You’re six years old and you just built the most amazing, intricate, and detailed sand castle. No other sand castle can match such intense artistry. This is your greatest achievement.
“Mom! Look what I did!” you scream and proudly share your creation, seeking unconditional approval. That’s Super Mario Maker. Even when you have no idea what form your level will take, nearly every creation evokes a sense of pride. Through nostalgic nods to Mario Paint and surprising flexibility to utterly desecrate familiar Mario elements, Super Mario Maker will cast a smile across your face.
Let’s-a-Go!
You’ll start by playing an incomplete Level 1-1 from Super Mario Bros. and are prompted to fill in the blanks in order to reach the flagpole. It’s a natural introduction to the creation toolkit and forced me outside of my comfort zone and straight into the scary world of building. I mean, it’s a lot of pressure, coming up with something worthy of the Super Mario.
In a way, I was expecting to be presented with more fill-in-the-blank events but Super Mario Maker never tells you what makes a good level, rather, it teaches the fundamentals of design through a clever graduation system. As you build, you’ll gain access to more art styles, enemies, and power ups. Before unlocking each set of tools, you’ll have the option to play a Sample Level which illustrates how to integrate the new elements. Once you realize these Sample Levels are the tutorials, you’ll appreciate them for how inspiring they are.
This throttled roll out might cause for disappointment. However, after unlocking a few deliveries, you’ll be grateful that it wasn’t all available out of the gate. By starting with Mario’s most basic elements like Goombas and Mushrooms, you’ll learn to create interesting levels based on platforming and pacing rather than using an over-abundance of stuff as a crutch.
Super Mario Maker’s greatest accomplishment is making level design, an insanely complex concept, accessible to everyone. This is largely thanks to a wonderful combination of the Gamepad and the powerful user interface. Placing items with precision and copying multiple items quickly is a breeze. I fully expected to skip over “Make” and jump right into “Play.” To my surprise, Super Mario Maker gave me a safe place to try my hand at creating and made me feel quite skilled, if I do say so myself.
Super Mario Player
We all know how Mario plays but what surprised me was the diversity of gameplay across the four art styles. I was reminded that Mario gains a little more dexterity with each iteration. For example, the ability to carry turtle shells in Super Mario Bros. 3 rather than just knock them ahead in the original, or a spin jump in Super Mario World, and of course wall jumps introduced in New Super Mario Bros. U. This variable alone lends to a ton of content and I won’t be getting bored any time soon but its only the beginning.
There are so many things you can do to enemies and power ups that you’ve never seen before but totally make sense in the world of Super Mario. What would you expect to happen if you were to give a Mushroom to a Koopa? He gets bigger. Put a set of wings on him? He flies. Throw a Hammer Brother on top? You have a giant flying Koopa giving a piggy back to a Hammer Brother. It looks as ridiculous as it sounds and this is really one of the more basic combinations. This juxtaposition of familiar and outlandish is insanely clever and only flirts with being gimmicky.
Mamma Mia!
As great as it is, I have two major problems with Super Mario Maker. First, you can expedite the unlocking process by spamming levels with an impossible number new tools. Knowing this, your impatience will likely take over and you’ll want to see what the next set of tools will contain. Ultimately, you will (read: I did) miss the understated tutorial system. This is similar to learning the guitar. Nobody wants to learn scales or chord progressions, just teach me how to play Master of Puppets. Well, trust me, it’s hard to write a song if you’ve skipped the fundamentals. By creating a shortcut to the “good stuff,” Super Mario Maker does itself a disservice for both creators and players of the user-generated content.
In other creator-centric games like Sound Shapes (PS3, PS4, PS Vita), you unlock creation pieces by playing through a campaign. With this in mind, I would have much rather the 10 or even 100 Mario Challenge given this treatment with a more directly linked connection between completion and unlocks.
The other problem is the Sharing component of Super Mario Maker. Clearly, playing Mario is perfect – it’s Mario. The Creation tools are great. But Sharing is cumbersome and impersonal. There are workarounds to find what your friends are up to, like using the Miiverse, but this is completely disjointed from the rest of the game and far from intuitive.
You can Follow creators that you discover by chance but you can’t search for specific users, like friends, internet personalities, or game developers. Super Mario Maker completely misses the opportunity to tap into the internet’s buzz surrounding this game.
Want to try my level? Okay, grab a pen and paper. The code is XXXX-XXXX… Facebook, Twitter, and various online forums are full of level codes and Gamepad screen shots taken from smart phones by only the most enthusiastic creators. Ironically, if it weren’t for Apple or Android, level sharing would be darn-near non-existent. Simple filter tools or tags would go a long way to enhance this part of the experience.
Final Verdict
Just like most Nintendo games, Super Mario Maker is best played with someone close to you. My wife and I are having a blast creating levels for each other. After polishing her masterpieces, she’ll proudly hand me the Gamepad and say “try it!” Then watch with glee as I discover unforeseen ways to reach the flagpole. It’s a profoundly joyful experience and something I hope more people get to be a part of.
In video games, milestones are generally celebrated with self-congratulatory remakes or Anniversary editions. In typical Nintendo style, Mario celebrates 30 years by flipping the script and invites us to create our own love letters to the plumber who started it all. Though Super Mario Maker stumbles a little with curation, creator discovery, and sharing in general, it more than makes up for these shortfalls with tried-and-true playing mechanics and an innovative level creator that single-handedly justifies the Wii U’s Gamepad.
Very nice review.