Guys, Guys. Super Mario Maker. Seriously.

This happens to me too often with Nintendo games:  I know I’m going to like their new games, but I completely underestimate how much I get hooked by them.  Captain Toad, Splatoon, and now the latest example, Super Mario Maker.  I’ve been completely surprised by how much fun I’ve had making levels.  I had reservations initially because, with a series that’s gone on this long, what could users really create for Mario that Nintendo hasn’t done already.  I was wrong, of course.  Designing levels has been one of those things where it causes the time to melt away without me noticing.  While in the level creator, I find there’s just this domino effect in my imagination where new ideas to try are constantly just coming together.  While creating, I’ve yet to reach a point where I’m stumped as to what to add next.  I seem to always find an idea I want to experiment with next.

Consequently, as coming up with new plans for a level is rather natural, the challenge of designing a level really lies in executing those ideas in a smooth and fun way.  One of the things that really helps out while building levels is that you can seamlessly transition from editing the level to playing the level.  The smooth, load time-free transition from editing to play testing makes fine tuning a level or experimenting with an idea very accommodating and painless.  I’m not going to pretend like my levels are super well-designed masterpieces, but this aspect of the level designer means that they’re much tightly-crafted and less messy than they could have been.

For those who don’t know, there are four tile sets available in the editor: Super Mario Bros. 1 and 3, Super Mario World, and New Super Mario Bros. U.  Furthermore, you can make levels in specific environments, such as underwater, ghost houses, airships, Bowser castles, etc.  Super Mario Bros. 2 (USA version) is left out probably because it is mechanically a major divergence from the other games (as it is based around picking up and throwing enemies rather than stomping them).  But there are doors you can place in a level that strongly resemble the doors to subspace in SMB2, so it is represented in a very token way.  

I think, of all the tile sets, I find the best looking to be the SMB3 levels.  It may just be my own bias toward this game as my favorite of classic SMB, but the SMB3 pixel art just looks very crisp and sharp in HD.  The SMW visuals are a little busy, I think (although they look very good when playing on the gamepad).  Meanwhile, SMB1 looks a little bit off in HD.  I’m not sure why, but I think it might be because all of the sprites cast shadows on the background.  On the other hand, wall jumping is probably my favorite thing to do in a platforming game.  In Mario Maker, wall jumping is only possible in NSMBU levels (as that mechanic doesn’t exist in older games), so I tend to find myself wanting to design levels in that tile set more than the others.

With all that said, I do have one major complaint with the game.  As far as I can tell, there’s no way to set mid-level checkpoints.  This makes long, elaborate, and challenging levels a little more tedious than they should be, since any time you die you have to repeat the early parts of the level.  As I prefer to make levels that are on the tricky side, I find myself preferring to make them on the short side so they don’t wear too much on the player’s patience.  

Here are my levels so far:

Crawling Caverns:  D553-0000-002A-057B

This level seems to have been my most popular so far.  It’s an underground level in NSMBU style, and wall jumping is required to succeed.  In addition, I experimented around with the idea of needing to use giant enemies, such as giant turtle (shells), to clear the way forward.

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Land Meets Sea:  27CE-0000-0030-E71F

The theme for this level is a normal ground level beset by a lot of traditionally underwater enemies, include flying bloopers (giant and normal size), cheep cheeps shot from cannons, and spiny balls.  As a tip, the player should try to move briskly through this level, or otherwise the screen can pile up with enemies from the cannons at certain points and make it a lot harder than it was meant to be.

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Hydroelectric:  FE51-0000-0044-A244

This underwater level started off as an attempt to create a tribute to the hydroelectric dam level from the TMNT NES game.  I don’t know if you would realize that from the final level design, but it definitely has a “don’t touch the walls” aspect to it.  I originally wanted to make this in the SMB3 style and use the electric jellyfish in that tile set as the walls, but the result was something that was a bit of a visual overload.  Instead, I used the SMB tile set and spiky balls as the walls instead.

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Hope you like wall jumping!:  C9AB-0000-004D-5CF4

A NSMBU castle level.  This one was meant to be heavily focused on wall jumping, because as I’ve mentioned, I love wall jumping.  It’s not a masterpiece or anything, but it’s actually probably my favorite I’ve created so far, and it taught me a lot about what Mario is capable of doing under NSMBU rules.  

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Under, Through, Around, and Over:  1C4B-0000-0027-43EA

This is the first level I designed.  I decided it was fitting to begin with the original SMB.  Ultimately, I think I was trying to be a little too clever with this one, and the result is something that is a little on the messy side.              

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The year 2015 marks SMB’s 30th Anniversary, and initially I was a bit concerned that Nintendo wasn’t doing anything special for it.  There was a lot of concern about Super Mario Maker when it was first announced, because Nintendo has historically not been great at doing online systems, and a game like this needs a good online system for users to trade levels.  Last year there was even some confusion coming from Nintendo as to whether gamers would even be able to share levels online or not!  Thus, the end result of Mario Maker has actually been something much more incredible than many other people or myself thought it would be and has been a great way to commemorate Mario’s 30th.