The Story of Super Mario All Stars: Special Edition! A Gaming History Retrospective Documentary

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Published 2022-11-04
In 1993, Nintendo took its greatest hits and made them even better. (Chapter markers and more below...)


Episode information
GTV 123 “The Story of Super Mario All Stars" Season 7 Episode 1
Original Airdate: March 25, 2022
Re-released: November 4th, 2022
Produced December 2021-March 2022 (SE: October 2022)
Recorded at Butsudan Studios and edited on my all new 14” MacBook M1 Pro! Edited and produced with Photoshop and Final Cut Pro, which my job paid for!

0:00 Mamu Cares!
0:06 GTV ID: An all star lineup!
0:11 Introduction
0:55 Act: 1 The Road to 1993
3:58 CM 1: Super Mario Collection (Japan, 1993)
4:30 Act 2: The Concept and The Creation
13:45 CM 2: Super Mario All Stars (U.S., 1993)
14:17 Act 3: What is Old and What is New
25:17 CM 3: Super Mario All Stars (U.K., 1993)
25:58 Act 4: The Art of The Re-issue
32:05 CM 4: SNES Super Set (U.S., 1993)
32:37 Act 5: The Right Thing to Do?



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Partial Transcript:
Some games never go out of style, Case in point. Nintendo’s first entries in the Super Mario Bros. series. These games are well past the 30 year mark, and yet people still love them just as much as they did on the day these games came out. As great as this set is, their legacy still stands thanks in part to a clever strategy by Nintendo. It was all done in a way that seems like a foregone conclusion these days, but way back when was unheard of, and actually quite genius.
It’s a tale as old as time. Your favorite video games get old. New ones come out, and those favorites of yesteryear fade away. This generational change has been happening for decades now. Over time, this changing of the tides has solidified into a precise schedule: every 5-6 years for Nintendo, and 8-10 years for everyone else! While it is a standard practice these days, back in the Early 90s, things weren’t as orderly as they are now.
As the 1990s began, Nintendo had 3 product lines! The 8-bit Family Computer, the portable GameBoy and the 16-bit Super Famicom.

Generational shifts had happened before. In Japan, Sega, and Epoch before then, simply axed the older machine, and made a clean break for the next generation. Nintendo did opposite and kept the 8-bit line alive, alongside 16-bit. For while, this worked well, as fans began to migrate. Eventually, hardware sales, software sales, and software titles of the Super Famicom surpassed the older Family Computer. As the Super Famicom came to West as the Super NES, the same pattern followed. The NES was phased out, newer games came much less frequently. The older titles would fall out of print. While newer games were promoted.

During this changeover, new fans were coming along for the ride. A younger generation was coming up and entering gaming at 16-bit level.
That weird generational gap left Nintendo in a pinch! One on hand you had a new set of fans, who may have heard of Mario’s previous adventures, but without the older NES had no means to play them! Then you had all the old-timers who had nothing new to play! And if they wanted to take a trip through the “Groove Yard of Forgotten Hits” you had to dig out that old machine! And deal with old, outdated, 8-bit graphics!

In 1993, Nintendo finally answered everyone’s prayers with a special compilation. Something new and exciting. Something that, at the time, had never been done before. Nintendo took their past Super Mario Bros. games, remastered them for the 16-bit era, and sold them in one package. Super Mario Collection! Known in the West as Super Mario All-Stars.

Now everyone could enjoy all of Mario’s greatest hits, with improved graphics, sound, controls and other niceties that weren’t possible on 8-bit!

Some clips courtesy of Raven XP, NenRiki, Vinni 64 and Game Escape.
Music courtesy of Qumu and Akihabara Electric Circus.

