During a chance meeting + walk at Calabazas Park, my high school friend Prashant revealed that Nintendo released a limited time Super Mario compilation in September 2020 (aka “Super Mario 3D All-Stars”). The bundle contains Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Galaxy. Digital editions are no longer available, but leftover physical copies can still be found if you know where to look.
Super Mario Odyssey is by far my favorite game for Nintendo Switch, so I was piqued. It’s true that I still have not finished Breath of the Wild, but I was in the mood for a change so I bought a copy late Wednesday night. (Sorry, Zelda, you’ll get rescued later.)
The game arrived on Friday, but thanks to my Jungle Cruise movie night, I didn’t get to play it until Saturday morning. In the past, I’ve seen my brother Chris playing Super Mario 64 on emulators so I invited him for the unboxing and trial run. First, we tried out 64. We handed off the controller whenever we died or played too long. By lunchtime we had finished the first two portraits.
After lunch, Chris got pulled away by girlfriend funny business so I tried out Galaxy on my own. Overall, I liked Galaxy a lot more. The shiny graphics pulled me in a lot more quickly. Come to think of it, even though it is 14 years old, Galaxy doesn’t look all that different from Nintendo games today.
Anyhow, soon I was hooked. I really liked how the miniature planets partitioned the game off into bite sized chunks. In fact, I was so attached that I didn’t even give Sunshine a go. (Hey, California is in a drought so watering the plants can wait.) The biggest downside to the game is that it uses Wii controls. My arms are still weak; raising them for long periods of time is not ideal.
