Super Mario Maker

[Ebbo]

So, has anyone else given this one a shot yet?

It's game that lets you design your own 2D Mario levels in either SMB, SMB3, SMW or NSMB themes. You can also share levels online or play levels made by other players. And it's pretty much as wonderful and whimsical as you'd expect if you happen to enjoy Mario platformers.

There are certainly a plethora of assets missing from each game yet I do find all the tools available more than sufficient for creating some devious levels with plenty of room for improvisation - I've already witnessed some rather clever (and infuriating) stage designs while playing online. Then again if I had dime every time I see a revision of 1-1 from original SMB...

I was also pleasantly surprised by the fact that 1.0.1 patch actually removed 9-day unlocking system. It still takes a couple of hours to get everything unlocked but it's much more tolerable now.

Feel free to share your levels! Here is my first one to start things off:
2F19-0000-0017-AB07

[BrianC]

I'm getting it for my birthday (which is today), but I have to wait for it to arrive in the mail. I can't wait to play it and make some levels.

[GaijinPunch]

I'm getting it for my birthday (which is today)

[GaijinPunch]

[GaijinPunch]

[GaijinPunch]

[GaijinPunch]

[GaijinPunch]

The multiple posts are for extra birthday effect. And, without further ado, the final final...




In all seriousness, this does sound pretty exciting to me (a person without a WiiU or any game system hooked up at the moment even.) This is probably a dumb question in this day and age, but it's Nintendo - can you share levels with your online butt buddies?

[BryanM]

Buncha questions

What stuff is missing? Does it have any pack-in levels at all (any from the old games?)? How does it determine the difficulty of levels - is it just automatic on their end from seeing how many lives it takes people to clear a stage on average?

[city41]

Buncha questions

What stuff is missing? Does it have any pack-in levels at all (any from the old games?)? How does it determine the difficulty of levels - is it just automatic on their end from seeing how many lives it takes people to clear a stage on average?

It has a "10 mario" mode where you play 8 levels and have 10 Marios to do so. They are short levels that are mostly designed to show off what the maker is capable of. Once you beat this mode, you can then do the Nintendo world championship 2015 levels.

Other than that, no real baked in content.

People are already making levels like crazy. Most are quite bad, a few are pretty good and clever. I expect the quality of user made levels to just keep going up.

Making your own level is a lot of fun, they did a stellar job on the editor.

[drunkninja24]

I've been messing with this, it's really good, the editor is simple to use and yeah, while there's obviously a ton of crap in the usermade level library, there's quite a few standouts too. I like that a few elements can kinda cross between game styles, so you can have a SMB1 airship level and other such things.

Luckily its not hard to unlock everything either, a quick and easy way to get all the tools is to just mess around in the editor for a few minutes, and when it says something will be delivered by X date, just make sure to place at least 1 of any unused items, then make a huge chunk of blocks, select them all with L, then use the ZL copy function to past them, shouldn't take but 4-5 times or so before the delivery truck "arrives earlier than expected" with the new stuff. Rinse and repeat until everything is unlocked.

[BrianC]

Thanks GaijinPunch! It seems there is a sharing system. I have seen codes posted for levels.

[mamboFoxtrot]

Been playing it like a mad man. Hell, I've got it up right now!

Buncha questions

What stuff is missing?

Quite a bit, unfortunately. The big ones:
- Slopes
- Checkpoints
- Frog, Tanuki, and Hammer Suit from SMB3; Penguin suit and Ice Flower from NSMB (also, no Baby Yoshi); No NSMBU power-ups.
- Anything from SMB2
- Some level themes, such as Desert or Cloud Tops
- Various enemies, such as Fuzzies, Charging Chucks, Spikes, or the Piranha Plants that juggle spike-balls above them.
- Various other individual level gimmicks from the various games.
- No way to make defeating an enemy end a level. So, no boss fights like the SMB3 Airship or Castle levels or SMW Fortresses etc. You'll have to be really creative to actually force people to fight Bowser or whoever else you want to make a boss.
- No playable characters other than Mario (the Amiibo outfits don't change your controls any)
- Level size limit of 10 screens wide and 2 screens tall, plus a Sub-level that can be just as large. So, you can't really have a vertically-oriented level.

There's still plenty to play with, but the majority of levels from the games from SMB3 onwards cannot be recreated.

Does it have any pack-in levels at all (any from the old games?)?

It's like city41 said. Most of the sample courses aren't particularly interesting, either. They did do some "remixes" of older levels, and you'll inevitably find recreations and such from users.

How does it determine the difficulty of levels - is it just automatic on their end from seeing how many lives it takes people to clear a stage on average?

