The idea behind "Super Mario All Stars" for the Super Nintendo is a great one. Put together all the Mario games (at least to that point) on a single cartridge and allow players to SAVE their progress. Wow! While the concept it a great one, the trouble I've always found with this collection comes from the individual games themselves.
-Mario 3: 95% percent of my time playing "All Stars" was spent playing this game, as it is the one that easily translates the best from NES to SNES. It is the only game that doesn't feel like a "port", and it is the best all-around Mario game maybe ever (Mario '64 may give it a run).
-Mario 1: A faithful re-creation of the iconic original. However, I've always felt that game was meant to be played on the original NES with the two-button control. It plays okay on the SNES, but it loses some of that atmosphere.
-Mario 2: This is just a strange game to begin with. It is completely different (pulling up plants and throwing them?!) than any other Mario game. I know some people really enjoy it, by I always skipped this one because I thought it wasn't as good as the traditional Mario setup.
-Lost Levels: The trouble here is that Lost Levels is just too doggone difficult (the reason why the strange Mario 2 exists in the first place, as game distributors correctly evaluated it as much too hard for U.S. gamers). It looks great and feels like a classic Mario game, but good luck getting anywhere past the first couple of levels. I can run through the entire Mario Bros. original with almost no damage, but I could barely even make a dent in this one.
Thus, your overall enjoyment of "Super Mario All Stars" will likely come down to two factors: 1. Does it bother you to play a game on a different system for which it was intended?"; and 2. Will you play Mario 2 and/or Lost Levels enough to even make it worth your while? I had hours of fun playing Mario 3 from this cartridge, but all the others pretty much sat stagnant for the reasons described above
