Back in 2020, two prominent Nintendo franchises celebrated their anniversaries in different ways: Super Mario Bros and Fire Emblem. The former celebrated 35 years with a big anniversary Nintendo Direct, detailing multiple announcements such as an enhanced port of 3D World, Mario items coming to Animal Crossing New Horizons, merch and NSO drops, a fancy new Game & Watch system, and two new offers to celebrate the 35th anniversary:
**[Super Mario 3D All Stars](https://youtu.be/p1DMxyopFx4)** had been heavily rumored for months in the leadup to the official announcement. And it was finally announced and launched that September. As a collection, I find it to be a basic barebones effort with upscaled emulation, minimal control enhancements, and missed potential. But the games themselves are still anywhere from good to fantastic, and at the very least having the official soundtracks is something. The most common criticism was the omission of Galaxy 2, which would’ve gone a long way towards justifying the $60 price tag. As it stands, I find the Crash, Spyro, Mega Man, and TMNT collections to be better offerings. And even the recent Advance Wars Reboot Camp is still a better deal in my eyes since those at least are from-the-ground-up remakes. But if you have no other means of getting them, this collection is still a fine alternative.
The other notable release from Mario was **[Super Mario Bros. 35](https://youtu.be/a8DJpeCy8CQ)**, a Tetris 99-style battle royale where 35 players compete online to get as far as you can while also screwing with other players in the process. I didn’t play this one much, but it was a free download so I snagged it anyway.
The last big Nintendo release of 2020 came at the end of the year with **[Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light](https://youtu.be/YVp5Ov3cneI)**. This was an official localization of the very first FE game to commemorate the franchise’s 30th anniversary, which I can tell was a much bigger effort than Mario 3D All Stars. It was released on the eShop for only $6 dollars and featured save states and rewind features, which were definitely needed. I had decent fun with it, and I’m glad to have been able to experience the origins of a series I’ve come to appreciate.
But… now we get to the kicker. By the end of March 2021, all three titles were delisted from the eShop as a way to “close off the anniversary celebrations.” In Mario 35’s case even the servers were shut down, so even though you downloaded it you couldn’t play online anymore. And while you can hopefully find physical copies of 3D All Stars somewhere these days, the other two were digital only. I suppose I should consider myself part of the problem for buying into it, and [plenty of people have made jokes and gags about what kind of precedent this could set for future releases](https://youtu.be/t-keY1wvpLg). Happy anniversary to Punch Out next year, I guess? Here’s hoping we get an HD remaster of the Wii game only available digitally for 3 days.