Super Mario Maker - Review

At one point or another, anyone who has played a Mario game would have had the thought that they could make a level better, or different or just that they could, after years of asking if it would be possible, Nintendo have released Super Mario Maker and it’s a wonderful creation kit, with a few missing pieces.

First up the game is split into two distinct areas, Play & Create and you are either going to be doing one or the other, you could stare at the games screen, but that is not that fun. Play will see you playing through levels created by Nintendo themselves or other players, you can choose to play one level at a time, 10 at a time or more all with varying degrees of difficulty. There is the tiniest thread of story in the 10 Mario or 100 Mario Challenges, with Princess Peach being kidnapped again, but that is all you get. One cool aspect of them is if you beat the final level with costume Mario, Toad will react differently depending on the costume being worn, if you happen to be dressed as Bowser, Toad will really be confused. The 10 Mario challenge can be completed within 20 minutes or so, but the 100 Mario Challenge will take some time, more so if you set it to normal or hard difficulty and while the 10 Mario uses courses made by Nintendo the 100 Mario challenge pulls levels from online, which have been created by the community, which can lead to some insanely challenging creations. Which leads to the other half of the game, Create.

Creating a course is as simple as tapping where you want your elements to go, it is as straight forward as an editor can be, which means with a few taps you can have something basic built and ready to play. When you first start up the create mode, there will only be a small range of items you can use, sound ground elements and enemies, the reason is so you can understand how each of them works, so rather than see all of them and feeling daunted, you will get access to the rest over time. Building your first level is really straight forward as all you need to do is follow the template laid out by Nintendo, once you are done the rest is up to, with experimentation being the key to building something special. Once you have used all the elements at least once and played for a while, you will get a notice that there is a delivery coming, which brings new elements.

As each delivery arrives, you will get a range of items, themes and world types, upon the final delivery everything will be there for you to play with. The exact pre-requisites for getting the deliveries can be a little hard to understand, as the game does not really explain it either, but as long as you can keep making you will unlock them all. Once you have them all, the amount of options available to you is staggering, you can stack Koopa’s onto Goomba’s, who in turn are on Wigglers who have wings attached to them, meaning it is a sight as well as one impressive obstacle, in the games made by Nintendo that is not something you would see, but here its open season.

The game offers up four different styles of Mario games as they have been presented over the years, the original Mario, Super Mario Bros 3, Super Mario World and New Super Mario Bros, each style changes how items and Mario work and as you can swap them as you want when creating, it can result in a number of humorous reactions, but it can also break things if you have been building a precision course, so choosing a style at the commencement of a build is quite critical. Once you have selected your game theme, you can swap between the backgrounds at will, going from above ground to underground and even under the sea, which has Goomba’s swimming and that is a sight, even cooler is that some themes like Ghost Houses, which never existed until Super Mario World have been created for the earlier themes and they fit in as they always existed there. If you stick to the original Super Mario Bros theme, you can scan in all the currently released amiibo to unlock special mushrooms that will grant Mario the ability to wear a costume that will have him look like whomever you choose, I smiled when I unlocked Sonic and had him running around the world of Mario.

Almost every object you can place down has an alternate state, when you place down the familiar Green Koopa, they will keep on walking in the on direction, even to their doom, but if you shake it before placing it into the world, they will change it to the red variant. The same is true for Boo’s, platforms, Bowser and more, the fun of finding out what each does is to shake everything you can; Of course, things like ground elements won’t change, but it is fun to see what you can alter. The other thing you can do is place a lot of objects into coin blocks, mushrooms, fire flowers and such, but even Koopa’s, Bowser, Boo’s, Piranha Plants and more, which will allow you to create some wonderfully frustrating moments.

The music is almost as recognizable as Mario is himself and here it plays really well, both when you are playing and when your making. Whenever you place an object down into the world, the name is sung in an autotuned fashion, but it blends in-time with the music that is playing in the background, it’s a lot of fun to place things down just to hear how they sound. The creatures and items of the worlds sound the same for their respective worlds, but change to match the theme when you swap it around. When you place the music note down, you bounce as normal, but if you shake it swaps to a note that plays a tune when you run under it, which for those musically inclined can lead to some impressive recreations of popular music, just like the old Mario Pain music maker back in the day.

The game is filled to the brim with things to play and make, with experimentation resulting in some wonderfully fun levels, some might question how it can be called a game when you have to make your own levels, but you could get months of fun from the game and never step foot into the creation aspect, if you wanted. Super Mario Maker is love letter to the history of Mario, with nods to the old Mario Paint thrown in, fans of the veteran plumber will lover being able to design whatever they can imagine.