Fuck the gameplay – feel the cardboard!
The funny thing about WoSblog’s recent Gran Turismo 5 piece (at the time of writing by far the most-read individual post in WB history, although the various Benchmark Reviews bits added together outstrip it by miles as the single most popular topic), is that everyone took it as being mostly an attack on Eurogamer, which was never really the intention.
This is, though.
I normally like most of Simon Parkin’s stuff on EG – he’s one of their standout contributors alongside John Walker, Ellie Gibson and (sometimes) Dan Whitehead. But the piece he penned this week on Super Mario All-Stars ought to be printed out onto tablets of stone, used to beat him to a messy death, and then be displayed on the site’s front page with the blood and brain matter still encrusted on them as a warning to readers who might naively be coming to the site in the hope of some useful and impartial buying advice rather than hideous, simpering advertorial.
It’s not so much the comically bad research, which got fairly important and pertinent facts completely wrong (such as suggesting that buying the four NES games that make up the compilation on Virtual Console would cost more than the £24.99 price of the Wii disc, when in fact they’d set you back more like £15, even if you bought the rubbish not-a-real-SMB-game respray job that is Super Mario Bros 2).
It’s not even the deeply embarrassing way the piece was originally illustrated with screenshots of said NES games, rather than the much prettier enhanced ports that you actually get on the disc (which in fact comprises nothing more than the ROM of the 1993 SNES collection of the same name). One of them, hilariously, was pinched from IGN, complete with watermark.
The really toe-curling thing is that the piece isn’t really a review of SMB25th at all. It’s – literally – a review of the cardboard box it comes in, which concludes that you should pay Nintendo £25 for the privilege of owning one of the laziest, shittiest ripoffs of all time, and thereby encourage them to keep spewing out the most abominably cynical cash-in atrocities imaginable.
The article basically drops its trousers, bends over, begs Nintendo to do it hard and come in its hair, and then says “Thank you, sir” afterwards.
To do it justice I’d have to quote nearly the whole review, which is why it’s linked above for you to read for yourself (in Google Cache form, because I don’t want to send them even a handful of extra readers) and see that the following extracts aren’t being taken out of context.
“Boxes make the intangible tangible. Digital distribution offers convenience, but it does so at the expense of experience. And Nintendo has always understood the value of experience.
Super Mario All-Stars, which bundles together four of the series’ formative 8-bit titles, enjoys packaging that is both commemorative and celebratory. The smooth, dusky, Famicom-mauve cardboard box is emblazoned with a gold wreath, inside which stands a Mario sprite, facing right: poised and ready, as ever, to run off into the inviting distance. Understated but thoughtful, like a Criterion Collection version of a cherished children’s film, it strikes a balance between playfulness and austerity.”
“Physically, the re-release has been treated with an appropriate degree of care and attention. Inside the box, there’s a compilation soundtrack of music from the series, along with sound effects – trills and warbles that can be pinned to every action and reaction in the game from memory. Likewise, a booklet outlining the origins of the series, and featuring comments from creator Shigeru Miyamoto and never-before-seen artwork from its development, is a welcome bonus.”
“But perhaps the greatest value of this pack is the packaging itself. Owning a physical copy of Super Mario All-Stars on Wii allows these games to sit proudly on your shelf, a statement to everyone who enters your home and sees it. Here is a game that, in some tiny way, made me the person I am today. Celebrate that with me.
Is a ROM cheaper? Absolutely. Does it offer the same amount of value? Not even close.”
The rest of the review, in fairness, doesn’t even attempt to conceal exactly why this conclusion is such a shameful piece of craven shilling. Super Mario All-Stars 25th Anniversary Edition is so dripping with Nintendo’s longstanding hatred for PAL gamers that they haven’t even bothered to include a 60Hz option, despite approximately four people in the whole of Europe now owning TVs which don’t support 60Hz.
The “commemorative” versions of these iconic games PAL users are expected to celebrate, then, are the abysmal bowdlerized ones originally foisted on the continent two decades ago, complete with distorted graphics, slowed-down gameplay and great big ugly borders.
It wouldn’t even have cost Nintendo a penny to optimise them – they’d just have had to include the US version of the SNES ROM instead of (or as well as) the PAL one. And it’s not as if they were short of room on the DVD, given that the ROM occupies less than one five-thousandth of the capacity of the disc.
