Super Mario Maker is a fantastic product, and a sure-fire example of a gift that keeps on giving. You can make levels, upload levels, and play random levels made by random people all over the world. As long as it sells its cool few million (the Mario/Nintendo Console attach rate is always extremely strong), there will be an endless supply of new content rolling around in the internet long after you’ve exhausted your creativity. You will find your fun levels, your challenging levels, your confusing levels, and levels that will make you scream bloody mary. Essentially, it’s your typical Super Mario Bros. game on an endless supply of Bane steroids.
Four art styles and gameplay styles to choose from (Each game will indeed play differently depending on which version you have chosen), you can construct any crazy level your heart desires to make. You can have Bowser riding on a wiggler in the very beginning of a level. You can have 7 koopas piled high while lakitus toss flying piranha plants at you. You can have a level in which you have to avoid getting bigger in order to advance to the end. Whatever your mind makes up, there’s a good chance it’s feasible on the WiiU.
And this is awesome for the gamers and the Nintendo fans---this is potentially tough news for the actual company. Nintendo may have created a monster, they may have created a scenario in which the students are about to excel and trample over the teacher. Halfway through the production, Nintendo must have noticed that handing the keys of the franchise to a rabid, dedicated, and quite clever fanbase may yield some consequences down the road. What happens when the aspiring chef starts making better recipes than the head chef? You wouldn’t see Major League Baseball allowing the fans to make major decisions, right? (It would explain all the unanswered letters)
I am deathly serious when I mention that some of the levels I have experienced online contain some of the best level design since Super Mario Galaxy 2 back in the Wii days. I am also serious when mentioning that this is the most excited the gaming community is towards a game since Super Mario Galaxy provided Mario with a fresh new look and feel back in 2007.
What is making the gaming world giddy about Super Mario Maker is that with the ability to randomly play other people’s levels there is no consistency, no rhyme or reason, no formula that has been done to death by Nintendo in recent years with their decent-yet-limited New Super Mario Bros. series. We are seeing creativity that we had been desperately craving in the past decade from Mario games---being truly satisfied in the Super Mario Galaxy franchise but not much noise since. Even the highly rated Super Mario 3D World lacked the hype pop that we used to experience in other platforming games.
Nintendo is about to lose control of the Mario franchise, and it has already noticed the dramatic shift as they have been banning YouTube videos left and right concerning speedruns and the notoriously cruel and clever modded levels in recent days (stupid decision I must add). It has even reached a point in which Miyamoto recently talked about having to move the Mario franchise in another direction. He knows just as well as anybody that the nostalgia and the appeal of Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World is far bigger and more extensive than all the recent Mario platformers. The 2-D Mario games for the WiiU have combined for 10 million copies---which is only half of what Super Mario World sold, and still can’t match the numbers of Super Mario Bros. 3 (17 million)---and both games came out during a time in which the gaming industry was much much smaller.
It’s strange for this article to transform from praise towards a revolutionary and ballsy (especially by Nintendo standards) game to become a cautionary piece about the potential upcoming gloom in a franchise that consistently sells millions, I understand your current confusion. However Super Mario Bros. doesn’t move consoles like it used to. Mario Bros., Mario Bros. 3, Mario World, and ultimately Super Mario 64 looked and played well enough that it convinced you to purchase the console. These were hardware movers. And then there’s the big transitions: Mario Bros. Lost Levels to Mario Bros. 3, Mario Bros. 3 to Mario World, and then Mario World to Yoshi’s Island. Nowadays your rookies into the gaming industry know of Mario, might play Mario, but aren’t really purchasing Mario. A change is indeed needed, and Super Mario Maker’s resounding initial success is evidence of that.
Success is sometimes dangerous. Seeing the cash flow sometimes shields the fact that a change is needed. Major League Baseball needed a few changes, and it took years before finally applying some improvements, even though it was already a multi-billion dollar industry that’s always a few yards away from becoming the most lucrative sports league in the planet. The Super Mario franchise has seen over 200 million copies sold, but it does need a refresher, or better yet, a break. Look at what’s happened to Zelda---running on nostalgia fumes.
Perhaps it’s time for Super Mario to take a slight break, with Super Mario Maker providing the platforming thrills until the next installment rolls in. With its easy accessibility, DLC potential, and (hopefully, DON’T MESS THIS UP) easy transition to the next franchise via remake or spiritual sequel, Super Mario Maker can bring in new gamers, new creators, and tons of ideas for years to come. As long as Nintendo doesn’t pull the plug on this potentially budding spin-off, Super Mario Bros. can live off of Mario Maker while it seeks its next renaissance moment.
Whether it’s a change in lineup, gameplay additions, new power-ups, new storylines, new visuals, new spin-offs (Super Mario RPG 2 would be greatly appreciated by the way) or just absolutely revving up the quantity on the next Mario game (aim for the gold Nintendo, gun for 100 levels), we have reached a point in which the only excitement we truly felt about an upcoming Mario game was one that WE were allowed to design. That’s not exactly a good sign of confidence to the company that usually dishes out the experiences. Hopefully Super Mario Maker will serve as a wake-up call as well to Nintendo about the fanbase, about our commitment to the craft, and about the fact that they might need to step its game up. Until then, we have our official Mario level editor, and it’s definitely a dream come true---and probably Nintendo’s worst nightmare.
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