Super Mario Maker

It’s been done before, certainly, and with a respectable degree of tact and deliberation, to boot. But it’s never been done by Nintendo, in that Nintendo kind of way, with all the polish and charm and delightful balance between complexity and accessibility on which the developer prides themselves.

It’s not that Nintendo is totally new to the user creation game. Mario vs. DK tried its hand at level design, and of course, in a different sort of way, the Animal Crossing series has been all about customization. More recently, Art Academy emphasized player creativity, but it also was a much more traditional, well, blank canvas for users to play with. Truly, not since Mario Paint has a mainstream, high-profile Nintendo game been so dependent upon user production and participation.

Super Mario Maker is not completely insulated from the lessons of recent attempts by others to capitalize on the concept. After all, everyone knows how these types of games go: it all seems so promising at the start, but before long, it’s far too obvious that the droves of wanna-be amateur level designers simply can’t hold a candle to the professionals who do this for a living. Balance, pacing, and just plain fun in level design are acquired skills, and unfortunately, even the best make-your-own-level games have fallen victim to an inability to effectively filter out the junk and award those who have done a great job of contributing.

Well, it may be a consequence of the pre-release community composition of game reviewers, analysts, enthusiasts, and developers, but thus far, Super Mario Maker seems like it’s handling things differently. Sure, there’s a healthy share of terrible levels, but there are good to great levels in larger numbers—at least, in larger numbers than there ever seemed to be in LittleBigPlanet, anyway.

Super Mario Maker is precisely what it claims to be: a game which lets you create your own Mario levels. You can choose between four different Mario universes—Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, and New Super Mario Bros. U—and six different environments—Overworld, Underground, Underwater, Airship, Ghost House, and Castle. Each game features those same environments, even if they didn’t originally exist in the classic title, and it’s fun to see how Nintendo has retroactively applied the template to the older games (for instance, how airship and ghost house levels look in Super Mario Bros.). There’s even new musical compositions in the style of the original games to accompany the new environments. It’s also amazing how good the different game styles look in upscaled widescreen HD.

Of course, there’s also a ton of different elements (enemies, power-ups, interactive objects) you can add to your level at will. In a lot of ways, it’s much like what you’d expect a LittleBigPlanet of the Mario universe to look like. But why is it that Super Mario Maker seems poised to provide greater quality of user-generated content than its forebears?

Part of the reason is certainly the comparable simplicity of Mario Maker’s design. While LittleBigPlanet prided itself in allowing players to create practically anything, Mario Maker doesn’t even attempt to promise such flexibility in design. It features a mere fraction of the available gameplay elements that LBP does, and it corrals players’ ambitions to an extent within the safe confines of the Mario construct. Much like most everything else Nintendo is known for, Mario Maker trades flexibility and infinite possibility for accessibility and intelligent balance.

Not only does the game feature fewer gameplay elements, but it’s more approachable, too. Although unlocking new options isn’t anything new in level creation, Mario Maker gently yet firmly encourages the player to experiment with what’s already available (for “five minutes”—which is really like five active minutes to be more accurate) before the next delivery of level ingredients is queued.

What’s more, the delivery doesn’t happen until the next day. So the idea is that if you spend a little bit of time starting on a new level concept with your available palette, you’re likely to want to keep fooling with them, now devoid of any real pressure to progress, simply for the sake of finishing something you’ve already begun. And you know, it works—at least, for the first week or so, when those new deliveries are still available for the unlocking.

This approach has the obvious side effect of painlessly teaching the player how to implement the array of available options. While you only begin with a couple of different environments and game universes, you soon grow that list to more than double (as listed above), and that’s not to mention the actual game elements (ingredients, if you will; the previously-referenced enemies, power-ups, and so on) that are granted to you. You begin with less than a couple dozen of these primary ingredients, but the list soon grows to sixty different ones.

And actually, that’s not all. You see, in typical Nintendo fashion, it’s the optional hidden depth that’s so much more appealing. As it turns out, around half (or more) of the elements can be shaken to reveal alternate versions of themselves (or different, yet related elements). For instance, shaking a Koopa Troopa switches him between green and red varieties, and shaking a Piranha Plant toggles between normal and fire-spitting types. Some of the enemies produced by this process are completely unique, and many of the elements cannot be found in the original games (especially Super Mario Bros.).

