It received positive reviews for its games, technical improvements, and controls, but it was criticized for its presentation, lack of additional content, time-limited release, and the absence of Super Mario Galaxy 2 (2010).

As of March 2021, Super Mario 3D All-Stars had sold more than 9 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling video games of 2020.

The games in the collection all utilize emulation,[4] although Galaxy was partially recompiled to run natively on the Nintendo Switch.

They support Joy-Con controls with rumble function, and are displayed at higher resolutions, such as Sunshine running in a 16:9 aspect ratio.

[10] Galaxy features optional Joy-Con controls that imitate the motion-controlled setup of the Wii Remote and Nunchuk,[11] with Mario's spin ability remapped to the X and Y buttons.

[17] During development, the team intended to maintain elements of the original games, such as design and spirit, while offering improvements such as an increased resolution and changes to the controller layout.

[23] A follow-up report by VGC corroborated the inclusion of 64, Sunshine, and Galaxy, and claimed that Nintendo's plans to announce the compilation at E3 2020 were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

[50][44][56] Ian Walker from Kotaku said the port of 64 "hasn't introduced any obviously unfortunate consequences" and even fixed some "occasional performance dips" from the original, and that the controls for the game worked well on the Switch.

For Sunshine, he felt the adjusted controls would affect anyone playing who had muscle memory from the original and that the visuals stuttered somewhat late in the game.

He did wish Nintendo had added "some quality-of-life upgrades", feeling players experiencing the game for the first time "might find it somewhat inaccessible".

Finally, Ryan felt upscaling Galaxy made it "a fully realized version" of the game and praised the updated control options, adding the handheld mode configuration, while "not the most ideal way to play", still worked.

[4] By September 7, pre-orders for Super Mario 3D All-Stars had made it the second-best-selling game of 2020 on Amazon in the United States, behind Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

They added that Nintendo and their UK distributors were "unable to give... any reassurance" that more copies would be made available to them through the on-sale period.