Super Mario Maker impressions

I know what you’re going to say. “But Drew, the demo of Mighty No. 9 — which you backed — is out today. Why aren’t you doing an impressions piece on that?”

To which I say, “Because.”

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get down to business.

Prepare to meet your (Super Mario) maker

Before I get going on about making and playing customized Mario levels, I really, really, want to celebrate all the Mario Paint references Super Mario Maker brings to the table.

The title screen (which you can pick up and play if you don’t proceed into the menu, by the way) directly references by having every letter of the game’s tile react when it is tapped with a variety of need effects, some of which even affects the gameplay.

Every once in a while while building levels, three flies may wander on screen. Your cursor will switch to a familiar-looking flyswatter when near them. Swatting the flies transports you into a fly-swatting minigame, though this one is far more challenging than in Mario Paint!

A few bits and bobs of the user interface and some of the later creative options take their cues from the Super Nintendo cult classic, but that’s about it as far as the big shout-outs go. Here’s hoping the reaction and recognition result in a proper follow up that bizarrely hadn’t occurred on the DS or Wii.

But back to the main event. Super Mario Maker is an outstanding sandbox that would have been the much-needed killer app for the Wii U’s tablet back when the console launched. Building levels is friendly and intuitive, and it’s hard not to feel excited when you master the process and create your first stage from scratch.

The game has trouble keeping up the momentum, though, as the release schedule of the authoring tools went too slow for me. The first update arrived almost instantly after I started playing, but two levels later, I was stalling creatively, wanting to use powerups, enemies and terrain that was still locked. I yearned to use vines, starmen and invisible blocks. I had great ideas for Super Mario World and Super Mario 3 stages.

The second update, which I’m (for now) stuck on, only delivered the starman.

After building my fifth stage, I grew tired with the limits of my toolbox, and moved on to playing levels instead of building them.

I worked through all eight 10-Mario Challenges, consisting of on-disk levels made by the game’s developers. Many of them felt like the Mario entrees in NES Remix, training disguised as skills competitions. And believe me, when you see what all the other owners of Super Mario Maker have done in the online stages, you’ll be glad you trained up; the 100-Mario Challenge uses only user-submitted levels.

I’ve yet to finish a 100-Mario Challenge on high difficulty; the best run so far has me with 37 Marios left and only six of 16 stages cleared. Yeah.

The lost levels

While the toolset is expansive, and it’s fantastic to see elements in games they didn’t exist before (fire bars in SMB 3 and SMW, for example, and Thwomps, Chain Chomps and Kuribo’s shoe in SMB), the omissions are very obvious. Glaring, even.

There are no Fire Bros., Boomerang Bros., Sumo Bros., Spike, Chargin’ Chuck, Renzor, Rex, Boom Boom, Big Bertha, Koopalings, Hammer-throwing Bowser and countless other enemies.

There are also no slopes. There are no giant-size pipes and blocks. While there is an ice block, there is no ice terrain. Further, there isn’t the kind of ice block in which coins and enemies are frozen. Nor is there the other, other kind of ice block that could be picked up and thrown. Nor is there the SMB 3 enemy who absolutely murdered you with their ability to throw those blocks.

There are no frog, tanuki, Hammer Bros. or penguin suits, P-Wings, carrots, poison mushrooms, gold flowers or ice flowers. There’s no pink note blocks or silver P-switches.

The enemies don’t dance to the music in the New SMB stages, one of the series’ little hallmarks.

While you can use Yoshi, there are no baby Yoshis. The red, blue and yellow Yoshis are likewise missing. There are no berries to eat, and Yoshi won’t lay a super mushroom after eating five enemies. Yoshi also doesn’t gain abilities from different-colored Koopas; naturally, the yellow and blue Koopas are omitted. It was actually a shock to me playing through a re-creation of Super Mario World‘s Yoshi’s Island 2 stage and not spitting fire after Yoshi ate a red shell.

And, of course, enemies, terrain and powerups from Super Mario USA (or 2 to us in North America) and the Super Mario Land 1 and 2 are unrepresented in any form.

There are other limitations as well. While you can make warp pipes, they must lead to a new screen; you cannot have a warp pipe that simply moves Mario back and forth in the same area. Conversely, vines cannot lead to new screens as they did (only) in SMB. You also cannot make a level that is only partially underwater.

Another immediately obvious awkward bit is that mushroom powers still spawn when you’re big Mario, not turning into fire flowers or super leafs/feathers/propeller hats instead.

Some of this functionality may yet be added in a future update, but Nintendo’s been mum on whether any major content revisions or DLC is planned, other than to mention they hear a lot of people asking about Super Mario USA.

The gallery is open

If you’re interested in trying a few of the levels I’ve built so far, have at! Bear in mind, there only use up to the second (of eight) updates worth of building materials.

“A simple respite” 9D31-0000-003B-4B19

This is a Mario 1 level based on me continuing to mess around with the tutorial. Nothing nasty or overly creative, but it was a good teeth-cutter for me.

“Three lives to live” 0EBA-0000-003B-671D

This was a mostly failed attempt at making a level with lots of alternate paths and rewards for exploration. It started life as a Mario 1 level, but I eventually swapped it to the New SMB style so it could be less butt-ugly given the lack of background tools at the time I made it. The name comes from the fact that there are three (intentional) ways to get a 1-up in this level.

“Fly, my pretties!” 282A-0000-003B-400C

This is an asshole level. As you well know, I am an asshole, but I’m not 100% a dick. While I will spring death traps on you in this stage, not a single one of them is inescapable (unlike some really awful stages I played in the expert difficulty 100-Mario Challenge). I very deliberately used the New SMB set for this stage in order to enable the wall jump. It will be your best friend if you are skilled, but your worst enemy if you are not.

I made this stage for Chris of Let’s Play and Couch Co-op fame after playing his first Mario Maker level, in which I was unintentionally killed by an errant design element. He’s sense completely remodeled that level, and you can play it for yourself at B374-0000-0033-EEDF. He also has another level that’s not for the feint of heart at 11CD-0000-0034-BD51.

“Sunken cannons” 7952-0000-003E-60BB

This stage I’m the most proud of. It looks great with strong continuity of design. It ramps up with a variety of challenges without being overdone. It’s hard, but fair if you keep moving. There’s some rewards along the way for those willing to take the risks, and subtle shortcuts that help protect you from some of the dangers.