Or maybe you’d like a larger version of an enemy? Easy—just drag a mushroom overtop it in the editor. A couple of enemies even completely change types when you do this. Or maybe you want them to fly? Sure—try dragging and dropping wings onto them. Or do both mushroom and wings. This same technique can be used to alter the behavior of other elements as well, such as adding pipes that spit super stars or Lakitus that fling fire flowers. A flying Spiny, for instance, emits four spines that fly outward across the screen at regular intervals during its trip. See, it’s complicated, but it’s so intuitive, that you really don’t even have to think about how to work it. And that speaks to the elegance of Nintendo’s design here.

You can also stack elements to great effect. Probably one of the first things anyone does when playing Super Mario Maker is creates a pile of giant enemies, because it’s just so easy and fun to do. What’s interesting about it is that everything just fits together logically, and the player really doesn’t have to do very much to make it work. You can’t break the game it seems; it just figures out what you’re doing and goes with the flow.

To that end, it also does its best to remove the mundanity and laboriousness from the level creation process; as you create, background elements (bushes, trees) are automatically populated. When you place doors or pipes, they come in pairs, and you’re forced to produce an exit. When it’s all finished, you actually have to complete the level before it is uploaded. Combining elements as mentioned previously (mushrooms and wings on enemies, enemies or items in pipes or blocks, etc.) works seamlessly and without concern for the details.

And the editor makes it fun to play around with the options, too. The interface is, well, cute, and the presentation of the various controls is slick and well-handled. Everything pops in and out of view with smooth animations and satisfying accompanying sound effects. The music for the particular game and environment with which you’re operating fades between the game version and a spoofed-up editor version with jazzy instruments or electronic embellishment as you switch between editor and game testing. And, speaking of which, dropping Mario anywhere, with any power-up in hand, is as easy as dragging and dropping him, then hitting the Play button to immediately check your results. You can toggle his movement path using a separate option for easy planning of platform placement and other elements. It’s really just well-done stuff.

Of course, the touch interface is leagues beyond the old controller-based interaction of the previous LittleBigPlanet games. “Drawing” platforms and environments is mostly a pleasure, with helpful multi-select box-drawing (think Microsoft Windows) and element Copy commands available at the simple press of a trigger button. The rest of the specific controls are just as intuitive, and while it isn’t worth going through all of them, to quickly explain what’s available, you can adjust the course length, add a sub-level of any environment you choose, configure autoscroll (and the speed of scrolling—three choices), and choose the time limit for the course. You can even customize the sound effects that occur when Mario passes by a particular spot in your level.

The longer you play, the more costumes you unlock, too, which can be acquired via the Mystery Mushroom item in Super Mario Bros. levels. There are tons of different characters available from numerous game franchises (think Super Smash Bros. style), and each is accompanied by its own set of sound effects. On the media server, tons of levels have already been developed which take advantage of the costumes. It’s a lot of fun.

Between the available elements and other options, there are so many permutations possible that it’s easy to see the power this places in the hands of the creative community. To get a better idea of just what this entails, there’s really no better way than to list the available level elements and tag them with a quick explanation. So that’s precisely what I’m going to do next.

Available Elements in Super Mario Maker

Please Note: These elements change in accordance with the environment and game universe you’ve selected. Where it’s interesting, I’ll note any major morphisms.

Please Also Note: Many elements can be shaken to transform them into different elements. Where this is possible, I’ve noted the transformations in indented bullets.

1. Block (breakable) – This is your typical Mario brick/block which can be hit and broken by Super Mario. In Super Mario World (SMW), it changes to the flippable “eye” block. You can drag/drop items and enemies to the block to place them inside it.
2. Question block – Again, self-explanatory stuff. Again, you can drag/drop items and enemies to the block to place them inside it.
3. Hard block – This is a block which cannot be broken or interacted with.
4. Ground – This is a piece of the ground.
5. Pipe – You can place things in pipes by dragging/dropping. You can also create a path to a sublevel by dragging Mario to the pipe and then placing the exit pipe in an area of your choice.
6. Mushroom
   
7. Coin
   
8. Note block – Functionally, these are simply the bouncy blocks with the musical note on them. They can be used for evil purposes during level creation to make navigation of the terrain particularly challenging, as timing one’s press of the jump button to catapult off of one high enough to progress is not consistently possible for mere mortals.
   • Musical block – So I played a level where I got Rick Rolled—no kidding. And the way it was done was using these musical blocks, of course. You see, the blocks play notes when something touches them, and that includes both Mario and any enemies. Placing enemies on top of the notes and having them jump at just the right time can generate music if you’re really clever about it.
9. Goomba – When wings are added, they bounce.
   