But Nintendo will always gouge their customers for the greatest possible amount of money – up to and including outright theft – for the smallest possible amount of content they can conceivably get away with (even if doing so doesn’t actually save Nintendo any money), so it’s the crappy PAL version only. This ingrained grasping corporate ideology is also why it’s the original 1993 version of All-Stars we get, not even the superior one from the following year that added Super Mario World to the compilation.
(SMW was titled “Super Mario Bros 4” on its original Japanese release, and is generally regarded as the best of the 2D Mario platformers, so you’d think it’d be worthy of appearing in this “celebration”, given that including it would have required zero extra work or expense. But no. It’s a little bit like celebrating the career of Ernie Wise without mentioning Eric Morecambe.)
It’s not exactly news to anyone that the Super Mario Bros games – or at least, the two “proper” ones you actually get on this disc – are great. And they’ve been easily available on Virtual Console for years, which would also save you buying SMB2. Spending two pages on a feature saying “Hey, guess what – it turns out that Super Mario Bros and Super Mario Bros 3 are actually pretty spiffy videogames! Who knew?” would be an idiotic waste of everyone’s time.
So there’s no excuse for reviewing this compilation on the basis of anything other than its merits as a retail product in its own right. And on that level, by any conceivable rational measure it deserves about 2/10 at the most. (Personally I think I’d have gone with 2.5/2010, because I’m a smartarse and because that would also accurately reflect its position on the merit scale.)
It’s impossibly mean-spirited, technologically retarded, and basically just a giant “Fuck you, chumps” to its audience. I mean, Christ, for 25 quid they could at least have put it in a nice metal tin or something.
SMB 25th Anniversary is currently sitting at No.22 in the All-Formats chart. That tells us one of two things: either people are really dumb and happy to lap up Nintendo’s arse-gravy, and therefore EG is simply catering pragmatically for an audience of idiots (although the review is taking a pretty sustained kicking from most of the contributors to its comments thread).
Or, it tells us that the game is only high in the charts because of terrible reviews like this, pathetically abdicating their responsibility to their readers because some fanboy gene or programming won’t let them give a Mario platform-game release a low score no matter what the circumstances.
Either way, you have to ask what the point of “reviewing” games at all is, if telling people to pay £25 for a cardboard box is what it’s come to.
They could have easily fit SMW, SMW2, Mario 64 and Mario Sunshine on the disc, with room to spare.
Spot on. I tried this before buying it, and as soon as I discovered it was exactly the same game as the SNES Mario All-Stars that's sitting on my shelf, my heart sank. I could have had it for £18 from Amazon, but that's too much for a bit of packaging that won't leave you with anything in five years time apart from a sense that you were ripped off.
Why not update the graphics on the NES games? Why not include SMW and SM64? Why not have a full-length interview with Miyamoto, take us through the design process, put some of the design specs on disc. And no 60Hz – ffs…
I'm a pretty slavish Mario buyer, but this one was too much even for me. The review was a joke.
I bet if Nintendo were to release an "Ultimate Zelda" collection and only include those two games released for the CD-i Eurogamer would give 9/10.
Anyone (including the tool who edits Retro Gamer) who whines "unoptimised PAL was good enough for me when I was a kid" doesn't deserve to play videogames, let alone write about them.
Unoptimised PAL is fine if there's nothing else available (or if the game was originally designed around PAL – plenty of Amiga games are unplayably fast in 60Hz, for example).
But there's literally no reason for not including the US ROM on there. Even if they had to put a disclaimer saying that the 60Hz versions don't contain European languages when you start the game.
I´m still not sure what I hate more: The idea that they are selling a single SNES ROM on a whole DVD (as you pointed out) or that the 3DS is going to be region locked.
Actually, I'd probably buy that Zelda CD-i compilation…
If you were like me and you caught sight of the box/case in question at your preferred retail store (Gamestation in this case), a quick look at the back of it will reveal a little message in the middle gleefully (or maybe not gleefully) reminding you that the content is the same as the SNES original, leaving you wise enough to put the thing straight down again.
Not that I can say much, seeing as it looks to be included with the limited-edition red Wii. Which I'm getting this Christmas.
Saw the Eurogamer review – terrible. Happy to see someone put the boot in.
Wow nintendo really really hate it's loyal fans.
