YMMV / Super Mario All-Stars

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Lakitu's sprite in SMB1 looks like he has Puppy-Dog Eyes, making it seem like he feels guilty for attacking Mario.
• Awesome Art: The All-Stars remakes are absolutely gorgeous to look at and easily outdo Super Mario World in the visuals department, with levels having very rich, colorful and insanely detailed (for their time anyway) backgrounds. The updated backgrounds are especially a step up from the often blank and/or minimalistic backgrounds of the original NES titles. It is little wonder that Nintendo didn't change the remakes' artstyle when rereleasing it for the Wii. Though they could/should have added 16:9 widescreen while keeping the awesome art, anyway.
• Awesome Music: The Boss Battles against Bowser in Super Mario Bros. and The Lost Levels gain an epic battle theme in All-Stars that truly fits the classic clash instead of nothing and just continuing playing the castle theme.
• Broken Base:
  • How do the remakes stack up to their NES counterparts? Some prefer the All-Star versions for their upgraded presentations and added save systems, while others feel they lose part of the uniqueness and charm of the original NES games.^note And in the modern era of emulation and save states, the All-Stars remakes adding save systems to the games isn't quite the advantage it was back in the early '90s, as most official rereleases of the NES games allow you to save anywhere via save states. Super Mario Bros. 3 is a particular sore spot amongst fans since it downplays the minimalistic stage play aesthetic of the original in favor of a more typical Mario aesthetic. Some don't mind it and consider the All-Stars version to be gorgeous, while others feel it takes away much of what made 3 unique visually.
  • The 16-bit rearrangements by Soyo Oka. Some love the rearrangements to the point of preferring them over the original tracks, while others feel they miss the mark and lack the punchiness and simple charm of Koji Kondo's original 8-bit tracks.
• Fanon: Because this version (and the GBA remake) of Super Mario Bros. 3 heavily downplays the stage play aesthetic of the NES original, fans treat the remakes as Mario and Luigi's actual adventure with the original being more of a stage play adaptation.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: The Wii port, released for the 25th Anniversary of SMB1. Mind you, the quality of the port itself is perfect - the problem was that the game was exactly the same as the SNES game and a full-priced rerelease that basically slapped a completely unaltered ROM of All-Stars (not even All-Stars + World!^note This is most likely due to All-Stars + World not being released in Japan alongside World being already released on the Wii Virtual Console) onto a Wii disc with a modest art booklet and soundtrack CD to accompany it, instead of just releasing the game on the Virtual Console for far less money. Not helping matters, that was the only thing Nintendo did for the 25th Anniversary. Afterwards, when the game was re-released unchanged once again for the Nintendo Switch Online legacy games service for the 35th Anniversary, it didn't receive this criticism, as Nintendo did various other things for the 35th Anniversary, including Super Mario 3D All Stars and Super Mario Bros. 35.
• Nightmare Fuel: The game's Anti-piracy message. It's not super creepy on its own, but it's terrifying when it pops up unexpectedly when the system boots up, due to the lack of any sounds or background.
• Polished Port: All-Stars greatly enhanced the visuals and soundtrack of all four games, and gave them the ability to save progress as well as four save files each. To a lesser extent (it is already a SNES game), the version of Super Mario World included on SMAS + SMW has Luigi being given new sprites that weren't just palette swaps of Mario's.
• Scrappy Mechanic: One exists for SMB1 and The Lost Levels - in the original versions of these games, breaking a brick block causes Mario or Luigi to bounce back off, but in Super Mario All-Stars, due to a programming mistake, the player maintains a little bit of forward momentum as they break through the block instead of bouncing off, making breaking brick blocks in rapid succession a little more tricky. Fortunately, a fanmade patch that fixes the bug can be found here.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: Remake in this case. The Lost Levels is easier than the Disk System original, while still being the hardest of the compilation (which is why saves are per stage instead of per world).
• Spiritual Successor: The Super Mario Advance series, which, while not a compilation of games, still served as a Video Game Remake. Advance ported the versions of 2 and 3 seen in this game to the Game Boy Advance with further improvements and additions (and slightly downgraded soundtrack and lighter color pallete), and also featured ports of two other SNES Mario games: Super Mario World^note which may or may not have also been based on the version seen in SMAS+SMW and Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island.
• Surprise Difficulty: This is the first time international players got to experience The Lost Levels and immediately realize why it wasn't originally released worldwide in the first place.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The change to the block mechanics in the first game and The Lost Levels that causes you to keep some forward momentum rather than bounce you back, has caused some people to swear off this compilation despite all of the ways in which it otherwise vastly improves on the originals, while others just think that it's an unfortunate bug in an otherwise perfect remake, but still enjoy it anyway.
  • The Lost Levels loses the unique graphical differences from its predecessor, making it look even more of a Mission-Pack Sequel.
  • Some people don't like how the caves and fortresses look bland and samey in the All-Stars version of Super Mario Bros. 3 as compared to the NES original's more varied colors and textures. The fact that the fortress in World 8 used color variation to differentiate both sections in the NES version makes the All-Stars version far more confusing.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The simple addition of lightning flashes to World 8-4 in the original game and The Lost Levels, along with the castle's unique background, really gives it a nice "final stage" feel (or Disc-One Final Dungeon in The Lost Levels, as there's also World D-4). Likewise, Lightning flashes were also added to the airship levels in 3, giving them a very climactic atmosphere compared to the original game.

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