I’ve often thought how awesome it would be to be able to make your own old school Mario levels for friends to try and complete. It seems my secret and personal prayers have been liberated and answered with Nintendo’s newest title Mario Maker. It’s rather impressive for a game to have made it to a few days before E3 without being leaked considering there were almost no surprises this year. Going off nothing but the title from a picture of the booth on the show floor everyone was speculating what Mario Maker would be.
Everyone was right; you make your own Mario levels.
Mario Maker is very simple to play. You select the object you’d like to put in the level and tap the stylus to place it. It couldn’t be easier, but that’s the point: anyone can make a Mario level. They can be simple and fun to play, or if the person making the level is particularly evil, the levels can be extremely hard.
If at any point while creating the level you want to test it out you just hit the play button and you instantly have control of Mario. You can place him wherever you want so he can start in a ridiculous situation or in relative safety. When you’re done testing you can go straight back to editing and fine tuning the level.
If you’re trying to make platforms requiring a near impossible jump you can switch to play mode and launch your little plumber as far as you can. Once you get back into editing you’ll notice Mario has left a ghost trail showing exactly where he jumped and where we would have landed. Then it’s just a matter of placing a block in the right spot shown by the ghost and you have a perfectly diabolical gap for Mario to try and jump. This takes all the guesswork out of making a level. Just give it a quick test and the amount of time spent making levels is halved.
If you are partial to New Super Mario Bros over the classic style you can switch between the two at any point. The visuals will change but the physics will remain classic Mario, meaning there is less sliding and Mario sticks to platforms a little better. Keeping with the classic style you’ll notice a lot of assets from Mario Paint showing once again Nintendo really are the masters of utilising old franchises and cashing in on the nostalgia that keeps gamers coming back for more.
My first question about Mario Maker was obviously if there will be any level sharing online. Unfortunately, the answer was no but my interpretation is it’s a no at this time. Honestly, without some kind of sharing facility I fail to see the point of Mario Maker. Imagine being able to make courses for friends or accessing the top ten voted levels of the week. That’s the only hope Mario Maker has to be more than a game for a few hours before most players lose interest. Nintendo are always family first and I’m sure it wouldn’t take long for people to realize you can spell naughty words with blocks or baddies but it wouldn’t take much to monitor that kind of tomfoolery.
It’s a lot of fun but to have legs online sharing needs to be part of the game at launch. It looks like it would run on the 3DS just as well as the Wii U so making it for both platforms would increase the install base substantially. I doubt we will see it working on both platforms with level sharing between the two but it wont launch this year so there’s hope.
Mario Maker Will be available for Wii U in 2015.
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