1993 · Super Famicom · Game story
Super Mario Collection is four kinds of momentum in one bright box
Nintendo's Japanese Super Famicom original gathers four foundational adventures, refreshes their picture and sound, and makes each game feel like a different answer to a single question: what can a run and jump become?
In this story
Four doors, one hallway
Super Mario Collection has the tidy confidence of a great library card. Open it and four doors appear: Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Bros. USA and Super Mario Bros. 3. Each is substantial enough to occupy an afternoon, a holiday, or a small private obsession. Put together, they create a remarkable tour of how quickly a platform game can change its accent while keeping its basic vocabulary intact. Run. Jump. Land. Rescue. The verbs stay friendly; the worlds repeatedly teach them new ways to sing. 1 2
The Japanese Super Famicom original is compelling because it presents the four games as a set of rooms in the same house. Their art and sound have been refreshed for the hardware, and the collection adds saving to the experience. That shared frame matters. The player can leave one adventure at a difficult moment, open another door, then return with the muscle memory of a completely different Mario still fresh in the hands. The cartridge becomes a pocket arcade of platforming moods, each entry familiar enough to greet and different enough to surprise. Its menu therefore feels less like a museum label and more like a hallway at playtime: each door preserves a distinct world, yet the shared presentation encourages a delightful habit of comparing one game’s instincts with the next one’s surprises. 3 2
Trivia Super Mario USA’s cast turns one of the collection’s four doors into four smaller doors. Nintendo’s own guide says Luigi jumps highest and farthest, Toad pulls and carries fastest, and Peach can walk through the air for about a second and a half. Even before a stage begins, character choice can change whether the next obstacle feels like a sprint, a leap or a small act of levitation. 7
See it in action
The first run never gets old
Super Mario Bros. remains the clean opening movement. It understands that a good run is a promise: the screen moves to the right, a ledge arrives, a Goomba changes the height of the next decision, and the player learns to trust a jump longer than instinct first permits. In Collection, that simple line feels especially vivid because it sits beside three later answers to the same design problem. Start here and the essentials become visible. Momentum is information. A block can be a question. A pipe can be a joke, a shortcut, or a tiny act of suspense. 5 1
Its pleasure is not merely historical. The first game has a crisp appetite for forward motion. A player can make progress through care, but the game continually tempts a more fluent response: keep moving, read the next hazard, let the arc of one jump set up the next. In the collection’s shared audiovisual dressing, that old language gains a new kind of contrast. The later games can feel baroque, vertical or strategic; the original feels like a pencil drawing whose line is so exact that every extra mark would weaken it. 3 5
Trivia Fire Mario’s generosity has a tiny hard edge: Nintendo’s guide says he can throw only two fireballs in succession. That limit is easy to overlook, yet it gives the power-up its rhythm. The flower does not turn the game into effortless target practice; it asks the player to place a pair of bouncing shots, watch where they travel, and keep moving while the screen catches up. 5
The Lost Levels is a conversation with confidence
Super Mario Bros. 2, often called The Lost Levels outside Japan, takes the first game’s plain language and starts speaking it with a raised eyebrow. It expects the player to know what a familiar platform, pipe or jump ought to mean, then asks for a touch more certainty. The thrill is wonderfully specific: a run that would be routine in the first adventure suddenly needs restraint, a better takeoff, or a more deliberate landing. It turns knowledge into a material the player can keep refining. 6 2
Inside Collection, this is the title that makes the set feel brave. It stops the compilation from becoming a procession of friendly nostalgia and gives it a taut, almost sporting middle. The player has just been taught how cleanly the original can flow; now that fluency is put under pressure. The reward is a sharpened eye. Small changes in spacing, enemy placement and timing become a new kind of map. The game makes expertise feel less like memorising and more like learning to hear a familiar tune at a faster tempo. 2 3
Trivia Collection changes the practical shape of this challenge by allowing a save after every level in Super Mario Bros. 2. That detail is a small act of hospitality toward an adventure built from concentrated tests. A difficult stage can be cleared, recorded, and left as a small flag on the cartridge’s map of the player’s growing confidence. 2
USA teaches platforming to throw
Then Super Mario USA arrives and rearranges the furniture. Its dream world, Subcon, is a place where vegetables can be pulled from the ground and thrown at enemies, where a magic potion can open a route to a back-screen world, and where the platform is often a place to pause, lift and improvise. Forward speed still matters, yet the game makes room for handling things. A root, a shell or a block becomes a prop in a brief comic scene. Mario is still running, but he has also learned stagecraft. 8 7
