- All right, I wanted
to make a quick video about the "3D All-Stars Collection" outside of my normal upload schedule because, as somebody who's played a lot of different versions
of Mario games in the past, I feel like I have a little
bit to contribute to this, but it's more that you keep asking me. There's been a lot of
hubbub around the internet that these games aren't
remakes or remasters, but emulated ports, which
doesn't matter to me at all. I'm just happy that they're
on the Switch in any capacity. But I will say I had some
immediate and visceral reactions to playing all three of these games. I'm weirded out; I'm weirded out by this. They all play fantastic. I highly recommend this collection as one of the best games for the Switch. It's just that it feels weird. Something's off, and it's not something I was expecting to feel at all when I pressed the plus
button for the first time. (upbeat 8-bit rock music) The best way to play "Super Mario 64" is on original hardware, going through a Super
64 into a Framemeister and then into your TV. And you should play it using either a Retro Fighters controller
or a Hyperkin Admiral, and don't let anybody tell you otherwise. I just noticed this the Switch version. It's not going through my
original hardware; how dare I? There are plenty of updated ROMs and modified versions of
the game, like the PC port, but the original hardware
will give you the experience you were meant to have. And even with this new Switch release, there's still a couple of things that, when rolled together, just
don't feel right to me. It always felt weird playing "Mario 64" with an Xbox controller
when emulating it on PC. This is to be expected. We're playing an N64 game on the computer. The N64 controller was built
with "Mario 64" in mind. It was made for this game. On the Xbox controller, Y and
B are essentially useless. There's way too many bumpers. The right stick doesn't control the camera in a way that feels good;
you have to flick it. But this all gets a pass because, again, you're playing an N64 game on a computer and probably illegally. But in a AAA actual Nintendo
release on the Switch, it's weird; it feels really weird. I don't know what exactly I was expecting. Maybe it's because the
Switch has over 20 years of hardware advancements over the N64, and it's relegated to playing what is, essentially, the birth of 3D gaming. Don't get me wrong, it plays very well. It's just as responsive as you'd expect. Some people are saying there
is noticeable input lag. I think that's an effect
of the audio latency with certain sound effects. This isn't something that
I noticed personally, but it is there, and some people who are
hypersensitive to that stuff might be triggered by it. Though, overall, I'd say it
plays noticeably smoother. N64 games have notoriously
bad frame rates. People are once again
upset about this port because it's locked at a
steady 30 frames per second, but the N64 version dipped well
below that very frequently, so I'm okay with a locked 30. Similar to how ports of Mega Man games will have slowed down baked in, it's weird to see the game run smoothly. I'm not sure how I feel about the decision to lock it at 30 frames per
second and not ramp it up to 60, but 60 frames per second hacks of the game also look really weird and really strange. The decision to leave it four by three instead of 16 by nine also confuses me, especially because it's
pillboxed even further. It doesn't take up at
least the full vertical size of the screen. Monitors have done a pretty
good job of getting widescreen to work fine on the "Mario 64" ROM, but I'd imagine to get it
up to Nintendo standards, they probably would have done
a little more work to it, but the game feels fine in four by three because that's the way I remember it. Honestly, it doesn't feel
weird in 16 by nine either, though; I could take it or leave it. What's always been weird
is that, in emulators, the polygons look sharp and crisp, where the textures and UI
elements look like pixelated ass. In this version, the
polygons have some jaggies, but all the UI elements
have been weirdly up-resd. They don't exactly look like
they've been completely remade. It almost looks like they
were put through some sort of AI upscaler. Some textures have been up-resd as well, but most of them are still mush. So now we have this weird
mix of mushy textures and pixelated elements
and sharp UI elements and jaggy polygons. It's not bad. Look at the weird railing. And then the UI elements aren't pixelated like the banister is. It's freaking me out. But the door has a new texture on it. It's much better than
doing a straight up port. It's just weird. Of course, there's also
the fact that "Mario 64" controls like an early 3D game. If you wanna turn around,
and he does like... A whole thing that could
knock you off the ledge. That, that move right there. It's not exactly the
most precise platformer. I made a video a little bit
ago on why I think "Mario 64" would benefit the most
from a complete remake. I'm a little disappointed
that they didn't do too much to the game, but ultimately I'm just happy
it's on the Switch at all. It's still a great game,
and it's a great port. "Super Mario Sunshine"
is a much bigger deal. This is the first time
we've seen it ported to another console since
its launch on the GameCube. What I gather is that "Mario Sunshine" is most people's least
favorite 3D Mario game, and, because of that,
it often gets forgotten, but 3D Mario games set a really high bar, so just because it's the worst, it doesn't mean it's not still amazing. And it feels pretty much
exactly how it should. It's unfortunate that you can't
use a GameCube controller, but it's well optimized
for a pro controller. Normally, flood is pressure sensitive, but the pro controller doesn't
register pressure sensitivity from the triggers. They get around this by
having ZR do a running squirt and R do a stop and squirt. And ZL is for strafing
while you're holding down R to squirt. This feels just fine. It makes for a pretty awkward
tutorial video though. - [Robotic Voice] If you press the button, you can stop and shoot. - Nintendo did make the effort
to make "Mario Sunshine" be widescreen, and, honestly, it feels like this is the way
it was always meant to be. It's still locked at 30 frames per second, which is not an improvement
over the original. The original handled 30