10. Koopa Troopa (green) – Green KTs keep walking the same direction, right off the edge of a lift if it’s in front of them. When wings are added, they bounce.
    • Koopa Troopa (red) – Red KTs stop and turn around at the end of a ledge. When wings are added, they fly up and down.
      
11. Piranha Plant – These generally reside within pipes, but they don’t have to; they can also sit on the ground or be granted wings. The normal variety of this plant either just sits on the ground, pops out of pipes at regular intervals, or leaps into the air with wings.
    • Fire Piranha Plant – Same drill but they spit fire. Come on, you knew that was coming.
12. Wings – These can be added to practically anything: blocks, enemies, power-ups, coins… some enemies fly, some jump, some hover.
13. Lakitu – He spews Spinies normally, but he can also be equipped with any power-ups or other enemies. Outfitted with wings, he bounces up and down in the air as he flies (evil). Also evil: having him throw Fire Piranha Plants.
14. Spiny – Lakitu’s weapon of choice. Given wings, these nasty little guys spew four spines (at alternating angles) every few seconds as they fly across the screen, uninhibited by objects.
    • Spiny Shell
15. Lift – These are those long, horizontal platforms that move back and forth or up and down. You can tap them to choose which direction. Giving them wings makes them undulate up and down in the air as they move.
    • Falling Lift – The blue lifts that drop out from under Mario as soon as he lands on them, forcing him to act quickly.
16. Fire Flower
    
17. Star
    
18. 1-Up
    
19. Bill Blaster – The towers that shoot Bullet Bills. These can also be equipped with power-ups, coins, and other enemies to change what they shoot. Their height can be adjusted by dragging up on them.
    • Homing Bill Blaster – A red-colored version of the original that fires homing Bullet Bills.
20. Blooper – The little swimmy guys that are so very annoying. Given wings, they change their movement patterns.
    • Blooper (with kids) – What’s worse than a Blooper? A Blooper with kids following it!
21. Cheep Cheep (green) – It’s a fish that just swims (or jumps, depending on the environment). This one keeps on swimming in one direction. With wings, Cheep Cheeps hover a bit every few jumps.
    • Cheep Cheep (red) – Swims back and forth repeatedly.
22. Spike Trap – Touch it and get hurt. This is a stationary object which cannot be modified. In Super Mario Bros. 3 water environments, it turns into a jellyfish.
23. Semi-Solid Platform – A platform Mario can both walk in front of and/or jump on.
    • (Alternates) – Various colors/styles – three total.
24. Hammer Bros. – You know them, you hate them. Given wings they jump higher.
    • Sledge Bros. – You know, the big fat guys that immobilize Mario when they land.
25. Buzzy Beetle – The black-clad, fire-proof beetles.
    • Buzzy Beetle Shell – Just the shell.
26. Thwomp – Given wings, they fly back and forth waiting to strike.
27. Lava Bubble (Podoboo) – Can bounce from below the screen, into lava, out of pipes, out of Lakitu…
28. Bowser – One of the coolest elements (obviously); it behaves differently depending on which game universe you’re working within. For the most part he jumps around and spits fire in random directions. Can be outfitted with a mushroom or wings (or both) to great effect. Only three total Bowsers can be placed in each level.
    • Bowser Jr. – Similar to his dad, he also holes up in his shell and slides around, wreaking havoc in between projectile-breathing exercises. Each Bowser Jr. counts as a Bowser, so only up to three can be placed in each level (any combination).
29. Trampoline (vertical) – Catapults Mario upward.
    • Trampoline (horizontal)
      
