GOTY 2015 – Number 4 – Super Mario Maker

(Song is “Peach Pie” by Amy “Bingo” Bingaman)


There’s been a recent move from Nintendo to push games into becoming platforms. A game has to be the foundation of months, or even years, of play. Mario has always been this kind of platform. A major reason Mario 64 is so fondly remembered is that its cryptic level design and playful controls made it a great thing for kids who didn’t have many other games. Now, Super Mario Maker has become this generation’s archetypal never-ending game.

Here’s the new game you put on when you “just want to play a bit of Mario”. Super Mario Maker takes four of the most popular games in the series, and gives players a big set of toys to play around with in each one. You can try to make authentic-feeling levels, or ridiculous challenges, or big mad experiments. This is Nintendo crafting beautiful, genius videogame tools over decades and just going, “Here. Have a go”.
Now everybody’s making Mario. Everybody can make Mario. Most people are pish at making Mario, aye, but you don’t have to worry about that. Just make your Mario. Have a wee smile. Everybody’s here! Not your boring real people. The ones you actually like. The ones who only exist in Nintendo games. They’re not real, but you can pretend they are. They’ll do a wee jump if you press a button. Look. They’re listening to you.

Some Mario Maker players have been very clever and made levels that rethink the uses of wee Mario things. Look what a Goomba can do. Look, if you put a door here and spikes here, then something happens. I don’t care. We’re allowed to make Mario levels and you want to find the exploits? Fuck off. Just stay happy within Nintendo’s firm grasp. They’re not happy outside.

If you haven’t guessed yet, Mario Maker’s a difficult game to talk about at any length, because you’re not really talking about a hard and fast game. You’re talking about a morphing, strange thing that just becomes whatever people turn it into. If you don’t know how to look for good levels, you can stick Mario Maker on for an hour and have a miserable time. Just don’t play it wrong. Look what’s here.

I don’t know about you (I don’t know if I can trust you) but everybody good has an unreasonable gushing adoration for either Super Mario Bros 3 or Super Mario World. They like other Mario games, sure, but those two just make wee bits of their bodies go warm. I’m the same. This is more of them, and it’s all official. It’s the boys who made your precious objects of affection making more of them, and asking you to join in. You can make airship levels or auto-scrolling levels or levels where Yoshi has to shoot fireballs back or fucking Kuribo’s Shoe levels. We’re allowed to, now. The big boys said it was okay.

Maybe the most definitively positive thing about Mario Maker is how Nintendo have made the process of Mario making so quick and easy to understand and curious. It’s all very obvious and logical. You just draw the levels in. Mario things behave like Mario things. You don’t have to worry about anything beyond that. It all seems very simple, but if you look at the next best alternative, you see how elegant all this is compared to LittleBigPlanet’s messy logic strings and floppy objects. A platformer doesn’t need to be bland to work in a level-creation tool. It can be the best platformer ever. It can be Super Mario Bros 3. And here it is.

Refreshingly, Nintendo have applied the same game design fun to the level creation tool. The thing sings as you place baddies on your course. There’s fun wee animations when you shake things about. There’s even a wee hidden game in there. There’s a lot of stuff pulled straight out of Mario Paint, and that’s a really odd choice, but it makes the game dafter and more fun, and that’s what we like about Nintendo. It’s bizarre that someone can make a utility this much fun, but of course, when Nintendo do it, it is.