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THERE’S SOMETHING ODDLY transgressive
about Mario Maker. After over 30 years
stomping Goombas in carefully designed and
refined Super Mario Bros. levels, the
opportunity to take the reins comes with a
strange sense of power. With every utterly
ridiculous corruption of Nintendo’s famously
breezy platformer, with every gargantuan-
sized Thwomp placed maliciously and secretly
at the end of a marathon level, Mario Maker
can feel like breaking into school at the
weekend and wreaking havoc in the canteen.
Nintendo isn’t so reckless as to leave the
keys in the door and turn the other way: one of
the greatest improvements this sequel has over
its predecessor is a full-length, Nintendo made
campaign of levels that are not only fun to
play, but provide a crash course in all thecleverthingsit’spossibletodowiththe very
snazzy editor. While veterans of the original
Wii U Mario Maker are likely to skip this, it
stands as the most innovative (and weird)
single-player 2D Mario game since The Lost
Levels. Given the focus of Mario Maker 2, it
shows Nintendo daring to experiment and get
silly with its approach to 2D level design.
Because overall, Nintendo must understand
that Mario Maker is a fairly ‘hardcore’ game by
the measure of Mario games. Endless Mode
returns, which allows players to tackle an
endless stream of user-created levels on three
difficulty tiers, but these tend to be either
frivolously easy or else very hard. There are
exceptions of course (there are already
thousands of levels and counting) and it’s easy
to skip levels if they’re either boring or tedious.But if you’re after a guaranteed good time and
you’re not interested in level creation, perhaps
you’ll want to stick to Nintendo’s campaign.
Mario Maker is about its community, and
the meta-game is trying to make your own
creations ‘go viral’. The toolset is remarkably
easy to use, but the real challenge is
understanding what makes a good level tick.
Given Mario’s moveset, and given the five game
templates (Super Mario Bros, Super Mario Bros
3 , Super Mario World, Super Mario Bros U and
3D World), as well as the various costumes and
alternative characters (Toad is a highlight, of
course), there’s a lot to get one’s head around.
And if you have no luck making levels that gain
a foothold in the community, it’s a pleasure to
create them anyway.
Still, Nintendo’s discoverability is obscure to
say the least, and the most popular courses tend
to be either novelties (such as auto-run levels) or
very challenging courses uploaded by the first
game’s veterans. That’s at the time of writing,
and is likely to change. But it’s hard to imagine
anyone feeling left out, given the presence of
Nintendo’s own campaign, the accessibility of
its creation tools, and the sheer pleasure in
commanding Mario: even if you’re
commanding him through levels that’d make
Salvador Dali feel shy. [SHAUN PRESCOTT][ PC AND CONSOLE GAMES ]Super Mario Maker 2
WII U’S CROWN JEWEL FINALLY SWITCHES TEAMS.
Nintendo Switch | $79.95 | http://www.nintendo.com/DISCOVERGAME REVIEWSWINNERED’sCHOICE
AWA RD41 /^2