FINALLY! I’VE BEEN ASKING FOR THIS FOR YEARS! Nintendo has finally released a course editor for their flagship title, Super Mario Brothers. However, they didn’t do it first. There are 2 editors I have played outside of Mario Maker or MM as I’m lazily going to write it from now on. These are Super Mario Flash and Super Mario Brothers X. The less powerful of the two is the flash version. As it’s a flash game, it isn’t anywhere near as good as MM, but can be fun for a few minutes if you’re bored. The other, more controversial game is called Super Mario Brothers X, made by Redgit, who made Terraria. It is far more powerful than Super Mario Flash, and even MM. I will be making several comparisons to SMBX as I go throughout the review. Both are free to play on PC, and I will link them both at the end.
But, let’s first talk about the game on its own. It has 2 elements to it, making and playing. The playing portion is as what you’d expect, you go into the menu and start rummaging through levels, starring and commenting via Miiverse. Although Miiverse takes a while to load up, it functions alright, and is quite hassle-free.
The course world menu. (Not my Mii)
You can also play either the 10 or 100 Mario challenge, which puts you through a string of courses with either 10 or 100 lives. With the 10 Mario Challenge, which I will be lazily writing as 10MARUCHALLENGUUU, is made up of Nintendo created courses, and if you clear it 7 times, you unlock the Nintendo World Championship levels, which are super difficult! After completing them, you will unlock the skinny mushroom on demand, by shaking the mushroom, rather than by chance. However, the 100MARUCHALLENGUUU is all user generated content, and has 3 difficulty levels: Easy, Medium and Expert (or Hard), which contain levels that are selected based on their deaths: attempts ratio. This allows you to play the mode suited to your abilities. For completing the 100 Mario Challenge, you are awarded an amiibo skin, which is chosen at random. However, you cannot spam easy mode and unlock them all, eventually, you will reach the cap, then you are forced to play medium, then hard. These modes are really fun and I’m glad they’re included in the game. It really gives the player something to work for. Since it is user-generated content, it’s impossible to review the levels themselves, but most of them seem to be quite well made. Your mileage may vary though.
You can also use amiibos to unlock costumes, and as with Yoshi’s Woolly World, it is done very well. You touch the amiibo to the gamepad to unlock the costume, and you can use it after that without the amiibo. My favourite is probably Luigi, LUGGI NOMBRE WUN!!
Luggi
But now, onto the main part of the game, the editor itself! It is everything you could want: you have your power-ups, like the Super Mushroom, Fire Flower, all you would expect. It even has some exclusive items like the newly added Fire Koopa Clown Car, which has a Mega Man X style charge gun for a mouth. It is very powerful, and you can do some amazing things with it. Plus, you also have the cape from SMW in the SMW mode, amiibo mushroom in the classic mode, propeller cap in the NSMB mode, and the raccoon leaf in the SMB3 mode. These come from one item, and it changes depending on what mode you are in. The modes change the art style to their respective games, and add a TON of variety. Even if it is just a palette swap, with the aforementioned items changed.
‘Bout time I showed you the bluddy editor, h’ent et!
The blocks are as you would expect, you get ground (indestructible), hard (can break but only with certain items), bricks (easily break), and question blocks (holds items). These are bundled with a huge array of harmful blocks, like the spikes or burners. There are so many other cool features too, the most prominent being that you can combine course elements to create bigger and better (literally) enemies and hazards. You can give a goomba a mushroom, and not only does it grow, but it splits into 2 smaller goombas upon death. But my personal favourite has to be a *breaths*, a giant Bowser riding in the Fire Koopa Clown Car with a Bowser Jr. on his back with wings with a homing missile cannon strapped to its back with a giant hammer bro. just to finish it off, *exhales*. Wow, 2OP4U Sakurai plz neRf. Anyway, the course editor allows for some crazy *word*, but, it did have a lot more potential for cooler enemies, like the Fire Bro., or the poison mushroom. There is also a lot more they could have done with the editor itself, like switches that move blocks and events etc. Although I don’t think the latter will be added, the inclusion of the checkpoint flag in an update does give me hope. I imagine that a lot of the features I listed would make level making quite complex, which goes against the idea of the game. To quote the box, “Everyone can play it; Anyone can make it”, and they stick to this well, it is very easy to use. It’s a simple tap tap tap process.
Overall, it is a must have for the Wii U. Its interface is great and easy to use. The download speeds for levels is near instant, and with a lot of room for amazing ideas, bosses, and puzzles, this is my Game of the Year (2015). There was a lot of features I wish were included, and the navigation through the course world makers section lacks a search, it is truly the editor we have wanted for years. That’s why my final rating for this game is:
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87/100
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Insert phrase of comedic value here.
Marcus
Stuff and That. 