All Comments (21)
  • @GTV-Japan
    Q: What is (still) the capital of Ohio?
  • @robintst
    Nintendo were right to give us Doki Doki Panic as Mario 2, that was and still is my favorite of the 8-bit Mario games. The Lost Levels is just cruel, even today. If that was the game we had gotten back in the day, I probably would have snapped my NES controller over my knee from the frustration.
  • @Ryuhei64
    It must have been amazing to discover this "4 in 1" collection in 1993.
  • @therant3837
    Dude got deep at the end of his speech at the end of this segment. The part about appreciation, and things being held for while before they are "given" or released. I know he was just speaking of gaming, but man that hit close to home for me. This guy gives a pretty good presentation. I'll be watching more of his videos. Reeses Peaces, everyone......
  • Super Mario All-Stars + Super Mario World is an awesome collection
  • To be honest, I prefer the Mario 2 we got over The Lost Levels. The fact that it was so radically different from the other titles intrigued me. It felt like a proper adventure in this mysterious dream world. I also really liked that Princess Peach took a more active role instead of needing to be rescued. The time I grew up in was well past the NES's prime, so the whole "Samus is a girl" plot twist from the original Metroid was common knowledge at that point -- but this was still mind-blowing to me. I also liked that it was the first game where Luigi wasn't simply a pallette-swap of Mario, being taller and having his signature high jump. I think, had we gotten The Lost Levels originally, it would have just been more of the same. This would probably be fine, but Mario 2 introduced a lot of unique elements that I feel breathed new life into the series.
  • As I said before, my dad bought a Super Nintendo and my mom bought me a Sega Genesis, and the divorce settlement had me and my sister spending most of the year with our mom and going over to our dad's house every other weekend and for a month in the summer. One of the games we had at my dad's house was Super Mario All-Stars and honestly, having played the NES versions of the three games we got before that, I felt then and still do today that the All-Stars version with the upgraded graphics and music and fixed glitches was the definitive way to play those games. And that is why, years later after getting my first job, when I bought a Super Nintendo on ebay, I also bought a copy of Super Mario All-Stars. No longer have them, but for a time before losing them, I was able to relive a portion of my childhood.
  • @JPBrooksLive
    In January of 1999, there was an ice storm in Georgia and it blew out the TV in my parents living room... The night before the Super Bowl.... Well, that made my dad go get a big ol' RPTV and it was the biggest TV I had ever seen. The first thing I did? Grabbed my SNES and played Mario All Stars until the big game that night! It was so cool seeing Mario so big 😂
  • @arioca
    Amazing video! I still remember how incredible and surreal this collection was back in '93. Later on I bought a new SNES that came bundled with Super Mario All-Stars + Super Mario World, which is to date one of my favorite compilations ever and probably the most played.
  • @GamingDelight
    In my childhood, while I first experienced the original Super Mario Bros. on the NES, I never actually owned it, or an NES, and I never even experienced the other two games. It was thanks to Super Mario All Stars that I finally owned it, and experienced Mario 2 (JP and Western) and Mario 3 for the first time. Mario 2 was the first of those games I actually beat, but because I was just a beginner gamer back then, it took years for me to finally beat every game on it.
  • Shigeru Miyamoto was truly a visionary. And your channel deserves way more subscribers/views for the high quality long form videos you do. I appreciate you man! Keep up the good work.
  • @pichonPoP
    This cartridge was amazing back in 1995,1996,1997, all those years I used to play almost every day with friends at theirs respective homes, cause didn't have a console at that time. Remember playing that Lost Level and I asked myself why that game was so terrible difficult? We did beat all of them, but it that special took a lot of time to complete. Thanks for making this video, really it made some tears went down from here.
  • @kenny9648
    Nice video, like usually. Thankfully, we got the alternate SMB2 here in Europe too. It's one of my favorite games of all times.
  • @BastetFurry
    Regarding the ending, Nintendo not releasing many of the RPGs for the NES and SNES in Germany was one of the reasons for me to become a PC gamer and abandon consoles. Some years later i could finally play some of them trough emulation, the late 90s being the heyday of the emu scene for me, but the train was long gone for me as we say in Germany.
  • @KanjoNights
    This right here is how you start a weekend. New drop from GTV. Hell yes, I'm gonna enjoy this
  • I appreciate all the work you put in these videos! Back in the SNES days, All-Stars opened my eyes to the idea that games of previous console generations weren't automatically outdated and to be discarded and it was so wonderful to rediscover Super Mario Bros. 1, 2 and 3 with 16-bit sound and visuals after not having played the "trilogy" for a couple of years by then. These days, I prefer to go back to the 8-bit originals for that iconic experience, but part of me still wants an All-Stars cart, if only for The Lost Levels/JP Super Mario Bros. 2.
  • @Vulpas
    Great video, as always. This compilation set the standard for remakes way back then and most still don't live up to it.
  • @FiercedeityBrad
    Getting all stars for Christmas 1993 was epic, I remember playing the lost levels and being a mario vet by that point made it challenging but not frustrating. That's why I like it, it was perfect timing for us who grew up with the classics, going from 1, 2 (USA), 3, world, to lost levels was perfect.