Yep, it’s still the 25th anniversary of Super Mario Bros. The limited edition Wii version of Super Mario All-Stars came out last week, and it offers a ton of nostalgic value for $30. The box set includes the SNES classic Super Mario All-Stars ported on disc to the Wii, a soundtrack of Mario music, and a booklet about gaming’s favorite plumber. As a Nintendo fanboy’s walk down memory lane, this is a great deal. As a gaming experience, not so much. It’s more than the issue of copying a 17-year-old game to the Wii, but to get the full story you’ll have to read after the jump.

Club Nintendo is Nintendo’s big fan club/rewards program, giving dedicated gamers copious swag in return for video game registrations and surveys. The majority of said swag is in my apartment, and as part of the 25th anniversary of Super Mario Bros., we’re going to take a look at it. Many of these items can be obtained through Club Nintendo if you rack up enough coins, but two of them are special “Elite Status” awards given out every year when you reach a high enough coin level. Take a tour through the Mario museum after the break.

Nintendo held a birthday party-slash-grand-reopening of its Nintendo World Store on Sunday, as part of its ongoing celebration of the 25th anniversary of the release of Super Mario Bros. Yes, it’s Mario’s big 2-5, and the shindig was epic. Cake, games, Mario, and hundreds of excited Nintendo fans were packed into the recently remodeled Nintendo World Store at Rockefeller Center.

Check out Shiggy and Reggie’s surprise visit, the giant Mario cake, and a full photo gallery after the break.

Dammit, Nintendo. Only you could get the gaming world excited about the re-release of a 17-year-old remake of some 20-plus-year-old games. You know that Wii version of Super Mario All-Stars Japan is getting, with a soundtrack CD, booklet, and 25th anniversary Super Mario Bros. packaging? We’re getting it, too.

Nintendo announced Thursday that it would be releasing a “limited time” edition of Super Mario All-Stars, the Super Nintendo compilation remake of Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 2 (both American and Japanese versions), and Super Mario Bros. 3, and gave them all 16-bit graphical overhauls and save features. This version of the game will work on the Wii, and be able to use the Wiimote, Classic Controller, and even the Gamecube controller. The game will also include a Mario soundtrack CD and a booklet of Mario history.

The best part? It’ll be just $30. Well, the “best part” is a bit relative. If you consider it a full game in its own right, worthy of a current-generation release at $30, it’s a great deal. If you think it’s a 17-year-old relic that played the remake card when it first game out, it’s a cheap cash-in. If you think the $30 is a steal compared to the $50 of most new Wii games, it’s a great deal. If you think you’re getting ripped off an extra $10 compared to the price of the original games over the Virtual Console, it’s a cheap cash-in. Either way, the game comes out December 12, and will be available at all major retailers (making the “limited edition” part of the release just slightly in question).

Depending on your point of view, my apartment now looks either totally awesome, or like a 12 year old lives in it. This is thanks to the fresh set of New Super Mario Bros. wall decals, manufactured by Blik and provided for review by ThinkGeek. If you ever thought it would be awesome to have a huge video game mural in your room, these vinyl decals are just what you’ve been waiting for.

Super Mario Bros., the game that launched a million side-scrollers, is coming up on its 25th birthday. The game first came out in Japan September 13, 1985, and hit the United States in March of 1986. Nintendo is preparing for the celebration with a trademark representing the game’s 25th anniversary. It’s only been registered in Japan, and Nintendo of America hasn’t made any announcements yet, but it looks like the company is getting ready for some sort of 25th birthday celebration.

One thing’s for certain: a little over a month after the game’s birthday, Super Mario All-Stars will finally hit the Wii. Unfortunately, it looks like it’s going to be a Japan-only release in the form of a retail game. According to Siliconera, the “Super Mario Collection Special Pack” will hit stores in Japan on October 21 with a retail price of 2500 yen (about $30). Besides the game collection (which includes Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 2 USA (the reskinned version of Doki Doki Panic we all grew up with), Super Mario Bros. 2 JP (better known in America as “Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels”), and Super Mario Bros. 3), the pack will come with a soundtrack CD including music ranging from Super Mario Bros. to Super Mario Galaxy 2, and a booklet going over Mario’s history from 1985 to now.

Mario’s side-scrolling debut in America has its 25th anniversary next March, so while nothing has been confirmed by Nintendo of America, there’s still a chance we might see a similar release in the Spring.

When Nintendo first announced the Virtual Console, it seemed like a brilliant idea. The company would re-release the greatest games on its 8-, 16-, and 64-bit systems for download, letting us rebuild our childhood gaming libraries on a single memory card and play all of our favorite old-school games on the Wii. Every week would see a handful of classic games released on the Virtual Console, ready for download.

Four years later, the Virtual Console offers over 360 games (in North America) from the Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Sega Genesis, Turbografix-16, Neo Geo, and even the Sega Master System and Commodore 64. It sounds like a lot, until you realize the NES and SNES had over 700 games each.

The Virtual Console still has a lot of big holes in its library, and it looks like Nintendo isn’t trying very hard to fill them. These days we’re lucky to see one game come out on the VC per week, and that game can range from the obscure and uninteresting (this week’s Ufouria: THe Saga) to the vaguely fun but pales in comparison to other titles (Aero the Acrobat).

Here are the 15 most notable games missing from the Wii Virtual Console.

We take a lot of game series for granted today. It seems like Metroid and Metal Gear have been around for years, and have always been beloved by gamers. The gaming landscape is a lot different than it was years ago, though. Some of the most popular franchises in gaming have had massive gaps in their libraries, spending years between really big hits. Sometimes there aren’t any new games in the series for some time, and sometimes the series has a string of duds. Of course, the longer a franchise goes without a big, popular release, the more impressive it is when it finally come back. Here are the 6 biggest comebacks in gaming.