Super Mario Maker Review

Regardless, Nintendo offers a convenient way to assist you in discovering new levels, and provides a simple method of honing in on some potentially great ones. In a semi-social media fashion, you can look up stages via a well-organized list of levels, or even designers, which have received the most “stars” by other players. You can even “follow” users that have provided several enjoyable stages. Sticking with the social media comparison, stars are similar to Facebook’s “likes” or Miiverses “yeahs,” as they reward the level creator for a well-crafted, creative, or otherwise amusing stage. One neat feature these stars hold, aside from simply making players aware of its quality, is that it also rewards the creator with additional slots in which to upload more levels. This is a neat, albeit subtle feature as it provides greater incentive to create better quality stages, as you fight to earn those badges of honor.

There is also a Demon Souls-esque comment system that allows either friends or strangers to leave their two cents, helpful advice, or simply random humorous banter throughout the user-created stages. These proved amusing for the most part, though at times I found that they cluttered up the more popular stages and actually got in the way to the point where it cost me a life in a few instances. Though, thankfully this can be switched off.

The lack of an in-game friend list and occasionally cluttered comment system notwithstanding, however, Super Mario Maker provides an otherwise outstanding and robust online experience with a neatly organized system of leaderboards that make for easy level browsing. This is a relief, since the game very heavily relies on its online community for its content. Simply combing through the top 100 users and stages is almost guaranteed to provide you with hours of amusement and joy as you venture through a plethora of different types of stages from different Mario eras.

I have experienced everything from grueling dungeons, to head-scratching puzzlers, clever homages to other games like Sonic, Pac Man, and Splatoon, and even some showcases that provided strange gimmicks like levels that “play themselves.” I have played some quirky little stages that can be completed in seconds, and some lengthy nail-biters that truly put my Mario skills to the test. On a side note - upon uploading a stage, Nintendo requires the designer to complete their own stage, ensuring the player that no matter how difficult and absurd a level may seem, it is technically doable.

The game offers both a 10 life challenge which helps give you a taste of this experience via the generally simplistic pre-made sample courses, as well as a more robust 100 life challenge which can be played through on a difficulty level of easy, normal, or hard. The latter challenge provides yet another quick and convenient method to discover and play through a random sequence of user-created stages, which can thankfully be skipped in favor of another if the stage proves to be too much. These modes prove a welcome addition, as they provide a bit more of that traditional Mario experience of getting from point A to B to save the princess with x number of lives, and make for the ideal quick pick-up-and-play experience. They also grant another avenue in which to earn some more fun unlockables. One minor grievance is that you are only granted a maximum of three extra lives per level, though one can understand this limitation in a sense, as many levels tend to throw 1ups at you quite liberally.

It was quite enjoyable to relive my Mario nostalgia with levels that used all of the major Mario themes, sometimes even playing through all four in one sitting. I was also pleasantly surprised with how much these themes actually felt like their original iterations, despite Nintendo’s claim that the New Super Mario physics had been used as the foundation for the gameplay. Even upon playing some of the more off-the-wall and quirky stages, I really felt like I was playing the respective Mario games, whether it be New Super Mario with its subtly more floaty mechanics, or the original Super Mario Brothers with its more stiff and precise controls.

The neatest aspect of all, is that despite my vast nostalgic journey into this online Mario wonderland, I have barely scratched the surface when it comes to user-created courses, as people continually crank out more stages. While there have been plenty of duds, there has been a plethora of surprisingly great stages as well. Provided you have access to the internet of course, you are essentially provided with endless amounts of gameplay - even when disregarding the level creator!

Whether you’re an old school Mario fan seeking some nostalgia, a creative type wishing to flex his or her artistic muscle, or just a gamer who enjoys a solid platformer, Super Mario Maker more than delivers. It offers a smorgasbord of features and endless streams of user-created content (much of which is quite good), and provides a new spin on an old series, while still adhering to the classic style that made the original Mario series such a phenomenon. This game does the franchise proud, and only adds to its legend.