LogFAQs > #933120678

#18





Years of release: 2015 (Wii U), 2016 (3DS)
Beaten?: N/A

This could also be Super Mario Maker 2 in this slot, but I've only played a little bit of it, and I played a lot of SMM1. Super Mario Maker 2 by all accounts seems to be improved on most levels, although it has some slightly awkward UI and a couple of removed features I'm sad about, but the original has the novelty factor, so I'm ranking that one here. You can assume this is both games in one slot though.

Super Mario Maker is the highest Mario game on my list, and for good reason. Well, no, not for good reason, SMO should've been, SMG2 and SM3DW are both amazing also, etc etc whatever. But Super Mario Maker in so many ways feels like the truly ultimate Mario game. It is all Marios at once, both the good and the bad, and it is a truly wonderful thing to behold.

I have always loved games that allow you to customize your own levels. This goes back to when I was 2 years old - one of our most beloved home videos is of me as a wee tot, playing Wrecking Crew with my mom, telling her where to place objects on the screen, shouting "LADDER LADDER LADDER LADDER LADDER" and giggling with excitement as, there they go, the ladders going up the screen. This obsession continued with Excitebike, onto things like Rollercoaster Tycoon and RPG Maker in the 90's, Jumper and Stepmania in the 00's and of course, stuff like WarioWare D.I.Y. later. I've always wanted to get into romhacking games like Super Mario World and messing around with stuff and making levels in those, and although Lunar Magic is a pretty comprehensive and fairly intuitive SMW hacking tool, I just couldn't really get into it for some reason - wasn't quite intuitive enough. I wanted more instant gratification out of it, I guess.

I was a little skeptical of Super Mario Maker at first, for the same sorts of reasons I skeptical of WarioWare DIY. How well would the creation engine really work? Really well, as it turned out. Well, does it create levels that are perfectly faithful to the original games? Sort of. While it's lacking in some options and I was at first bothered by how a lot of the visuals effects don't look true to the original games, I soon got over that - Super Mario Maker really creates its own "language" so to speak of the different old and new parts that it has cobbled together. The result is its own new thing that lets you make old things.

I really like creating Mario levels in Mario Maker - I personally find a real joy in trying to create traditional levels, designing them to be how they would have developed them in older Mario games, trying to balance the difficulty and finding new ways to use the tools I'm given. The interface is really intuitive, the touchscreen makes putting stuff down a breeze, and I really like the almost Mario Paint-like qualities to the game's UI and sound design. But playing the levels is endlessly fascinating, too. I love doing 100 Mario challenges and just seeing everything - the good levels, the bad levels. There is something fascinating about seeing all of these infinite Mario worlds, even the garbage ones, and exploring them all.

I think what I get a kick out of the most though is just seeing other people play these levels. It is amazing to see the kind of crazy puzzles and awesome challenges that people create with these things and give to other people to try. The blind Super Mario Maker races they did at GDQ were some of the most entertaining things, seeing people speedrun on the fly and try to figure out these levels that other people created, and it's a joy to see the creativity at work. And I love to look up Youtube videos to see the various different tricks that people have figured out with different objects in the level editor to create new kinds of situations through clever application of the tools they have. There's just such an awesome and interesting community surrounding this game.

I only have a couple of minor complaints. First, Super Mario Maker 2 removed the ? mushrooms, which really sucks, because that was one of my favorite elements of the first Super Mario Maker. Also, it kind of makes me wish that we could create our own world maps and create entire games out of it, as long as that would take a person to do, it seems like something that would be really fun. And I just never feel like I have enough energy to really sit down and create a level - it's always too damn hard to put in the brainpower towards creating one. And Super Mario Maker 1 is, I guess, probably dead at this point? I don't remember if services are still online for it, but it's probably going to poof out of existence soon enough, and who knows if Super Mario Maker 2 will last the whole decade. I hope so, and hopefully I can enjoy it to the fullest while it's around, playing through an endless parade of absolute garbage some 10 year old kid in Florida made.