Review: Super Mario Maker (Wii U)
It may sound weird (or maybe not), but I’ve actually tried to get mad at Super Mario Maker. But no matter which way I look at it, I just can’t. Not for very long. From my perspective, you’d think it would be easy: I’ve spent enough time playing unofficial Super Mario World ROM hacks to know that when you give users the ability to make their own levels, chances are, they aren’t going to be very good at it.
For years now, adventurous users have been able to download software on their PC that allows them to create their own Mario levels (assuming they don’t have any problems with the legal grey area of emulation). Unfortunately, these levels are usually created by crazed ultra-fans, who are only hungry for unforgivingly difficult stages that have been tailor-made to suit their high level of skill. The crown jewel of these is the now-infamous Kaizo Mario level pack.
Kaizo-type levels are typically known for being so incredibly difficult that they cross over into being outright antagonistic. Being able to clear Kaizo Mario has become something of a rite of passage in some circles, and the level pack became popular enough that “Kaizo” is now considered a sub-genre into itself.
It is to these people that Super Mario Maker has been marketed, with Nintendo gleefully showing off how easy it is to build impossible levels. I slowly began to dread the release of Super Mario Maker for this very reason. Kaizo Mario (and other hacks like it) have made me grow to hate these types of levels. Anybody can make a level more challenging. Real designing talent comes from understanding moderation, balance and flow. In my opinion, an extreme level of difficulty is more often than not the sign of a sloppy designer.
Super Mario Maker tries to mitigate this with a number of sorting features while also balancing it with most of the functionality you’d want out of a level creation tool. You can share your levels with the public at large, subscribe to your favorite creators, and rate other people’s work. In theory, this should make it easy to find the best of the best, and Nintendo has taken numerous steps to make sure you can find whatever you’re looking for. Unproven users have a limited number of uploads (which gets gradually removed as they receive praise), and you can even filter stages by the amount of difficulty they contain (Easy, Normal and Expert).
That generally works well enough most of the time, but the system can’t account for everything, and modes like Super Mario Maker’s “100 Mario Challenge” contain no bias towards good or bad levels. It simply picks a level, any level, at complete random, and even on Easy difficulty, this will occasionally result in it presenting you with something inscrutable. Lord have mercy on you if you dare switch over to Expert difficulty, where Super Mario Maker’s worst, most obtuse levels live. That’s a natural side-effect of user-generated content, and you’ll find the exact same problems in creation-focused games like LittleBigPlanet. But getting three poorly-made water levels in a row makes it feel even sweeter when you stumble upon that totally awesome Ghost House level with all the secret doors and alternate paths.
Unfortunately, even the easiest levels can still frustrate. Super Mario Maker contains a host of notable quirks and omissions in its gameplay that occasionally get in the way of both making and playing the Mario game you’ve always dreamed about. Resting at the top of this list is the complete lack of a checkpointing system. Super Mario Maker doesn’t give you the tools to make large or especially complex levels, but some of them can still take several minutes to clear. Even the best levels can really feel like a drag if you happen to accidentally die near the end and are forced to start the whole thing over from the very beginning. Mid-stage checkpoints were available all the way back in the original Super Mario Bros. in 1985, so to have them absent from Super Mario Maker doesn’t really make a lot of sense.
There’s also problems with Mario’s iconic power-up system. In most 2D Mario games, you start out as small Mario, and collecting a Super Mushroom will make you grow in size to become Super Mario. Only while you are Super Mario can Fire Flowers, Racoon Leafs, and other power-ups be collected, right? That’s not the case in Super Mario Maker: all power-ups appear regardless of whether you’re small Mario or not. You wouldn’t think so, but this changes the feel of the game ever so slightly, and makes it feel weirdly un-Mario sometimes in a way that’s difficult to convey.
But none of this ends up a deal breaker. Super Mario Maker would be a better overall package if these things were fixed, certainly, but the fact that Nintendo released something like this at all is cause for celebration. The company is more known for denying a player options, and yet here is a game that is nothing but options. The editor is as simple and intuitive as can be. I’ve spent many years fiddling around with game creation tools, and typically, it would often take a whole weekend or more to create just one level. In Super Mario Maker, I can put together something in around an hour.
Even if you aren’t interested in making your own Mario levels or playing what other users have made, there’s still 60 official Nintendo-created levels (nearly as many as Super Mario World) tucked away in Super Mario Maker’s “10 Mario Challenge” mode, offering up the kind of focused, polished gameplay you’ve come to expect, albeit in sometimes smaller chunks that you might be used to.