frames per second very well, but cut scenes are very bizarre looking, mostly because it's early
3D that we're looking at, but also because they're old
MP4s that were originally letterboxed to be
widescreen on a 480p screen. So they were very low resolution, and they've been bizarrely up-resd. There's also a weird
haze over the animation. Overall, though, "Sunshine"
is a beautiful game. I don't think it needed the
remake treatment at all. This is a perfectly fine way
to play this old classic. No need to bust out the
GameCube or the Wii for this. You'll have a totally fine
experience here on the Switch. I'll admit I haven't played the original "Super Mario Galaxy" at all. I only played the second one
for a little bit at GameStop when I worked there on the demo kiosk. There was a midnight
launch when we were waiting for the store to reopen. I had like a two hour
break, and I spent two hours playing "Mario Galaxy
2" on the demo kiosk. It was great; it's a great game. So I don't have much to base this off of. I'm very excited to get
through this version, as "Galaxy" is many people's
favorite 3D Mario game, and playing some of it now, it is amazing. It's definitely the most
beautiful game in the collection. It definitely didn't
need much remastering. The original also ran at a
full 60 frames per second in widescreen, so, technically, it's not really an improvement. However, it's HD now. They didn't do all that
much to make it HD, but honestly it didn't need that much. It still looks great. It does suffer from the
same sort of hazy cut scenes that "Mario Sunshine" did, but they look a lot nicer than "Sunshine" because it has a five
year technological bump. The original game focused pretty heavily on the Wii's motion controls, which means some changes
had to be made here. Surprisingly, the Joy-Con feel great. The fact that you don't need
IR to point the controller directly at the screen shows
how far Nintendo has come in motion tracking technology, and it feels really fluid and intuitive. However, I don't know what happened, but the cursor janked out
every once in a while. It's really cool that you don't... Okay. That, what, okay. All right, well, you just proved me wrong. I was just about to say, "It's really cool that you
don't need an infrared sensor to be able to point. Like, it feels really good," but then it just froze
on me, so never mind. In the original, shaking the
controller spun Mario around. In this port, they let you just hit Y, so if you're using a pro controller, you don't have to shake the
whole controller every time. But this makes it way too
easy to just spin around the whole time because
that move is OP as... (Joy-Con clicking) Using a pro controller works, but having the cursor
on screen the whole time definitely feels weird. It's not as intuitive to aim
an entire controller around than it is to just point one Joy-Con. As much as I love the pro controller, I'll probably be playing
through this one on the Joy-Con. It's also weird seeing Wii menus again. Having to select menu
options with motion controls is giving me 'Nam flashbacks to not having the sensor bar set up correctly. If it sounds like I'm being harsh with some of my criticisms here, that's because I absolutely am. Nintendo is known for their
polish and attention to detail, so it's weird to see them
just port a bunch of old games onto a physical cartridge. To me, it seems like Nintendo
really struggled this year, and in order to make it out in time for Mario's 35th anniversary, they had to ship the
minimum viable product. That's not to say this
collection is bad by any means. It's still a fantastic collection of games and totally worth $60. I just wonder what it could have been with a little bit more
of that Nintendo polish and a little bit more of
that attention to detail. I still consider these
remasters even if they aren't on par with Nintendo's other remasters. And the fact that these are
emulated is pretty exciting. It means we could see other
N64 games, GameCube games, and Wii games ported to
the Switch very easily. Of course, the argument
is if these are emulated, then why don't I just
play these on my computer at a full 1080p? Well, that's because that's
(Joy-Con click) stealing, and this is a legit copy of some of these games for
the first time in many years. So what do you guys think about the "Mario 3D All-Stars Collection?" Is that something that you picked up? I'd recommend at least getting
the digital version by March if you wanna play some of these games. It's a limited release, but I'm sure Nintendo will
have something in the future. Maybe they'll sell each game individually for a bit of a marked up price, maybe $25. If you've never played
any of these games before, I'm curious to know what your first time playing them is like. Which one is your favorite? I have a feeling "Galaxy"
is gonna be the best one out of all of them, but that
also seems a little unfair. It's the newest one. I'm also curious to see what
people think of "Mario 64" and how well it aged. It's an amazing game, but it suffers from a little
bit of a dawn of 3D problems. Really, all it needs is a fixed camera. Anyway, leave it in the comments below, add me on Twitter, any and all of the social media garbage. We've got new videos here, I mean, at least once a
week; this is a bonus video. Make sure you subscribe so you
know when there's new videos, and make sure you're subscribed. make sure it says, "Subscribed," because you might think
you are, and you're not, and maybe you're just using
YouTube's suggested feed to see when I upload new videos,
and you can't rely on that 'cause one day YouTube's
not gonna show you, and then you're gonna be upset, and I'm gonna be even more upset because I need the views. Also, I use a lot of footage here from my Twitch stream over
on twitch.tv/wulffden, so make sure you follow over there and turn on notifications, so you know when I'm live over there, if you wanna hang out. But if you like YouTube a lot more, check out Wulff Den Clips. We have a clip of that gameplay. (bright music) (water splashing) So if you'd rather
watch a stream like that culminated into just
a 10-ish minute chunk, then go over there and watch that. Or just share this video with a friend, a friend who's maybe
thinking about getting this and wants to know how weird it is being ported over to the Switch, if it feels good, all
of these retro games. Thank you very much. Have yourself a good week.
