Super Mario Maker

After 3 decades of side-scrolling and saving the day it’s time for the fans to craft their own adventures. Super Mario Maker is Nintendo’s way of handing off development duties to their fans, giving you all the tools you need to build your own masterpiece. With a robust community of creators constantly submitting new creations it’s hard not to find something to play. It’s a fitting celebration for the 30^th anniversary of Mario’s life.

In Super Mario Maker you’ll be doing one of two things, building your own levels or playing those made by others. If you wish to be a player instead of a creator their are several options available. Downloading levels are easy and you can easily browse the collection of stages based on fellow creators you admire or popular vote. If something new is added an update will appear to keep players in the loop, constantly supplying gamers with new content.

If you find yourself overwhelmed by the community’s levels you can always dive into the 10 Mario Challenge. This introduction offers players the chance to play sample stages made by Nintendo and play around with them using Super Mario Maker’s tools. If you wish are a more daring challenge the 100 Mario Challenge pools levels from the community, however this is random and cause a massive flux in difficulty. If you feel vexed by a level’s design you can always give up a life to skip the stage.

It’s in the Course Maker that you can truly see what Super Mario Maker has to offer. The Coursebot will manage all your saves and new materials are unlocked overtime to help players feel less overwhelmed when viewing the vast content available to them. Those still struggling can dig through the abundance of material offered in the game’s e-manuel, which has been carefully crafted for players to teach the basics for developing Mario levels.

To unlock new level functionality or elements you’ll have to spend at least 5 minutes in the Course Maker. In over a week all the content will become available, but if you’re impatience or confident enough simply fast-forwarding your clock willdue the trick. At first it was a helpful to have access to a minimum list of items, however after a couple of days I felt limited to what I could make since I was still unlocking unknown items.

Once you become accustomed to how enemies behave, items work and shortcuts to cut and copy items quickly building Mario levels become less work and more entertaining. This was the first time I stared at the GamePad for so long since the small screen and stylus offering more precision when crafting stages than my television. Small additions such as music when you tap a bunch of items or humming classic Mario music helped in designing stages since it fed into my nostalgic memories of past Mario games.

Speaking of nostalgia you can swap between four eras of 2D Mario easily, changing every element your preferred style. More personal touches come in the form of adding sounds to certain objects in the area and recording sound effects with the GamePad’s microphone. However the sound functionality is limited to personal use and cannot be used for uploaded levels for obvious reasons.

The real thrill of finding hidden objects isn’t by unlocked content restricted by time but by fiddling with items. Some items will react different if shaken back and forth and hidden character models in the form of Mystery Mushrooms. These fun transformations not only change Mario into a new avatar but includes the theme when they complete a level or die. Unfortunately you cannot unlock these special skins and must use specific Amiibos for unique costumes like Sonic.

The true joy of Super Mario Maker is that new content is constantly available. You can spend hours just playing new levels, however this also means that it’s defined from what the community creates. I’ve played many stages that make references to many other games, impossible challenges and insanely elaborate stages that use the tools in ways I never thought of.

That also lies in the flaw of Super Mario Maker. I never felt like I was completing anything, no goals were place and I had nothing to strive for: not even saving Peach. It’s exciting to see what new stages are releasing or finding a new tool to fiddle with but something’s missing to tie the entire game together. One particular flaw irk me, the inclusion of the classic zoning out sound from the classic SNES Mario games was strangely not included in this game.

Super Mario Maker is worth investing if you want to something that test your creatively and gives you staggering amounts of gameplay content. Those willing to invest time and effort will find a lot of reasons to keep coming back, but not enough to keep playing for long hours. In short burst I found myself immediately surfing the community listing for the latest, and hottest, stage but immediately leaving once I completed it. Super Mario Maker isn’t for everyone but it’s definitely worth checking out, especially for those yearning to craft their own masterpiece set in Mario’s world.

Adam Siddiqui, NoobFeed
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