Super Mario Maker is a milestone. For the first time ever, Nintendo is handing the keys to the Mushroom Kingdom over to players. If you’ve ever played a Super Mario Bros. game and at any point thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” then this is for you. And even if you’ve never felt particularly creative, Super Mario Maker still offers up a future full of nearly-endless new levels for some of the best side-scrolling platformers of all time. Sure, you’re probably going to run into some awful user-made levels, but you’ll also play the really great ones, too, like a level where you get eaten by a dinosaur, fight through its digestive tract, and get pooped out the other side. You’d have to be a crazy person to say no to that.
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Good review! I really like how you brought up that power-up flaw because it bothers me too. In designing a level, it can get annoying for that reason. As much as I want it to be fixed through a patch or something, I don’t think it’s actually possible from what I guess. Also, bringing up the missing checkpoints is another good point. Even in Kaizo Mario, you could save state to act as a checkpoint but here there is only the start and the finish which may make some of the more difficult levels really hard. Something you didn’t mention was how in the Mario challenges, you are given the option to skip a level if you are finding it to drain your lives faster than you’d expected. However, I think you are required to come back to that level later before you finish the challenge. Quite a game though. Yes, I’ve played that exact dinosaur level you mentioned. 😀
Odd, I don’t remember being required to come back to the same level before finishing it. I thought the entire point was that if someone put together a ridiculous level, you could skip it, but you still lost any lives you gave up to it and still had to complete another level in its place?
The power-up thing is a shortcoming, among other things. I get the feeling they might have been holding back, if not for DLC or a second Super Mario Maker someday, then mostly because they didn’t want to put TOO much in, lest people might feel discouraged from buying more new Mario games.
You are probably right. I know for a fact that you can skip them, but I assumed about the coming back to it part. I wondered if this would deter people from buying actual Mario titles so restricting certain features does seem like the way to not do that. As long as they make 3D games though they shouldn’t have a problem.
Perhaps; if I’m not mistaken, though, the 2D games usually tend to outsell the 3D ones.
That said, this works nice as kind of an in-between if they’re still so reluctant to release more than one title per console generation.
Yep!
Really? How many post does this page want to make about Mario maker, it’s a terrible game, it’s just horrible, let’s try and keep this sonic page sonic related
Ooo~! An Edgy Post by an edgy guy! I like it! But seriously, shut it.
Calm down. Two Mario Maker articles aren’t going to kill anybody.
Gee, one would think that more than just Sonic stories were posted here…
Reporting on things besides Sonic has always been a core part of the TSSZ; it just puts Sonic at the forefront. Any other Mario Maker post had some relevance to Sonic. This review is the only one that has not much to do with the blue blur, but this is a gaming website so naturally there will be reviews of some big games out at the time. As for calling Mario Maker a horrible game, well, that’s just your opinion.
1. It has been a quiet year. There’s nothing to report on.
2. This is Sonic-related. Sonic is technically in the game.
3. It’s okay to branch out once in a blue moon.
4. We’re not just a Sonic page. We cover SEGA in general just as much as we cover Sonic.
@SSF1991
“2. This is Sonic-related. Sonic is technically in the game.”
You sir are technically correct, the best kind of correct.
I’m convinced that Tj comments dumb shit for attention. Don’t feed him. Keep posting great content TSSZ.
Agreed
The site’s tagline is ‘Beyond Blue’ i.e. more than Sonic. Don’t like it? The door’s over there.
Exactly!
With how much of a hit Mario Maker is right now, I REALLY hope that other games would include something similar to Mario Maker like say Doom 4’s SnapMap.
This is a very Nintendo oriented site. This is a review of a Nintendo game, it’s not Sonic or even a SEGA game, essentially irrelevant to this site.
You justify it by saying that Sonic is technically in the game. Then where is your review of Little Big Planet? Sonic is technically in that game as well. Why no review of that game? Why this Nintendo bias?
Here’s a total lack of LBP news: http://www.tssznews.com/?s=littlebigplanet
Oh, wait, there’s actually plenty.
And of course there’s been no news on the Android and iOS game: http://www.tssznews.com/?s=sonic%20runners
Oh wait, there’s even more of those than of the LBP ones.
But where is the review? Sonic is in the game right, the same reasoning that justified this review.
