Super Mario Maker is one of my favorite games on the Wii U. I’ve had a ball spending hundreds
of hours creating, designing, and tweaking different level designs, all in an effort
to create the best possible version to upload online for the rest of the world to try.
In some ways, Super Mario Maker for the Wii U is the ultimate 2D Mario game, bringing
creators and players together to enable, what is essentially, a never-ending Mario adventure.
It’s truly a remarkable experience.
And now Nintendo’s porting the game to their handheld platform in the form of Super Mario
Maker 3DS, bringing with it a handful of new features, on top of almost everything from
the original game.
Almost.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Now arguably one of the most important features in a game about making levels is the level
creator itself--and thankfully, it’s made the transition to the 3DS mostly unscathed.
It’s still incredibly robust and simple to use as ever, allowing you to mix and match
all kinds of Mario objects with ease.
Want to create a tower of Bowsers?
There’s nothing stopping you.
Or how about a roaming Bullet Bill Launcher that shoots out Chain Chomps instead?
The sky’s the limit!
But in the move to the 3DS, I did find the workspace a bit cramped this time around as
a result of the 3DS’s tiny touchscreen display, resulting in fewer tiles visible on-screen
without scrolling--and that’s even after hiding the newly toggleable side-menus.
But that aside, the editor is otherwise entirely usable.
Every object and feature you know and love is back and accounted for--with one notable
exception.
Or maybe that’s 150 exceptions, as the Mystery Mushroom, and its myriad costumes, are nowhere
to be found.
Which, as a creator, is a pretty big bummer since they really helped tie some of my wackier,
non-Mario levels together--I mean, what good’s a Wind Waker-themed level without Link?!
And the Mystery Mushroom’s absence affects more than just creators, but players too,
as any level that used them in the Wii U simply can’t be played here.
But to be fair, that still leaves a ton of levels left--most of them in fact--but that
selection will be slightly less diverse than on the Wii U.
Anyways, once you’ve finished making your masterpiece, you can save it to the Course
Bot--along with up to 119 other stages--and then share it for the the world to play...via
StreetPass.
And only StreetPass.
That’s right, besides directly transferring it to a friend’s 3DS locally, StreetPass
is the only way to have anyone else play your 3DS created levels.
Or in other words, it’s impossible to upload levels online.
Let me repeat that: you can’t post your custom levels online for others to play.
It’s an utterly baffling decision, as it completely misses the entire point of Super
Mario Maker, which even the box itself states is to Play, Create, and Share.
After all, what’s the point of creating levels if no one can play them...and no, StreetPass
is not a suitable replacement.
Okay, so the Making and Sharing portions of Super Mario Maker 3DS are a bust, but what
about Playing.
And thankfully, the game holds up a little better here, allowing access to almost any
course shared from the Wii U version of the game--minus the ones containing Mystery Mushrooms.
But there’s a catch here too, and that’s the fact that your ability to find courses
is significantly more limited than the Wii U version.
Option 1 is to play the 100 Mario Challenge, in which you’ll tackle a series of random
levels of varying quality, one after another.
Option 2 is Recommend Levels, which serves up a selection of 30 presumably highly-rated
levels--that you can freely choose among.
And if nothing catches your eye, you can throw out the group and try again.
And that’s it--those are literally your only two options to find levels,
So if you saw a video of a killer course on YouTube or if a friend recommended one to
you--good luck finding it here, as you can’t search for specific levels at all, whether
by Course ID, creator, or any other means.
The game doesn’t even support the fantastic Bookmark site feature!
The only levels you can play are the ones the game randomly selects.
But for as limited as it is, the Recommended Levels option actually did do a surprisingly
good job of finding half-decent levels for me to play, such as one that played with a
Day and Night theme, or another where I had to lead a Monty Mole through the course.
There’s certainly no shortage of good content to find--it just might not be the exact content
you want to find.
Another area where the 3DS port comes up short is the social aspect--as in, the complete
lack of it.
You can’t Like a course, nor leave a comment--heck, you can’t even see the feedback left from
other players on the Wii U version--not even something as simple as the overall Star rating.
It’s pretty shocking how there is literally no way to give or see feedback
And here’s another problem with Course World: it requires the internet--which means that
the bulk of the game’s content is inaccessible if you’re not near a wifi point--which is
a bit antithetical to the idea of this being a portable game.
I’m at a complete loss as to why the game doesn’t automatically cache some stages
for you to play even when you’re offline, but dem’s the breaks.
But it’s not all bad news, as the new Super Mario Challenge mode grants access to 100
levels created by Nintendo themselves--and yes, you can even play them offline.
And most of them are actually pretty good--even if they offer little that I haven’t seen
before from other creators.
But there is something to be said about having a lot of generally high-quality levels available
at your fingertips.
Plus each level comes with a couple of secondary challenges that you can earn medals for completing--although
the 2nd objective will only be revealed upon replay, which is a bit annoying.
All in all, Super Mario Maker 3DS is, well...perplexing.
On the one hand, it's remarkably faithful to the Wii version in terms of visual style,
presentation, and even the level editor in general.
Heck, it’s even better in a few ways, with a vastly improved and more personable tutorial
as well as the new Super Mario Challenge mode which can be fun
And yet, those improvements hardly matter as the game completely misses the main point
by not letting you do anything with the levels you’ve created, beyond sharing them locally
with friends, or via StreetPass.
The inability to upload courses online is a deal-breaker to me, and makes Super Mario
Maker a bit of a misnomer, when it’s really more of a Super Mario Player..
And even in that respect, it comes up short compared to the Wii U one with its lacking
search options and absolute zero social interaction.
As it turns out, these missing features were the lifeblood of the Wii U game that tied
everything together.
Whereas Super Mario Maker 3DS and like a car without the engine.
A body without a heart.
A person without a soul.
What’s here isn’t terrible--but it also misses the point by undermining its own content.
It’s just...meh to me.
Perhaps I’d look upon it more favorably in a vacuum, but in a world where the vastly
superior Wii U version exists, I simply can’t recommend it.
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reviews and other things gaming.