Genre: 3d Platformer
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo

The title's boxart looks a bit like a Mario-headed hydra, so against that backdrop the software's bare-bones "Nintendo Online"-esque menu system feels a bit anti-climactic. These are not native ports, and the emulation of Mario 64 leaves it in a strange 4:3 "window", with bars on all four sides-- the brain quickly occludes this fact once the action ensues, and the Nintendo 64 visuals look razor sharp. Super Mario Galaxy is vaguely disappointing; it looks fine, but it can't hold a candle to the absolute shocker that is Sunshine: blow that artwork up to modern resolutions, and the game-- aside from its sadly sketchy "docked" framerate-- looks like a 2020 release!

Coming in through a pristine HDMI signal, Mario 64's classic Koji Kondo soundtrack pops out of a nice pair of headphones, in a way that almost defies belief! This side of PC emulators, it's the best way to experience the game in the aural department-- no more "gay Bowser" though, unfortunately. Up next is Sunshine, with its somewhat annoying ukulele music and harsh NPC dialog sound effects. Still, it's the best sounding version of the game out there. Finally, there is Galaxy's soaring orchestra score, which sounds phenomenal here and is just as dramatic as it was originally.

Out of the three games, Sunshine is the one most easily picked up, in that it has a completely modern right analog stick-driven, fully-rotatable camera-- even with that however, it's easily the weakest of the three titles due to its inconsistent and often frustrating scenario designs. But some of that impression comes from sharing a bed with Galaxy, which is one of the best 3d platformers ever made. As for Mario 64, it's an acquired taste: it still has some of the best level design of all time, but Mario's too-nuanced movement and initially unintuitive camera make it feel somewhat antiquated.

With the original "Super Mario All-Stars", Nintendo went the full mile, totally re-writing all three games from scratch for the Super NES, while re-doing all of the graphics and audio in "Super Mario World"-style. Despite its cool naming convention, this collection took more of a bare-minimum approach: although in the case of Sunshine especially, it's not clear how the graphics could be made any better on the Switch's hardware. The coolest part of this entire collection is that in dual joy-con mode, Galaxy plays exactly like the Wii original-- a really nice touch. This collection may not be taking off with its Wing Cap, but it's still a title people will likely be dusting off their antique Switch units to play, perhaps even decades from now.