TSSZ has reviewed every major Nintendo game: Splatoon, Mario kart, Smash Bros, and now this game, despite most of them have little to nothing to do with either Sonic or Sega. While we haven’t got any review of bigger games like Batman Arkham Knight, Witcher 3, Bloodborne, Halo etc. What’s the deal with that? Nintendo is clearly getting more attention than any other publisher apart from Sega, which this site is based around.
In order to review a game, the reviewer must first be able to play said game; if they do not own the relevant console, how can they play it?
Alternatively, if you want to see a particular game reviewed on here, why not volunteer to write it?
There’s a simple answer to this: the Wii U I got to review the likes of Sonic Lost World was a business expense, and I’m simply making sure that I utilize it to its fullest degree.
Furthermore, I’ve always thought that the type of games you mention do not always 100% gel with the “Sonic Audience.” You can flip that around and say, well, we review GTA, and sure, I’ll give you that. But GTA’s an unavoidable event. The biggest of the big. I also reviewed GTA5 because Tristan told me to review GTA4 all the way back in 2008.
You’re probably right that we could branch out more, but again, we’re a small site. I review games for platforms I own that are current. I’d actually considered asking for a review copy of The Phantom Pain, but I don’t expect anyone’s looking for an opinion on how that game runs on the Xbox 360, especially not at this site of all places.
All I’m really saying is that this is a lot less sinister than you’re clearly making it out to be, and I do not appreciate game console territorialism.
@RACEPROUK
Apart from the first party titles, all of those games are available on every major system, that includes the PC which is something I expect a Sonic and Sega oriented site to have access to considering that many of Sega’s biggest games are PC exclusive, such as the Total War, Football manager and Company of Heroes.
Oh, where are the reviews of those games, TSSZ? All of them are major Sega franchises that you have omitted along with Valkyria Chronicles, Yakuza, Project Diva and Binary Domain, Rhythm Thief and Super Monkey Ball. That’s nine different Sega IP’s that TSSZ never bothered to review.
@RYAN BLOOM
I understand that, but surely you are not the only one who is reviewing games on this site? I don’t appreciate console territorialism either, that’s why I voice this discontent of mine.
You do know that the people who write for this site don’t do it as their only activity, right? That they have jobs and hobbies and lives?
To expect a fan site to review every single Sega game that comes out is, as far as I’m concerned, totally unreasonable. If you’re really that desperate to see reviews of those games, then either write them, or find somewhere that has them.
You kinda missed my point. TSSZ reviews several Nintendo games, that have little or nothing to do with Sonic or Sega, all whilst ignoring actual Sega games which this site is supposed to specialise in.
Several of those mentioned games are major Sega franchises that are equally, if not more, important as Sonic to Sega. Yet, they are being ignored.
The tagline for the website is ‘Beyond Blue’. That means it’s not limited to just Sonic and Sega. And like I said, if you want to see reviews of certain games, then you can always write them yourself.
I know the site doesn’t deal exclusively with Sonic or Sega. But a site who’s focus is Sonic and Sega, should prioritise Sonic and Sega games.
Yet, several major Sega games have been omitted, in exchange for content unrelated to Sega.
And even when we look at what is covered besides Sonic and Sega, Nintendo is the clear favourite.
Don’t like it? Door’s over there.
Why do you even care about “bias”? TSSZ has always looked beyond Sonic when it came to reviewing games. I’ve said it before, but the first review I published for this site was for Grand Theft Auto IV. And not because I requested it, but because Tristan asked me to.
What’s the use of getting so bent out of shape just because I chose to review this game?
TSSZ doesn’t have enough staff to review every single game when it comes out, unfortunately. It’s just me and Louis. Maybe I would have reviewed LittleBigPlanet if I had a Playstation 3 at the time it was relevant. Nothing would’ve stopped me from doing so.
Just enjoy the review, and if it’s for a game you don’t like, well, nobody’s forcing you to read it.
Of course it’s not possible to review every game. Therefore one needs to prioritise. And this site clearly prioritises Nintendo, even to the point that they’ve excluded some important Sega series. For instance, there’s not a single review of a Yakuza game on this site, nor did TSSZ publish a review of Valkyria Chronicles. It took several months until Alien:Isolation review was published, all whilst Mario Maker saw a review in the same month of the games release.
Yeah, you can’t cover everything, but one would think that Sega’s series would be prioritised above others, considering that this is what the site specialises in, Sonic and Sega. But guess not.
It’s like you expect every writer for this site to have at least one of every console from the last ten years; I’m willing to bet that’s far from the truth.