30. Skull Platform – A platform which, once boarded, begins moving to the right until it disintegrates several seconds later.
    • Blue Skull Platform – Same as above but moves at a multiple of the speed.
31. Fire Bar – The rotating fire bars that make castle navigation so difficult. You can control rotation direction and length through tapping and dragging.
32. Rocky Wrench – These guys emerge from the ground (or a pipe) and toss slow-moving wrenches through the air in Mario’s direction. They’re easily one of the most annoying enemies. With wings, it leaps out of the ground and hovers before throwing.
    • Monty Mole – Jumps out of the ground and, once landed, runs. If equipped with wings, jumps around after emerging. Horribly irritating.
33. Bob-omb – Walks around, and when irritated, explodes.
    • Short-fuse Bob-omb – If left alone for a short period, explodes anyway.
34. Donut Lift – Falls if Mario stands stationary on it for a couple seconds. You can even give it wings to make it fly.
35. Pow Block – When disturbed, kills all the enemies on the screen.
36. Cloud platform – Just a different style of platform; that’s all.
37. Rocket Engine – Spews a line of fire every few seconds.
    • Rocket Engine (opposite timing) – Same thing, except this one fires when the regular Rocket Engines are off.
38. Cannon – Fires cannonballs (shocking!) at a 45-degree angle. Always fires to the left. Dragging a mushroom to it does not configure it to fire mushrooms; it doubles its size (and the cannonballs which emerge).
    • Red Cannon – Fires twice as fast as the regular Cannon.
39. Bridge – Much like a semi-solid platform, but looks different.
40. Special Power-up (game-specific) – This changes in each game. In Super Mario Bros., it’s the Mystery Mushroom (which Mario uses to adopt a costume), in Super Mario Bros. 3, it’s the Leaf, in Super Mario World, it’s the Feather, and in New Super Mario Bros., it’s the Propeller Hat.
41. Spike Top – A beetle which is not only resistant to fire, but also jumping, due to a single spike on its back. These can also crawl up walls and on ceilings. Given wings, it flies in just the same way as the Spiny, except it doesn’t pause to emit spines.
    • Spike Top (blue) – Same as the previous, but it moves considerably more quickly.
42. Boo – The ghosts that chase you when your back is turned to them. Placed on the ground, they move forward continuously, occasionally stopping to submerge back into the soil for a couple seconds.
    • Circling Boo Buddies – These are the boos that form a circle with a single opening and move around its circumference.
43. Dry Bones – Can’t be killed; rebuilds itself after a short while once attacked. Will stop every so often to toss a bone in whatever direction it’s facing.
    
44. Magikoopa – Teleports around the area and fires Wingdings-like magic in Mario’s direction.
45. Hidden Block – A block that only appears once it’s hit by Mario.
    
46. Vine
    
47. P-Switch – Turns blocks to coins and vice versa. These can be configured to come out of blocks, pipes, or to be thrown by Lakitu.
    
48. Flat Door – These are placed automatically in pairs, and up to four pairs can be placed.
49. Muncher – The little black plants that essentially act as a hazardous floor to anything but invincible or Kuribo’s Shoe Mario.
50. Wiggler – A caterpillar that roams slowly and becomes angry and speeds up when stepped on. Given wings, he bounces like a madman, which is a tough thing to avoid when stressed.
    • Mad Wiggler – Wiggler starts out mad.
51. Kuribo’s Goomba / Yoshi’s Egg – This item changes in relation to the game universe. In SMB and SMB3, it’s the former. In SMW and NSMBU it’s the latter.
52. Koopa Clown Car – Can be used by any enemy, as well as Mario. Placing normally-stationary enemies in this thing (such as a Chain Chomp) can really create a terrible situation for Mario.
53. Mushroom Platform – Another semi-solid platform whose height can be adjusted.
54. Arrow Sign – Just a floating sign that points in a chosen direction (any of eight).
55. Track – This is a huge element that can be used to create visible tracks for literally anything to move along—platforms, enemies, power-ups, you name it. You simply draw the path, which can move in any direction you please, and then place the elements along the track in whatever order and facing whichever direction you want. Shaking the track produces curved tracks for a nice aesthetic to mix things up.
56. Conveyor Belt – Moves either left or right; can be tapped to choose.
    • Fast Conveyor Belt – Moves as fast as Mario can run!
57. Grinder – These spinning blades are normally seen moving along tracks in Super Mario World, but they can also be placed stationary to provide a fearful barrier.
58. Chain Chomp – Tethered to the ground by a wooden peg, these jump at Mario when he’s nearby.
    • Chain Chomp, untethered – Same thing, but already freed and bouncing around everywhere.
59. Ice Block – Everyone’s least favorite slippery surface.
60. One-Way Wall – A gate you can only pass through in one direction. The use of these can produce some interesting (and confusing!) situations.

