor, so don’t think Yoshi controls are holding it back. Oh well.

The irony here being that the recently leaked mario 64 sourcecode has already been retooled for other platforms and has been patched for 16:9 support by some hobby amateurs in a matter of weeks.l

I saw the same thing and was hoping it was just a mock up… but then it would have looked BETTER. I saw that tearing as well and couldn’t believe they’d show that, I’m not hopeful and I’m a sucker so I’ll keep expectations low.

I already pre-ordered the 3D All Stars collection. I’m disappointed Mario 64 is just HD upscale and that Sunshine is just widescreen optimized with apparently no QOL enhancements (Blue coins again? Yikes). That said, I still can’t wait to replay these in a convenient format (especially Galaxy in HD). Will also be pre-ordering that amazing 35th Game and Watch unit whenever that goes up. Lame though that G&W Ball is the bonus game instead of the OG LCD G&W version of SMB, but that’s ok because I have this:

4 Likes

Ouch, I see it’s £49.99 on Nintendo UK. It’s £42.85 here for a physical copy of 3D All-Stars: https://www.shopto.net/en/swsu34-super-mario-3d-all-stars-p455151/

Could save quite a bit if you’re buying 3 copies.

Is this correct? I only know of the fan reverse engineering which is 16:9 and 60fps but had taken years of work before it’s recent release. Or did I miss something?

Anyway, this 35th is Nintendo doing bare minimum for these releases which is so annoying when they’re sitting on these gems.

I’m looking at the full sm64 source code sitting here on my hard drive so yeah.

1 Like

They should have either patched the game and emulator to run at 320x224, or ported it from scratch and compiled for native hardware like they did with the Gameboy port. They could have also gone with a higher cost display with a higher resolution to smooth out the scaling enough that it wouldn’t be noticeable. They could have also chosen to just display a 256x240 frame if the other options weren’t doable. This is literally the worst path they could have taken. If they decided to opt for a display wired over i2c without any kind of buffering or vsync, it would be insult to their own heritage. Gunpei would spin in his grave.

1 Like

40-year-old man with SMB pajamas checking in here. Will buy this, and 3D World next year.

Mario is a happy place. While this collection could have been shown more care by its creators, it’s still nice to have. This is the content we need in 2020.

1 Like

Right, yes I think I did read about that leak. So what have people been doing with the Mario 64 source?