Or that the different authors have different systems that allows them to compliment each other.
Of which there is no guarantee, and you know it.
Face it, you’re holding a fan site to the same standards as a professional media outlet. And that is grossly unfair.
Don’t you think a site specialising in Sonic and Sega games should at the very least have the relevant systems to be able to play and review games from said company?
There is not one place on this site that claims it specialises in Sonic and Sega.
The sites name (The Super Sonic Zone, TSSZ), logo (Sonic’s head), history (Sonic scene, coverage of Sonic related material) and layout of it (with distinct tabs like “Sonic News”, and “SEGA News” on the top) all heavily imply that Sonic and Sega are the primary focus of the site.
Exactly: they’re the primary focus, not the only focus. So getting your panties in a twist just because there’s a review you’re not interested in is, quite frankly, pathetic.
Never said it was their only focus.
But the issue is not that it’s a review of a game I have no interest in. The issue is that TSSZ, a site specialising in Sonic and Sega, have omitted several important Sega games and franchises, all whilst focusing on company much more than on others, Nintendo. The issue is the way TSSZ prioritises, not just one review.
Since it won’t let me reply to your other replies, here’s the deal: I review games I want to play, on consoles I currently own. I’m going to assume Louis does the same thing. Those are definitely going to include Sonic games. I am a Sonic fan.
That’s all there really is to it. Reviewing games should not be a “political stance” as far as XYZ console is considered. I am not made of money, Tristan is not made of money, Louis is not made of money.
We are not sitting over here wringing our hands, going “YEAH NINTENDO IS THE BEST, PLAYSTATION AND XBOX ARE FOR LOOOOSERS.”
It’s more like “We already spent a bunch of money on this Wii U, and I am interested in playing Mario Maker.”
Believe me, I’d love to get a PS4. I missed the Playstation 3, so getting something like The Uncharted HD Collection is of great interest to me. But at that point, to get those two things, is nearly $500.
I have been saving money for almost nine months now because I need to upgrade my desktop computer. I have around $300 saved. If I’m lucky, I’ll have enough saved up by Christmas to buy the bare minimum of parts I need.
Complaints about this kind of stuff do nothing but create unwanted arguments over literally nothing.
@RYAN BLOOM
I understand. My criticism is not aimed at you, or any of the individual reviewers. It’s more aimed at the site as a whole.
Except the site’s reviewers are Ryan and occasionally Louis. So it’s kind of aimed at them.
It lies in the responsibilities of the site’s management to coordinate and diversify if needed, which they clearly do a sub-par job at.
Can’t blame the workers for the failings of the management.
I appreciate that you hold us to a higher standard of quality, but this almost comes off as an attack.
So management should force the writers to buy stuff they can’t necessarily afford?
You do realise this site is run by people who do it as a hobby, right?
The site needs to cover the aspects that it specialises in, right?
The management should then enlist people who have access to the needed resources. For instance, a large part of Sega’s games are on PC, so enlisting someone with access to a PC that can run Sega’s games becomes a high priority, right?
If the site is not able to deliver what it claims to specialise in, then what’s the point of it?
This isn’t IGN or Eurogamer; it’s a fansite, run by people who do it as a hobby. And expecting them to spend money they don’t have just to keep you happy is the most egotistical, self-absorbed bullshit.
Not to mention I have, on several occasions, suggested you volunteer as a writer. But you’re not going to bother are you? Of course you aren’t. Why? Because you’re a lazy-ass fuck who wants others to do what you want them to do, rather than getting of your fat arse and doing it yourself.
I know you’re trying to make a point but next time I recommend not calling someone a “lazy-ass fuck”.
“Users of the discussion system on TSSZ, including unregistered users, are expected to shows both common sense and respect in their remarks. Debate is encouraged, and at times it will get heated. Still, inflammatory, unintelligible, trolling, or otherwise offensive comments are subject to editing or deletion. Excessive violation of this provision risks a ban from commenting. While the tolerance level for comments on TSSZ is fairly high, second chances after violations are rare.” – http://www.tssznews.com/about/site-policies/
Can we get that enforced, TSSZ? The above users comment is quite offensive.
And your continued harassment of the staff who run this site as a hobby is somehow OK?
@SSF1991: Can’t reply directly, but yeah, I guess it was somewhat uncalled for
…and the spam filter’s struck again…
I didn’t see anything in the spam filter.
…and I can see the post I thought was lost…
*toddles off to do something else for a bit*
I took care of it :p