Today is Beth & Tom’s Fish Fry! If you’re in Kenosha, come on by, you’re welcome. If you need the address, send me a message and I’ll get it to you. It’s always a good time, kinda like an annual Trottier Family & Friends Reunion. Just hang out and catch up with everyone and eat some awesome food.

Nintendo recently announced a ton of new Mario content coming to the Switch–even several classics I love. First, completely free, they released “Super Mario All-Stars”, which isn’t actually a game in itself, it’s a package of original SNES classics, including Super Mario, Super Mario 2, Super Mario 3, and a Super Mario Lost Levels collection for the Switch. All are the original games, free to Nintendo Online subscribers. Then there’s “Super Mario 3D All-Stars”, if that’s not too confusingly close to the other package. This package includes Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Galaxy, the classic Nintendo games, however, they’ve all been enhanced with updated graphics and widescreen format, so they’re actually a bit different. I’m hoping they also kept originals intact so you can play either version of any of the three games. That would be awesome. I haven’t heard word of that yet though, it’s just wishful thinking.

The latter is also only available as a “Limited Edition”. In this case, that apparently means it will no longer be available after March 31st, 2021. That sounds weird. Why would they limit sales like that? One journalist suggested maybe they will re-release them as separate games in the future for a higher price, but he was only guessing. That would make sense, actually. Nintendo always sells their most popular stuff at the highest price point they can get away with. I like to think of them as the Apple of the console gaming world.

The free Super Mario All-Stars is available now. Super Mario 3D All-Stars is available for pre-order and releases on September 18th. Yes, I pre-ordered it. Right now I’m playing Super Mario, already getting as frustrated I did when I was younger, back in 1983 with I was 20. I’ll get past it though. I have tons more patience these days than I did back then.