Still, the (dry) bones of Super Mario 3D All-Stars are impeccable – three of the best games ever made, spruced up for one of the best consoles ever made. My hesitation with this bundle is that Nintendo knows this too and while a far, far cry from the toxic allegations of laziness, it does leave me a little wanting. The rub about a collection of games this good is that even the least effort imaginable to bundle them would still produce something worth owning. It is undoubtedly worth owning for any Nintendo fan but the princess remains in yet another castle. It’s a collection that is simultaneously celebrating and underserving the enormity of its contents, offering up a reasonably priced and gorgeous bundle marked with unforced errors.
With Super Mario 3D All-Stars Nintendo has paradoxically granted that much-needed access but also attempted to maintain its gilded withholding. The pedigree of the brand is well preserved through mystery and limited availability of its historical titles but the Disney Vault business model is long dead and access is now king (or princess). It will gladly, and regularly, deploy the iconography of its past in order to stoke the coals of our collectively coldening hearts but substantial preservation and access are withheld. For a company whose prestige is so forged in the fires of nostalgia, Nintendo has a strangely unsympathetic relationship with its own legacy.
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