Mario All-Stars Wasn’t Nintendo’s First Limited-Time Remaster Release

Nintendo was heavily criticized for its limited time release of Super Mario 3D All-Stars, a three-in-one port of beloved Super Mario games to the Switch. The collection includes Super Mario 64, Sunshine, and Galaxy, and was only available for purchase from September 18, 2020 to March 31, 2021. Nintendo even made the game artificially scarce by removing its listing from the eShop on March 31, making it impossible to buy a new copy digitally. Physical copies of Super Mario 3D All-Stars have already been spotted online for ridiculous prices from resellers hoping to profit off the limited availability.

As strange of a situation as it is, this isn’t the first time Nintendo has released one of their games for only a limited time. In order to celebrate the 25th anniversary of The Legend of Zelda, Four Swords Anniversary Edition was made available from September 18, 2011 to February 20, 2012. Two years later it was again made available for download for four days to celebrate the release of A Link Between Worlds. The DS game is a remaster of the original Four Swords on the Game Boy Advance. There is, however, a couple key differences between Four Swords Anniversary and Super Mario 3D All-Stars – namely that the former was available for free and made improvements over the original.

Both situations are still unnecessarily anti-consumer, but at least Four Swords Anniversary Edition was never sold for full price. The original Game Boy Advance version came bundled with a port of A Link to the Past anyway, so Four Swords has always been a bit of an afterthought, which makes it even more baffling that Nintendo would release unimproved ports of three wildly popular Super Mario titles and make it unavailable after six months.

Even Four Swords Got Better Treatment Than 3D All-Stars

When Nintendo ported the three Super Mario titles to the Switch, no improvements were made aside from Galaxy no longer requiring motion controls so it could be played in handheld mode. Super Mario 64, which at the time of the port was 24 years old, is still presented in a 4:3 aspect ratio, and even though its not the original version of the game (which contains important speedrunning glitches), its not the updated and improved DS version, either.

Four Swords Anniversary Edition, originally a multiplayer-only game, got a single-player mode, new levels, and utilizes the DS wireless communication where the original required Game Boy Advance link cables. The Legend of Zelda is by no means much less popular than Mario, but Four Swords isn’t exactly the most exciting game in the series. Despite this, Nintendo revamped it and made it available for free. The company’s other limited time release, Super Mario 3D All-Stars, made very little effort to modernize the games, and had limited availability despite being fully priced.

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