No idea. One of the publicly-viewable stats of a stage is its "completion percentage", which compares the number of clears compared to the number of attempts in general, so they might use that. (Hilariously enough, a lot of the "Don't Move" courses are nowhere near 100%)

This is probably a dumb question in this day and age, but it's Nintendo - can you share levels with your online butt buddies?

Yup. In addition to sharing Course Codes with each other, you can also "follow" people and view their courses from the "Makers" section (unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a Search or Friends section for "Makers"). Unless you meant sharing levels exclusively with friends. I don't think there's an option for that.

I was also pleasantly surprised by the fact that 1.0.1 patch actually removed 9-day unlocking system. It still takes a couple of hours to get everything unlocked but it's much more tolerable now.

Hahaha I had no idea and just did the calendar-change trick. Probably took the same amount of time tbh.
(PS: I played your level. I got a 74.)

[BryanM]

A Netflix style rating system where you can rate levels and it can suggest new ones for you to play based on the data would be really neat at filtering out quality.

Lunar Magic, the editor for Super Mario World, lets you save levels so it's trivial to get together with some people and throw together a patchwork game. Always thought that would be pretty fun, but could never amass enough people on a forum to get into it. SMM is a great idea.

Quite a bit, unfortunately. The big ones:
- Slopes
- Checkpoints
- Frog, Tanuki, and Hammer Suit from SMB3; Penguin suit and Ice Flower from NSMB (also, no Baby Yoshi); No NSMBU power-ups.
- Anything from SMB2
- Some level themes, such as Desert or Cloud Tops
- Various enemies, such as Fuzzies, Charging Chucks, Spikes, or the Piranha Plants that juggle spike-balls above them.
- Various other individual level gimmicks from the various games.
- No way to make defeating an enemy end a level. So, no boss fights like the SMB3 Airship or Castle levels or SMW Fortresses etc. You'll have to be really creative to actually force people to fight Bowser or whoever else you want to make a boss.
- No playable characters other than Mario (the Amiibo outfits don't change your controls any)
- Level size limit of 10 screens wide and 2 screens tall, plus a Sub-level that can be just as large. So, you can't really have a vertically-oriented level.

Thanks for the rundown.

It makes sense for them to exclude newer content (gotta give people a reason to buy new mainline games and new versions of this series after all), but no muthafukin' SLOPES?!

[mamboFoxtrot]

Yeah, slopes are the one thing I miss the most. Butt-sliding brings the hype, yo.

I don't know if there's an official explanation, but I guess they weren't sure how slopes should work in SMB1? Or maybe couldn't figure out how to make using/placing slopes easy? Though there are some other omissions that really baffle me, like giant boos in the Mario World style not having the King Boo sprite, or using any of the SMB3 Giant Land enemy sprites.

I really hope this is a game that gets updates or DLC in the future.

[BryanM]

I'm sure it's to be bare bones as possible to maximize profit and ease themselves and the customer base into a new product line. You can agree how easily it could render their efforts to make new 2D mario games, or Mario Maker games obsolete or sell old games if it were extremely robust non?

I'm sure the sequel on the NX in five years will be badass. Hell: this would be the most kickass pack-in game of all time.

[Lord Satori]

The reason for the exclusion of newer content is obviously for their up and coming Mario hit "New Super Mario Bros. U Limited Edition and Knuckles".

They can't recycle the same content over and over if they give unlimited level building power to the users.

[Ed Oscuro]

Make My Mario

Presented by Kriss Kross

[ryu]

Played it with friends last night. We mostly did those 100 life challenges, where you get to play a bunch of randomly chosen stages. Honestly none of them were any good, but most of them were fun regardless. You get complete nonsense, like stages that where you just run straight to the goal, or stages with at least one challenging spot as in Kaizo Mario pretty often. I really enjoyed playing the challenging ones though, to the extend where I'm thinking of putting my money down on this.

I only fiddled around a little with the stage creator itself once. Didn't have anything to complain about.

[BryanM]

Lovin' the vids.

"W-what is this? Yeah. Another Flappy Bird level. Do you know how many Flappy Bird levels I've played?! Stop making these!"

There cannot be joy without enormous suffering.

[ryu]

I was quite annoyed that I was getting multiple "here's a bunch of coins, hf" kind of stages in a row on my turns last night.

Fucking coins!

[Obiwanshinobi]

Is Mario voiced again?

[ryu]

Is Mario voiced again?

As far as I remember not in the classic themed stages.

[Mischief Maker]

Perhaps you guys would be interested in a freeware Zelda Maker...

[TransatlanticFoe]

Been playing it like a mad man. Hell, I've got it up right now!

