It's hard to know what is a fair rating for a collection like this. While Super Mario 64 is showing it's age a little bit, and Sunshine still has those blue coins, they're still fun games to play and come bundled with Galaxy, probably Mario's best outing overall. They're quality games.

On the flipside, how they've been bundled is incredibly barebones - Galaxy has probably had the most work done allowing for players not to have to use motion controls in some play style (but annoyingly not others), but that's about it. There's a resolution bump and full soundtracks are included but these games are almost as they were when they released and that's incredibly disappointing for a re-release bundle in a world where something like Rare Replay or the N.Sane Trilogy exist.

Maybe chucking the All-Stars brand on it wasn't the smartest move, a collection that included revamped looks for all NES games, along with a game that had never been released outside of Japan before at that point as it increases expectations. But then again given the sales, maybe it was the smartest move...

I feel it was also going to be a stretch to turn an at most 4-5 hour segment from the original into a 30 hour one, and there are some parts that benefit from greater exploration or give time to develop characters that didn't get much first time round.

Unfortunately about half of the experience felt like severe padding which added nothing to the story or world and while the expanding of some characters was welcome, the introduction of others left me with a shrug at best and my eyes rolling to the back of my head at worst.

It's a shame, because the game looks great and can be fun to play but it felt tedious having to go through so much annoyance to get to the good bits.

Speaking in as general terms about the main thing some people have been upset about - I respect the decisions and even like them up to a point, but the tail end of the last chapter was out of leftfield compared to the tone of the rest of the game and ended up feeling rather dumb.