Iwata Asks, Super Mario All-Stars

Cite as: Iwata Asks, Super Mario All-Stars
Original: https://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/wii/super-mario-all-stars/
sha256: cfd58345ec6c6c99e8c50163fdaeb14ebce3f30f53ed4ee95d97045b3a5f15eb
Archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20150725233103id_/http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/_ui/xml/wii/super-mario-all-stars.xml
Accessed: 2026-10-26
Licence: © Nintendo
Credit: Nintendo Co., Ltd.; Satoru Iwata interviews Sugiyama and Mori, staff on the Super Famicom Super Mario All-Stars, and Koji Kondo.
Notes: The pinned copy is the interview's XML, which carries the full text and footnotes; the HTML page is at the url. Read for Iwata on why The Lost Levels was made ("for advanced players"), Sugiyama on Miyamoto wanting it in All-Stars because "not many had played on the Disk System", the save function added for All-Stars, Kondo on the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2 being a direct continuation of the first game, and the footnotes dating All-Stars to July 1993 and The Lost Levels to June 1986.

Cited on

The game was aimed at players who had mastered the first. Miyamoto recalls a sticker on the package that said "For Super Players", and a note to Nintendo's NES Classic interview describes it as a tougher challenge developed for advanced players. Nintendo's page today pitches it at people who played Super Mario Bros. to exhaustion, with a higher difficulty. Iwata, interviewing the All-Stars developers in 2010, described it the same way: he said they made it for advanced players, and Sugiyama agreed.	`Iwata`	Web
In America, the Super Mario Bros. 2 that Nintendo released was a different game. Koji Kondo says the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2 continued the first game directly, while in America it was a remake of Yume Kojo: Doki Doki Panic.	`Kondo`	Interview
Super Mario All-Stars for the Super Famicom collected the game in July 1993, as The Lost Levels, with Super Mario Bros. 1 to 3; it came out in North America in August 1993. Sugiyama, who says he worked on it as an assistant director and designer under another main director, recalls, if he remembers correctly, that Miyamoto proposed the collection; he thinks the idea was to include The Lost Levels to give a game few had played on the Disk System another chance. He says the team added saving, after each level in The Lost Levels, as significant help.	`footnote 1SugiyamaSugiyamaSugiyamaSugiyamaSugiyama`	Interview