Buncha questions

What stuff is missing?

Quite a bit, unfortunately. The big ones:
- Slopes
- Checkpoints
- Frog, Tanuki, and Hammer Suit from SMB3; Penguin suit and Ice Flower from NSMB (also, no Baby Yoshi); No NSMBU power-ups.
- Anything from SMB2
- Some level themes, such as Desert or Cloud Tops
- Various enemies, such as Fuzzies, Charging Chucks, Spikes, or the Piranha Plants that juggle spike-balls above them.
- Various other individual level gimmicks from the various games.
- No way to make defeating an enemy end a level. So, no boss fights like the SMB3 Airship or Castle levels or SMW Fortresses etc. You'll have to be really creative to actually force people to fight Bowser or whoever else you want to make a boss.
- No playable characters other than Mario (the Amiibo outfits don't change your controls any)
- Level size limit of 10 screens wide and 2 screens tall, plus a Sub-level that can be just as large. So, you can't really have a vertically-oriented level.

There's still plenty to play with, but the majority of levels from the games from SMB3 onwards cannot be recreated.

That's really quite disappointing. The screen limit especially, so no chance to create anything on the scale of 3 or World.

With all that ripped out it's literally just for fancy original Suoer Mario Bros stages. Which I'm sure will still be great fun but it does restrict it quite severely.

Can you at least have flying bloopers and wind like in Lost Levels?

[GaijinPunch]

Thanks GaijinPunch! It seems there is a sharing system. I have seen codes posted for levels.

I'm tempted to get a Wii-U, and this helps. But I'd then have to decide which. I've not bought an NTSC-U system in... fuck me... 20 years. Last one was the Sega Saturn.

[BulletMagnet]

I've not bought an NTSC-U system in... fuck me... 20 years. Last one was the Sega Saturn.

I can imagine that particular instance scarred you pretty badly.

[ZellSF]

Supposedly this has analog controls.

One thing that's really stopping me from running out to the stores to buy this: the whole single level approach. I want worlds, or even whole games designed by good level creators.

[mamboFoxtrot]

Yes, it does have analogue control. It's very slight and finicky, but you can control your walking speed a little.

That's really quite disappointing. The screen limit especially, so no chance to create anything on the scale of 3 or World.

Can you at least have flying bloopers and wind like in Lost Levels?

Bloopers yes, wind no. They also have the Blooper with the trail of mini-Bloops from SMB3. You can also give a Blooper wings to get a different flight pattern. A lot of other enemies can be made to fly or jump with wings as well.

There is a lot missing, but there are actually some new things in regards to enemies being underwater, having wings, or being big. You can also stack enemies on top of each other. So, like, put a fire piranha on top of Bowser so he can shoot fireballs while he shoots fireballs. Fun times.

The screen limit seems like a real downer, until you remember that there's no checkpoints, so any level longer than 8 screens could end up being really tedious anyways. I mean, really, using warps and the sub area, I could make a 40-screen-long level, but Jesus I would not want to start all that over every time I die. I've already encountered stages in the 100-Mario Challenge that are too damn long. Still sucks not being able to go vertical (though I suppose you could simulate it with a lot of door warps).

If you're looking to make a real, self-contained series of Mario levels with an overworld and such, SMBX is still your best bet (and also maybe the Platform Game Engine add-on to improve the UI, though I haven't messed with it yet). It's missing a few things of its own (such as the Cape power-up or NSMB wall-jump and other maneuvers), but it's still probably a better choice for most project ideas.

I'm sure it's to be bare bones as possible to maximize profit and ease themselves and the customer base into a new product line. You can agree how easily it could render their efforts to make new 2D mario games, or Mario Maker games obsolete or sell old games if it were extremely robust non?

They can't recycle the same content over and over if they give unlimited level building power to the users.

While I'm sure simple laziness or some basic dev-time constraints can explain most exclusions, I doubt "no one would by new Mario games if they can just make their own" is a real concern. I mean, some of the Mario games can be pretty vanilla, but they nonetheless still introduce some new power-ups, enemies, and level-themes each game. Also, a new Mario game would obviously be better designed (hopefully!) than most of the levels you'll be encountering online. I could almost see "we need to save features for the next Maker!" actually being a thing, though.

Also hot damn do I love the Underground music remix that plays when editing SMB1 underground levels. (SMB3's remix is pretty cool, too)

[BrianC]

Do the Goomba's react like the SMW Goombas (now officially Galoombas) in SMW mode? Telling from videos, the Koopa Troopas come out of their shells in SMW mode. I hope they add some SML stuff later. I would especially love to use the bombshell Koopas (nokobon) in levels.