"But perhaps the greatest value of this pack is the packaging itself. Owning a physical copy of Super Mario All-Stars on Wii allows these games to sit proudly on your shelf, a statement to everyone who enters your home and sees it. Here is a game that, in some tiny way, made me the person I am today. Celebrate that with me."
"Welcome to my home. I value possessions for their physical proximity to me, allowing me to feel like I live in some kind of library. The coolest library ever, with all the very best games, music, films, books etc. gathered together. Even in my furnishings I demonstrate that I am nothing more than a wallet strapped to an opinion and welded to a mis-firing penis. I invite you to sit and nod approvingly as you take in my excellent taste, as you appreciate how much money I must have spent on all these things, for lack of a fully-formed personality or identity. As the review suggests, it may be that this particular game provides only a tiny amount of my gaming background. Unsurprising as I am likely a UK gamer and as such probably didn't see any of these games until the previous All-Stars compilation, or ROMS, or the Virtual Console etc. But I am deeply aware that my collection would be lacking if I didn't have The Collected Original Super Mario Brothers, and this latest hardback, leather-bound Wii edition will do a smashing job of showing off what a dumb little consumer I am, while inspiring envy in those others who may aspire to have such tasteful items as mine. But they never will. Mine is best. I'm going to import the Japanese version too.
Thanks for the great review, Eurogamer! Oh, and don't worry about this spoilsports complaining about the quality of the software or of the images used in your review. As if actually loading up this compilation mattered! N00bs will be n00bs.
Yours,
a Western Culture Collector"
Anyone who gets annoyed about 50/60HZ when (in this case) it makes virtually no difference to how the game plays shouldn't be allowed to post on videogame forums.
Oh and 2.5 out of 10 is ridiculous. They're still great games, even if it is a cynical cash in.
The box business is just a nice bit of lyrical framing. As you point out Parkin does highlight the laziness of the actual product in the meat of the review.
So really this is just an article complaining about Nintendo's shitty rom-dump, with a few sentences about the pics and the score thrown in.
"Oh and 2.5 out of 10 is ridiculous. They're still great games, even if it is a cynical cash in."
It was 2.5/2010. But so – if it cost £5,000 you'd still give it 8/10? Because the games wouldn't be any less good. Like I say – it's not the games that are being reviewed, it's the product. And the product is bollocks-awful.
(Indeed, if we’re reviewing strictly on the merits of the content, 8/10 is a ridiculously low mark for SMB3 alone, never mind the rest of the games. As a game it hasn’t aged a day. So we’re obviously not doing that, which means the shittiness of the overall product is fair game.)
"Anyone who gets annoyed about 50/60HZ when (in this case) it makes virtually no difference to how the game plays shouldn't be allowed to post on videogame forums."
The entire point of the review was about the broader experience. It's written, after all, completely from the premise of comparing digital versions of the same game to boxed ones. And the broader experience of playing something with shitty ugly fucking borders everywhere instead of glorious as-God-intended fullscreen is measurably inferior. I find it very weird that someone who cares as much about games as you do doesn’t get that.
As someone who grew up with those games, and an ex-loyal fan of Nintendo up 'till N64 and their ever-growing desire to screw-up their fanbase with rehashes, bad format decisions, awful pricing and such, i'm not the least surprised.
I just don't think it's that much of a big deal that's all.
The people who I guess this is aimed at won't know any better, while people like us will know to leave well alone any way. I guess the difference between us is that you're hung up on the presentation (which is admittedly bad) while I just see it as an opportunity for a new generation of gamers to play some truly brilliant games (albeit it in an extremely lazy fashion).
Like I said I picked it up. So I guess I'm part of the problem 😉
Darren don't forget games programmed for 60hz will run slower on 5hz. Would you say a racing game good enough if it ran one 5th slower than it was suposed to?
The games we played on the amiga at 50hz where mostly programmed in 50hz and would run a little to fast on a 60hz machine.
"Like I said I picked it up. So I guess I'm part of the problem"
Hey, you're the guy who thought Game Room would turn out great. You can't help it 😀
I stand by my guns with that. At the time the concept was wonderful. Oh and for some reason I can't reply to you in Facebook chat. Stupid thing.
Nobody was arguing that the CONCEPT was bad, man. The concept being so great was precisely what made the abysmal execution so criminal.
Looks like Nintendo Life had the sense to side with RevStu at least: link to bit.ly