Ahhh the memories :D Good times.
As the luck would have it, the SNES didn't include the proper cables for the VCR/TV that we had at the time, so after church, here we were, driving around the place looking for a store that was open to sell us the right cables or adapters. Eventually it happened... we found a place, got what we needed and headed home.
The first game that got popped in was of course, Super Mario All-Stars. I still remember the little chattering voices in the dark and then *bing*, you hit a button and the characters appear in all their glory. After the splash screen, I remember being somewhat disappointed… "Multiple games? Oh no, they're all going to be little crappy games shoved together to sell off"… oh how wrong I was.
I went through each of the games, just playing a couple of minutes to see what they were like and decided that Super Mario 3 was for me. After all, it was the most like Super Mario World that my neighbour had been playing and ranting about. After spending countless hours on Mario 3 I found that Mario 2 was to my liking, similar, but very very different. By the time I had been able to finish both of these classics, I was able to appreciate the wonderfulness that was Super Mario Bros and then eventually, the Lost Levels, but that was more or less an extender for the original.
Looking back on it, I'm really impressed with the amount of game play that came from that one little cartridge. After recently buying a Wii, my mum keeps reminiscing and how good the value of the SNES was as we got so much play out of it.. 'it's the best thing we ever bought for you kids' she likes to say. And I think, most of that can be attributed to Mario All-Stars.