There’s a propensity to confirm every 2D Mario game that gets announced and released as “the best Super Mario ever”. And, while they technically are — thanks to decades of tweaking and evolutionary changes — they don’t often represent the revolutionary jump that many might hope they would.
The NES era of Mario games showed massive leaps each iteration, thanks to a better understanding of hardware and software limitations during the early days of gaming. The Super NES brought technology enhancements that helped realize some of the dreams that the designers couldn’t implement. The DS helped refine the 2D formula to its most basic, enjoyable ingredients. But after renditions on the Wii, 3DS and Wii U only seemed to involve minor changes (in actuality they were fairly important design ideas) fans began to wonder if the series had become stale.
In reality the issue wasn’t that the games were bad, because they weren’t. They were incredible. The issue was that the games were still trying to be the best Mario games. Instead, the teams could have focused on trying to be the best Mario experience. The development team behind Super Mario Maker might just very well understand that now, creating something that captures that personal feeling of nostalgia instead of outright copying it.
It’s easy to say “a Super Mario level editor is so obvious,” and it is, to some extent. But just creating levels isn’t the focus of Super Mario Maker; how those levels translate across history and physics, how we play them to make our own little experiences, and how we share them with friends and strangers are the key aspects of the game that drive its very existence. The magic of “Eighties Mario” wasn’t that the levels were great, but it was how we competed with friends and learned new ways to approach them. It’s not that we wanted to play Mario, but that we wanted to play Mario.
By allowing us to create levels, Nintendo is letting go of the tight reins that it had on Mario design and focusing on Mario experience. “This is crazy,” was shouted during the Nintendo World Championships 2015 live stream. “WHOA! HAHAHAHA!” and “How is that even possible?” were almost common.
THAT’S what Mario is. It’s crazy, it’s bonkers, it’s speed runs and it’s secrets. It’s laughing at mistakes and thinking we’ll never make it through a level. It’s wondering how the game’s designers even thought about putting that pipe there in the first place, or that invisible block that halts our jumps across a canyon. And now we’ll get to share that experience with others. Not only can we create levels across four Mario eras — Super Mario Bros & Super Mario Bros 3 (both NES), Super Mario World (SNES) and New Super Mario Bros U (Wii U) — but we can upload and share them around the world.
During the live streams this week, user-created levels ranged from simple (jumping off of a giant vine just to make it through one tine gap onto a flag) to the simply insane (one map in particular named “My Body is Ready”, a meme born of Nintendo of America’s President Reggie Fils-Aimé comments about Wii Fit years ago). The streams have shown how easy the game intends for level creation to be (we’ll have more on that after our latest hands-on), and how fun the results can get. Want to stack up Koopas into a giant wall? Sure. Want to have Bullet Bills launch in timed unison to create stepping stones over a lava pit? Do it. Want to not touch Mario and see the game’s physics take him across a level based on what seems like complete happenstance? Yes we can.
There will be several modes as well (100 Mario limits, time limits, etc) and the ability to use compatible amiibo to replace Mario with the respective character in 8 bit form. Wii Fit Trainer, Link, Samus in Super Mario Bros? Only in a fan’s dreams until now. Nintendo is even releasing 30th Anniversary Super Mario amiibo made of bits and blocks. There’s a lot packed into the game, even though the premise is so simple at its center.
I went from lukewarm on the game to straight up in love with what I’ve seen in videos. This is the Mario I’ve always wanted, and perhaps the one that will redefine the character yet again.
Super Mario Maker arrives on September 11 of this year, packaged with an art book full of images and ideas for levels.
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