Review: Super Mario Maker

Make Your Dream Course True

Many fans and gamers have said at one point or another: "If I did a game, I'd do it this way instead", well, now it's your chance to show everyone what you mean!

Super Mario Maker lets you create levels and worlds in this unique celebration of Super Mario's 30th Anniversary!

When creating a level, you can pick one of four styles, Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 3 from the NES, Super Mario World from the SNES, or New Super Mario Bros. U from the Wii U, each with their own "Ground", "Castle", "Underwater", etc. level themes.

On a surface level, it might seem like four styles isn't that much, but when you take into consideration how different and how many years there are from each one's debut, you realise just how complete these four are.

Another interesting bit about these themes, is that even if they say they're from four different games, in reality, the original Super Mario Bros. design actually came back for "Lost Levels" and the New Super Mario Bros. style has appeared in four games, bringing a total of eight games represented here.

Gameplay

The gameplay of this game actually varies from each style. The original is the most bare bones one, with dashing, jumping, and only the fire flower as a special power-up, 3 with more power-ups and the ability to build up speed, Super Mario World lets you hop on Yoshi and spin around, and New Super Mario Bros. U lets you stomp and wall jump.

All have that pixel-perfect platforming Super Mario is known for, and all have their own unique taste so each one is very fun.

Story Mode

The "Story Mode" is quite simple and straight-forward in this game. If you've played any mario game before, you beat worlds by beating levels, only this time, the courses are made by the Nintendo staff using the level editor from the game.

These come in groups of eight levels and are called "10 Mario" challenges, because they give you 10 lives. There's 60 of these challenges, making a total of 480 levels, so you have a lot of content even if you ignore the level creation aspect of this game, which leads us to our next point.

Creation

Easily one of the highlights of this game is just how full of content for creation it is: Enemies, blocks, power-ups, themes, Super Mario Maker lets you mix and match all of them to create the course YOU want. With very few and almost imposible-to-meet limitations, with a few exceptions, like the limit of placing 3 Bowsers on one single level (Mario would probably appreciate that).

Otherwise, you can make towers of enemies, or make a coin-road, a simple and quick look at the levels people are creating world-wide gives you a good enough idea of what we're talking about, which leads us to our next point.

Internet

The internet use of Super Mario Maker is by far the most complete Nintendo has released to date. Not only can you upload any level you create (With the only condition of you beating it before hand).

But you can also play, comment on, download and star ("like") any level uploaded by anyone in the world. You can even search for them by a code given to the creators should you be searching for something a bit more specific.

Amiibo

This is the most inclusive Amiibo-compatible game to date, all existing amiibo are compatible, it's even compatible with amiibo that aren't even out yet, like Lucas, Isabelle and Falco.

What your amiibo do in this game is that if you're creating or playing a level on the original Super Mario Bros. style, you can pick a Mystery Mushroom, and what this does is that it gives mario a power-up where instead of turning into his "Super" self, he'll transform into the character your amiibo represents.

Got a Link amiibo? If you scan it and place its Mystery Mushroom on a level, you'll have a power-up that turn Mario into Link. It's also important to note that you don't need to scan your amiibo every time, you scan it once and it'll be saved on a costume database within the game.

There's also "amiibo-less" costumes in the game, like Goombas, Slippy Toad, and Donkey Kong Jr. just to scratch the surface.

Closing

Overall, with its limitless supply of levels, fantastic gameplay, comprehensive amiibo compatibility, and fleshed out level creator, Super Mario Maker is simply the game to own if you have a Wii U, and if you don't have one, well, this game is the game to buy it for.