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Earlier this month, the Big N released an atomic bomb worth of fun on Wii U users. The element of surprise is all present in Super Mario Maker. You just don’t know what you’re getting into. Each new level poses as a fun challenge – for veterans and newcomers alike. Fan made levels will either make or break Nintendo’s newest Mario title.
The plan is simple – make a huge ecosystem and let users pump content. Nintendo offers some pre-packaged levels and the community creates the ones that will stick. Following the same strategy as Sony’s Little Big Planet, Super Mario Maker adds a ton of tools wrapped up in an iconic setting.
Tools are intuitive and easy to use, thus making level design fun. However, we would have loved some sort of in-depth tutorial that explains what goes where instead of just meddling with them until we figured things out. Unlocking new tools isn’t as organic as we were promised, but still highly enjoyable. For more information, check out the rest of this Super Mario Maker Review.
Super Mario Maker Review – A Build-A-Mario Game
To make things more interesting and also offer a quick glimpse of Mario’s history, Nintendo brings up a 10 Mario Challenge. This mode gives users 10 lives to complete pre-packaged levels. You have 68 stages and each and everyone one is amazingly different than the other.
While some stages are just remixes from old Mario games, others transform the beloved platformer into a puzzler, adding particular game mechanics that make the experience memorable and more engaging.
Depending on skill level, the 10 Mario Challenge can be completed in one or two sittings.
You can either play or disassemble courses, regardless if you complete them or not. This is a great way to better understand how to construct a level using the Super Mario Game Maker. You have all the tools at your disposal.
You have four styles to pick from the franchise’s history – you can choose from Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros 3 to Super Mario World and the New Super Mario Bros.
However, regardless of the style you choose, creating levels will be a little bit intimidating at first. Thanks to the well-designed UI and the newcomer-friendly learning curve, you’ll switch from playing to level design as if it were your second nature.
You can unlock everything over a 9-day period. This means that you must play every day for 9 days to unlock the 60 individual building blocks which you use to create levels. This learning curve is well, a little bit annoying if you only have time to game once in a while. Yet, it represents the perfect mechanism as to not overwhelm gamers. Gamers have all the time in the world to meddle with different tools before unlocking new ones.
I would find myself returning to Super Mario Maker with a huge gleeful grin. I lost track of time on more than one occasion. Nintendo’s Mario Maker offers tons of contraptions, courses and distractions. Toolkits are plentiful, but one absence just drives me bonkers. The inability to place checkpoints.
Why is Nintendo making this unnecessarily hard? Even their original 1985 Super Mario Bros wasn’t so cruel. Now, you have just one life to finish a level, which makes things a tad complicated for your ten year old niece.
Super Mario Maker doesn’t limit itself to just creating platformer levels. Flexibility is key and Nintendo knows this – give the community the chance to create something crazy and people will eventually do so. You can make a special b-day message, you can add special character costumes and you can even implement custom sounds – just record yourself and see what the outcome is.
A spark of personality, that’s what. Adding anything in the game creation phase will notify you by singing the name of the item. I’m curious, how long will it take for the community to start making Rihanna or Katy Perry songs out of blocks.
Nintendo doesn’t limit users to completing a level before being able to play it. You jump straight into the action. It’s recommended that you don’t flood their servers with a stage that features a lonesome brick in the middle of the screen.
More so, you won’t get anywhere with it. After you complete a level you have the possibility to quickly upload it to Nintendo. There, you’ll receive feedback. You can easily keep track of your stats. The community will vote and give feedback. There are curated lists where you can find the most popular and fun levels, or what level designers you need to follow. Unfortunately, there’s no filter that lets you search and play levels made by your amigos found in your friends list. Probably a quick update can patch things up – in the near future hopefully.
Super Mario Maker Amiibo
The addition of Amiibo to Super Mario Maker makes it a collector’s dream. With Amiibos you can turn Mario into Zelda, Link, Princess Peach, Pikachu, basically every iconic Nintendo character.
Check Nintendo’s official website for the full Super Mario Maker Amiibo list. Be warned, it’s a slippery slope one might be enticed to go on – Amiibos are hella cool, but you know what isn’t? Not having enough money to pay rent. Just putting it out there.
Super Mario Maker Verdict
90/100 points
I would have given it a full 100 mark but it’s not perfect – no game is. The 9-day period that lets you unlock everything by playing for five minutes a day is a tad annoying. Yet, Nintendo just announced a patch that fixes this issue – if you play more than five minutes, you’ll get your next allotted package earlier, the next day. Still, it kinda’ slightly ruins the balance of the game.
I don’t have any other grievances with Super Mario Maker. It’s good clean fun for the whole family. Even if your family consists of 40-something year old friends. Trust me, you’ll get more bang out of your buck here rather than wasting it on the newest Call of Duty.
Where can I Buy it?
Release Date
- Super Mario Maker Release Date – 11th of September 2015
Platform
- Super Mario Maker Platform – Wii U
You can buy the Super Mario Maker Bundle (which includes the console and game download) from Walmart for USD299. There’s a Super Mario Maker Limited Edition that comes packed with an Amiibo. It costs roughly USD70. If you just want the base game, be warned that you will be missing out on some of the Amiibo-fun. The base Super Mario Maker base game costs USD59.99 and it can be bought directly from Amazon.
So, what are you waiting for? I heatedly recommend purchasing the Super Mario Maker – video game. This retro inspired game is fun for the whole family. Afterwards, tell us in the comments section what you loved most about Nintendo’s latest title.
-Paul