The four-character selection is the game’s great invitation to play differently. Mario, Luigi, Toad and Princess Peach have their own jump and lifting traits, so the same room can feel altered before an enemy has even entered. Choose the character who makes a particular gap feel comfortable, or choose one whose oddity turns the route into a new experiment. The collection gains enormous warmth from placing this cast so close to the stern concentration of Super Mario Bros. 2. One door asks for immaculate precision; the next offers four ways to make mischief. 7 8
Trivia The magic potion’s route to the back screen is a lovely piece of dream logic. Nintendo’s description calls it a move to the ‘ura’ screen, literally an other side of the scene. A player who has spent two games judging the visible path suddenly gets to treat the background as a possibility. It is a tiny conceptual switch that makes USA feel like a platformer designed by a magician. 8
Three turns the map into a toybox
Super Mario Bros. 3 makes the collection suddenly expansive. Its world map gives the player a view from above before every level turns the camera back toward a run and jump. That alternating scale is the secret. A stage can be a compact athletic puzzle, but the map makes it part of a journey with routes, destinations and little pauses between acts. The player is free to enjoy the immediate texture of a level while also keeping an eye on the grander page of the adventure. 9 10
Transformation gives that map its toybox energy. Nintendo’s Mario history highlights the Super Leaf’s Raccoon Mario and the Tanooki Suit’s Tanooki Mario alongside the more familiar Mushroom, Fire Flower and Star. These forms do more than decorate the hero. They make the next screen feel negotiable in a different way. A tail invites a new kind of movement; a suit can turn an old obstacle into a fresh opportunity. Super Mario Bros. 3 feels gloriously stocked because every item can alter the player’s imagined route. The best part is the little pause before a level begins, when the player looks at a stored item and imagines the next few minutes changing shape around it. Strategy enters the series with a grin and a costume trunk. 10 9
Trivia Mario 3 even hides a separate two-player battle game inside its map play. When the two players meet on the map, one can press A to enter a Mario Bros.-style contest, and the original guide lists three additional coin-grabbing battle stages. It is an exuberant little side room: a long journey pauses so two players can settle a local argument with pipes, enemies and coins. 9
The collection is the fifth game
It is tempting to think of Super Mario Collection as four artifacts placed under a single glass case. Playing it reveals something more active. The new Super Famicom graphics and sound give the set a common voice, while saving changes the cadence of a long evening. A player can make a careful advance in one game, preserve it, and immediately sample a different style of Mario elsewhere in the menu. The compilation becomes a fifth game made from choice, comparison and the pleasure of returning. 3 2
That common voice makes the contrasts sing louder. Super Mario Bros. is line and momentum. Super Mario Bros. 2 is composure under pressure. USA is a set of props and personalities. Mario 3 is a travelling box of forms and routes. Viewed separately, each game has a strong identity. Viewed through the same collection, they make a small course in platforming grammar. Every one explains a new use for a jump, and every one makes the previous answer look a little more ingenious. 1 3 7 10
Trivia The save data has a stubbornly old-school character: the collection’s save files cannot be copied. A complete-save challenge therefore treats each of the four games as its own repeated expedition. That quirk suits the cartridge’s personality. It contains four adventures, but each one expects to be lived through with its own separate trail of decisions and victories. 4
A cabinet of different courage
The set’s great trick is emotional. Each game asks for a different kind of courage. In the first, it is the courage to keep moving. In the second, it is the courage to trust a narrow calculation. In USA, it is the courage to pick up a thing and see what happens. In 3, it is the courage to choose a route, carry a useful transformation and imagine a solution that the map has only hinted at. Collection places all four attitudes one button press apart. 5 6 8 10
That proximity is why it remains such a satisfying magazine-cover kind of package. It contains familiar faces and familiar music, yet it never asks the player to settle for familiarity. The next menu choice can lead to stricter timing, stranger tools, a new kind of travel or a beautifully spare race toward a flagpole. Super Mario Collection makes Mario’s early history feel less like a timeline and more like a room full of toys, each one ready to reveal a different rhythm when placed in the hands. The player can spend ten minutes chasing a clean first-world run, then choose a completely different lesson in carrying vegetables, plotting a map, or surviving a demanding sequel. That elasticity is the set’s quiet luxury. 1 2 3
Trivia Super Mario Bros. 3’s costume trunk is stranger than it first appears. Nintendo’s guide says Frog Mario can swim freely in every direction and accelerate with A, while Tanooki Mario can turn into a statue and become invulnerable during the transformation. One form makes water feel like open space; the other turns a frantic danger into a perfectly still joke. 9
A few more screens
2 official imagesSources & image credits
Facts were checked against the links below. Official media remains the property of Nintendo and the relevant rights holders.
- スーパーマリオコレクション Nintendo ↗
- スーパーマリオコレクション 〖ゲーム備忘録〗 ゲーム＊やおよろず Retro ↗
- スーパーマリオコレクション徹底攻略ガイド レトロゲーム横丁 ↗
- スーパーマリオコレクション 全セーブコンプリートRTA Mansaku’s Legend ↗
- スーパーマリオブラザーズ Nintendo ↗
- スーパーマリオブラザーズ2 Nintendo ↗
- スーパーマリオUSA Nintendo ↗
- スーパーマリオUSA Nintendo ↗
- スーパーマリオブラザーズ3 Nintendo ↗
- スーパーマリオブラザーズ3 | ヒストリー Nintendo ↗