When you see it in list form, it becomes clear that there’s a lot of stuff to play with. And bear in mind that my explanations are not in any way exhaustive; even on items where I don’t mention it, wings or mushrooms can generally be applied, items can be stacked, placed inside of pipes, Bill Blasters, blocks, Lakitu… there’s a ton of possibilities.

Even considering all of this, the game certainly doesn’t grant you every tool for Mario platforming creation. Tons of enemies are missing (seriously—check out the list from Super Mario World alone to get an idea), and plenty of functionality is absent, too. There’s obviously a huge list of stuff that didn’t make the cut (considering how many Mario games there have been to date). But the ones I missed the most in particular center on the inability to add blocks with conditional/progressive power-ups (e.g. a Fire Flower or Feather which only appears if Mario already has a Mushroom, which is an odd omission), as well as the lack of conditional Stars (coin if Mario hits it, Star if invincible Mario hits it).

There are other limitations as well. While the online interface is quite good overall (you can “follow” Makers whose levels you enjoy, “Star” the levels to reward good Makers and promote their stuff, and comment on levels via Miiverse to have your feedback publicly visible following the completion of a level), it’s still difficult to locate the style of courses you enjoy or find those made by friends of yours. The browsable courses are sorted into three categories—Featured, Star Ranking, and Up & Coming—which list the top courses for each. You can drill down further by choosing a location (Global or Regional), a time period, and a difficulty (Easy/Medium/Expert). But the only way to search for a course is by its 12-digit Course ID; otherwise, you’ll have to pick Makers (either by finding an existing course or following them, or by using the separate Makers category browser) and manually explore their uploaded items. It would have been awesome to be able to search courses based on style of gameplay, game universe, environment, enemy composition… this is a missed opportunity. Perhaps an idea for a patch?

It also would have been awesome to be able to view other people playing your course. In fact, I would have really enjoyed such a feature, but nothing like this exists in Super Mario Maker. The closest thing is the ability to view how many people have cleared your course (versus the number of attempts) and glance on a map at the locations where people have died. Hopefully Nintendo can add a replay feature without too much effort—it’d be awesome.

Two other limitations that might instead be considered positive however: firstly, courses are purged from the server over time if they are not very popular. I suppose this helps to weed out trash that no one ever wants to play, but it’s also kind of sad if you just never have your stuff noticed. This hasn’t happened to my knowledge on the media server yet, and it isn’t specified how unpopular a course needs to be to wind up purged, but it’s right there in the manual. And secondly, each player is limited to 10 simultaneous course uploads—at least, until they earn their way to more medals via the acquisition of stars from other players who enjoyed their courses. This also is probably a good thing however; if you are uploading junk, why not allow those who are doing a better job more real estate?

So maybe you’ll spend most of your time just playing the levels at random instead—and here, Super Mario Maker does a pretty good job. In the 100 Mario Challenge, you begin with 100 lives and must make your way through either 8 or 16 levels, selected according to their perceived difficulty, which is presumably determined based on their clear rate as a primary metric. The 8-level challenge is all “Easy” levels, and the “Normal” difficulty is 16 levels. After you complete Normal, Expert is unlocked, which is… well, crazy stupid hard. It’s fun for a few levels, but Expert does get pretty tedious.

There are some premade levels to get you started on some creative concepts, too. They’re part of the easier 10 Mario Challenge, and they’re added to Coursebot (the course save system, straight out of Mario Paint!) when you complete them. You can also browse the fairly interactive manual and enter 4-digit concept codes to unlock videos of new ideas.

Though surely there’s plenty of room for additional features and improvement (as well as some streamlining of the online interface), Super Mario Maker is a user-generated content experience assembled with the wisdom and mature philosophy of gaming’s finest. Provided the community-based filtration and rewards system holds up, it could very well wind up being the most enjoyable game of its type to date. While it lacks the sophistication and freedom of LittleBigPlanet, Super Mario Maker is truly all the better for it; within the smart confines of its toolset, creation doesn’t take an eternity, and other people’s levels are generally a whole lot more fun to play, too.