Forty years ago, Super Mario jumped out of his debut role-he was the nameless carpenter “Jumpman” in the classic game Donkey Kong-and into a realm of his own with the 1985 release of Super Mario Bros. Video games have never been the same. In this spectacular new special edition, TIME follows Mario’s journey, featuring interviews with creator Shigeru Miyamoto, inside details of Mario’s development and insights from video game experts. Mario’s indisputable greatness and how he has inspired some of the most popular modern games is all laid bare. Plus: Film industry experts reveal why 2023’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie was such a success.
CLICK TO ORDER MAGAZINE
2025 marks the 40th anniversary of the Super Mario series – which is crazy, because it feels like only yesterday that we celebrated its 35th anniversary with Super Mario 3D All-Stars and Super Mario Bros. 35. This year, however, is different. Though it still hasn’t been announced at the time of writing, Nintendo has new hardware releasing this year, which makes speculation a bit complicated. Will the company release a new 3D Mario game and tie it to the anniversary? Will Nintendo just release more remakes on the existing Switch? Who knows, but today we’re looking at all of the Super Mario anniversary celebrations throughout the years and what we might expect later this year.
CLICK TO ORDER MAGAZINE
he first really big Mario celebration in recent memory was the 25th anniversary. This was done during the Wii and DS era in 2010. The headlining anniversary game was the Super Mario All-Stars Limited Edition on Wii, which was an exact copy of Super Mario All-Stars as it originally released on the SNES. The physical package it came in, however, did at least include some extra goodies – a soundtrack CD and a small art booklet. Then you had some special edition red Wii and DS consoles, which came bundled with different Mario games depending on the region. Other than merch and some special interviews, however, there wasn’t much else done for Mario’s 25th anniversary. And given that the big anniversary game was a completely unchanged SNES game (sold for full retail price, instead of on the Virtual Console), it’s safe to say this didn’t wind up being the huge celebration you’d think Nintendo would host for such a milestone.
The 30th anniversary of the Mario series arguably had even less, but its headlining game was Super Mario Maker. This was an all-new way to design and experience Mario levels, which is understandably much more exciting than a re-release of Super Mario All-Stars. That said, we’re not entirely sure if Super Mario Maker was made for Mario’s 30th anniversary or if it just so happened to release with convenient timing. In any case, Nintendo released plenty of new merchandise and interviews, but not much else. Even if there wasn’t a ton of anniversary celebrations, Super Mario Maker has at least stood the test of time as one of Nintendo’s most prominent first-party releases. You can see that with the success of Super Mario Maker 2 on Switch, and we’ll definitely be seeing a Super Mario Maker 3 at some point on Switch 2, if we had to guess.
The big anniversary game, however, was Super Mario 3D All-Stars. Infamously, it was only available for a limited time before being delisted forever in March 2021. The game included Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Galaxy, none of which were available on Nintendo Switch otherwise at the time. All of the ports played quite well, but the collection was still criticized for lacking meaningful side content. If you take a look at Kirby’s Dream Collection: Special Edition that had released on Wii, that’s a great example of an anniversary collection with tons of extra content. That wasn’t the case with 3D All-Stars, however, and it presumably had less development time thanks to pandemic restrictions and such.
We also received Super Mario Bros. 35, an online multiplayer version of the original Super Mario Bros. that worked kind of like Tetris 99 in that you could send enemies to other players to hopefully eliminate them. This was great fun while the servers were online, but the entire game was unfortunately delisted from the Nintendo eShop and taken offline in March 2021 along with Super Mario 3D All-Stars. At least with that game, you can purchase a physical copy from secondhand resale sites. That’s not the case with Super Mario Bros. 35, however, which is no longer playable in any capacity. A true shame.
The post Super Mario: The All Star Video Game Changer HAPPY MAR10 DAY! appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.
