Nintendo has recently announced a whole bunch of things that will be available for the 35th anniversary of Super Mario Bros.  This includes making various Mario titles available on the Switch, a Mario Game & Watch, Mario-themed furniture coming to Animal Crossing: New Horizons in March of 2021, and even…Mario-inspired shoes?  Okay.  Ahem, you can find more about the famous plumber’s 35th anniversary celebration elsewhere on the Internet, for today I wanted to focus specifically on Super Mario 3D All-Stars, including some rather disappointing news.

First off, let’s get to the main details about this Mario collection coming soon to the Switch (September 18, to be more precise).  Super Mario 3D All-Stars will include Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Galaxy, games spanning the Nintendo 64, GameCube, and Wii, respectively.  (It has not gone unnoticed that Super Mario Galaxy 2 is strangely absent….)  There’s not a whole lot more to say about that, except for the fact that Sunshine is the game that has me, personally, the most excited since it’s the hardest to get one’s hands on, considering up until recently, the Wii and Wii U allowed one to play pretty much every major Nintendo game (thanks to the Virtual Console, as far as retro games were concerned), with the GameCube being the one console that was not really represented, aside from a few select remakes.

What is not so exciting is the fact that this game is going to be limited, including the digital version!  And this is a decision I find to be incredibly confusing.  Sure, if I don’t buy a physical game in the store fairly quickly after its release, even one that is not limited edition, it is usually sold out before long.  But why in the world would Nintendo wish to make even the digital version of the game limited?  Heck, making the physical edition limited is still a pretty unwise move because this is only going to encourage people to buy the game up and sell it for much higher prices elsewhere online.

This has rather discouraged me from getting the game, as I don’t want the digital version, considering the Switch’s measly hard drive space (the collection will be 4.8 GB), and I don’t know how fast the physical copy is going to sell out.  If I was going to buy it, I’d probably be getting it for Christmas, and it seems likely that something like this will be gone by then, so…I guess I can still use my Wii U for playing two of the three games on the list.  And I still have a working GameCube for Sunshine.  So that kind of decreases the appeal of paying $60 just to play these games on a newer console anyway, especially since the handheld aspect of the Switch is not something I use very often.

With that said, I’d like to hear your thoughts on the matter, dear readers.  Are you bothered by the game’s limited run?  Does it affect whether or not you’re going to buy it?  Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below!

Image taken from official Nintendo website