Super Mario Maker: The Infinite Mario Generator
Platform: Nintendo Wii U
Developer: Nintendo
Author: J.M.
Today marks the release of Super Mario Maker: Nintendo’s big celebration of 30 years of the little moustachioed plumber.
Super Mario Maker is at its core a level editor. You can go in and create whatever Mario level you can dream up, and then some. The creation interface strictly uses the game pad; in fact it’s totally possible to do everything on the game pad alone. It features a simple and very friendly interface. Want to put some bricks down? Drag and drop them from the menu on to the course. Want to hide a mushroom in a “?” block? Just drag and drop it into the block. Need to erase a mistake? Use the funny little eraser and *poof*.
The level editor also allows which Mario game you wish play in, and as of now there are four options: “Super Mario Bros.”, “Super Mario Bros. 3”, “Super Mario World”, and “New Super Mario Bros. U”. The physics and mechanics will match whichever game setting you choose: wall hugging and grabbing items will work in the “New Super Mario Bros. U” playset, but not in the “Super Mario Bros.” one.
Once you’re done creating your masterpiece level, you can save it to one of 30 worlds, with each world allowing four courses, basically permitting you to save 120 custom-made levels. Once you have a course saved, you can upload it so that other people from around the world can play, rate, and comment on it. What this means is that you can play any course that has been uploaded on to the server, basically giving you infinite levels of 2D Mario goodness. That’s a lot of Mario…
While on the subject of playing levels, there are a few ways to do so. First up is the “10 Mario Challenge”, in which you are given 10 lives to clear 8 random sample levels. This has the added benefit where any course you clear will be added to your sample course list, allowing you to pilfer any cool concepts you come across.
Click on the “Course World” button, and you’ll be brought to the main online hub. There you can play uploaded courses, find other courses created by a particular individual, or take on the “100 Mario Challenge”, which is identical to its “10 Mario” counterpart. This is the only time you’ll be playing random levels from other creators, so some shenanigans may occur.
Super Mario Maker features amiibo support. Place an amiibo on the reader and you’ll unlock a costume that gets added to the Mystery Mushroom roster. This enigmatic fungus works like a regular mushroom, only instead of growing you’ll morph into another character altogether. Fun little Easter eggs to sprinkle around your levels.
Unfortunately, a good deal of the content is hidden away behind a time-release lock. New blocks, items and environments take 24 hours to unlock, over the course of 9 days. A sly trick to make sure players come back every day for at least a week, and one that hasn’t gone unnoticed, as Nintendo has been receiving flak from the decision since announcing it.
EDIT: Nintendo has stated that in the day-one 1.01 patch, the wait time for new items will be reduced from 24 hours to 15 minutes. So it should take a little over 2 hours of messing about in the editor to unlock everything in the suite. Ah, the power of complaining over the internet…
I was always the kid who would follow the instructions of a Lego set to a tee. I bring this up because initially I was afraid I wasn’t going to be able to create an interesting Mario level from thin air; I sadly lack that creative spark. However, I actually did not run into this problem with Super Mario Maker. The mandatory tutorial has you run through an incomplete World 1-1, and then brings you to the editor, and tells you to fix it. As you scroll through the level in the editor, there are silhouettes of items and blocks where they should be, and you’ll be able to fill them in accordingly. Once finished, you are prompted to run the level again, now complete-able. At this point I had a firm understanding of how the editor works (truly, it is as simple as it can be), so I decided to try my hand at creating a level of my own.
Given a blank slate, I was unsure of where to begin, so I sat for a minute thinking about which Mario levels I enjoyed playing the most. I opted for a level strife with Koopas (turtle guys) and ways to use their shells with the environment, so I set to work. About 40 minutes later I had a level which I was quite proud of: separating paths, fun tricks with shells and breakable blocks, and hidden rewards for the players who explore and take the long way around. I was very pleased with how simple and organic the process was. Despite my lack of creativity, I wasn’t berated for not knowing how to proceed; in fact I was encouraged to place things down, test it out quickly, and make adjustments until it was the way I wanted it to be.
My only big point of contention with Super Mario Maker was the price. $69.99 (CAN) seemed like a very steep price for a level editor. Upon further refection, however, I’ve come to accept that this is a fair price, if not just for the sheer amount of content one gets within. An absolutely limitless amount of classic platforming is practically priceless, especially if you have that Mario itch…
On that note, I would definitely recommend Super Mario Maker. Being able to create your own levels for a classic video game is fantastic stuff, and even if you’re not into making courses, you’ll still get plenty of enjoyment from the vast and infinite amount of user-created levels. In the end it is still Super Mario Bros., which is what Nintendo does best, but at least there will always be something new.
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