Super Mario Maker Review

It takes a special something for Nintendo to give over the rights to anything it does to the people. Super Mario Bros. 30th Anniversary is that something. Nintendo is super protective of its properties, much like in the way Disney is of Mickey Mouse. To deviate from the message, to change the status quo, makes Nintendo uncomfortable but with Super Mario Maker they’ve thrown all that out the door.

At it simplest Super Mario Maker has two modes, Play and Create – both of which are accessible from the title screen. Create throws you into the editor, it starts off simple at first and evolves into somewhat of an advanced game editor after a few hours. Originally, and we had to review it like this, you had to unlock the tools over a manner of days (unless you fudged with the system clock) now you can unlock all the tools over the period of a few hours just by using them.

There are four graphical styles available, Super Mario Bros, Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World and New Super Mario Bros. U, and each of the games’ physics and powers are intact. While enemies transcend the games, select items such as the Propeller Cap and Cape from Super Mario World remain exclusive. You’ll also have to consider the slight differences in Mario’s abilities between games, as you can’t wall jump in the earlier titles. Aside from the different game skins you can also swap between the standard above ground stages, underground, airship and castle levels. If you wish you can also pick an underwater level but a pox on you for doing that to anyone.

The whole editor is quite simple and controlled completely from the GamePad touch screen. Tools are arranged across the top of the screen and its just easy to drop and plop them onto the game field. Everything you would expect to see in a Mario game is here. Blocks, ? Blocks, Goombas and Koopa Troopas, Floating Stages, Saws, Mushrooms, Fire Flowers, Magikoopas, Lakitus and Bowsers. It’s not just the items you can place that are expansive but how you can mix and match them into ways you’ve never seen before. The beauty of the game is that you can just make a Mario stage or you could make a stage that mixes up everything you know about the Mario games.

Flourishes are added to the stages automatically such as trees, kelp and more depending on the environment you’ve picked. Paths and pipes unlock later on but there’s still several things missing from the game that you would expect to see in a typical Mario game. While you can make a stage autoscroll and change that speed, you can’t make it vertically higher than two ‘screens’ worth. The timer too can be reduced but can’t exceed more than 500 seconds, something that can get in the way if you’re planning an epic stage. Weirdly there’s also no 45 degree slopes in the game, the simple block structure of the game must have kept them away.

Editing in Super Mario Maker is strictly limited to gameplay with audio, graphics and even AI changes strictly off limits. There is the ability to record a soundbite that can be trigged on a switch, block or anywhere on the map but it can’t be uploaded online. These limitations really though are on the small scale, the sheer amount of things you can do greatly outweigh the few you can’t.

If you’re not sold on the editor or don’t think you’d be any good at creating Mario stages there’s still more than enough here for you to check out on the other side game in the Play Mode. First up is 10 Mario Challenge. It’s simple, 8 course, 10 lives and that’s it. It’s simple in both execution and difficulty. Most of these courses are simply there to help encourage you into making your own and giving you ideas. There’s as many courses as a standard Mario game but it doesn’t really feel like a cohesive Mario title if you were hoping for one.

100 Mario Challenge is where the real meat is at. Expanding on the 10 Mario Challenge mode, this time you’ll have 100 lives to finish off a group of levels created by the community. Some of them are great, some of them are terrible. It’s a theme that you’ll soon notice with the game in general. If the first challenge isn’t enough for you there there’s a hard mode once you complete it on the normal difficulty the first time. Levels that can’t be completed (because some people are awful) can be skipped by holding down the Select (-) button.

The game also ignores some of the more common Super Mario rules. Lives and coins are essentially meaningless here. 1-Up Mushrooms are also capped so there’s no point in going for them. There’s little exploration here which is made worse by the fact you can’t link levels together, each stage is its own game and world. You’ll have to think differently to how a normal Mario game plays as the rules are reset every time you start.

No doubt you’ve seen people share their stages online already with codes, it’s a good start but it would be great to be able to search for stages by name or even the name of a creator. You can follow a creator and see their stages but something like playing only a certain type of stage is out of the question. Perhaps these advanced searches will come but for now the really popular stuff will rise to the top but the more interesting may never be seen. While there’s a lot of novelty and poor stages at the moment, expect to see things get better as time goes on and more and more creative people pick up the game. Once you’ve played 10 different ‘just hold right’ levels you’ll never want to go back again. The best stages aren’t the tricks or the traps but the levels that make you retrain your brain and get 30 years of muscle memory to reset.

Of course, we can’t finish this review without talking about how amiibo work with the game. Each amiibo you have unlocks a ‘costume’ for Mario, essentially turning him into ‘Super Mario’, if you get hit you’ll shrink back down to little Mario. Pretty much every single amiibo currently available works with the game and will not only unlock the costume for Mario but will change the sound effects and some characters even carry a little pose or flourish with them. Link can hold up a Triforce, Splatoon squids and Inklings can slide along on the ground. There’s even a different ending fanfare for each character (with some repeats). The great thing is though even if you don’t have every single amiibo there are still ways to unlock these costumes and there are costumes to unlock that are not amiibo characters. How you unlock those is up for you to discover.

Review concludes below.

Super Mario Maker was reviewed using a promotional version of the game. We also reviewed the game using the final retail version.