Forums > Submission Feedback > honestgamer's Super Mario Maker review

This is interesting. Do you have experience playing or working with rom hacks or unofficial editors? If so, how does this compare? The community and simplicity of this version seem like the selling points.

I've never messed around with any Mario game ROM hacks. I have used Zelda Classic (which as far as I know you can still download) to build out most of my own Zelda game. It was intense, in some ways similar to this, but in a lot of ways more complex. That's how I know Nintendo could tackle Zelda next and it would be amazing, though I wouldn't say I expect that. I just would love to see it happen. Oh, and I've also played around in game development tools, but those are of course not really anything like Super Mario Maker. And I've messed around with LittleBigPlanet too, but it's not nearly as intuitive, either. Nintendo definitely got the level design aspect right and that's why I like the game so much even when some of its other elements make my head hurt.

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." - John F. Kennedy on reality

"What if everything you see is more than what you see--the person next to you is a warrior and the space that appears empty is a secret door to another world? What if something appears that shouldn't? You either dismiss it, or you accept that there is much more to the world than you think. Perhaps it really is a doorway, and if you choose to go inside, you'll find many unexpected things." - Shigeru Miyamoto on secret doors to another world2

You'll absolutely find trolling attempts in 100-Man Mario, Ben.

One example that comes to mind was a stage with a long open space that seems unremarkable, after you descend along some stairs made out of blocks (like the ones you see near the end of 1-1 in the original Super Mario Bros. game).

So you start forward from there, and you jump, but you hit an invisible block. So you keep going, and you find out that every single place where you might jump has an invisible block over it, meaning you have to drop into a pit and lose a life before trying again. So you do that. And this time, you know you need to make a long jump to clear that lower ground in order to avoid getting trapped. So you make a leap, and there's another invisible block positioned just right so that you're knocked down to the low ground and have to lose ANOTHER life. And there are other such blocks.

Technically, the level can be completed... and in fact, I did clear it. But you have to pay the toll in trial-and-error, until you figure out where every block is.

And of course, there are all sorts of variations on this sort of thing. I've encountered a few now, after only playing through around 120 or so player-created stages. Some players are just mistaking ridiculous trial-and-error for "fun," but some are definitely trolling.

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." - John F. Kennedy on reality

"What if everything you see is more than what you see--the person next to you is a warrior and the space that appears empty is a secret door to another world? What if something appears that shouldn't? You either dismiss it, or you accept that there is much more to the world than you think. Perhaps it really is a doorway, and if you choose to go inside, you'll find many unexpected things." - Shigeru Miyamoto on secret doors to another world2

There was a database issue, Ben, so the site was down and had to be restored from a couple of days earlier. That means I lost probably 3 or 4 posts to the forums, but I don't think any reviews or blog posts (whew).

As for creative levels, there are certainly plenty of those. I played through one stage that basically took me through a "heist," with really clever use of the assets so that it barely even felt like a Mario title. Another stage was an auto-scroller, and you had to run and wall bounce through an obstacle while staying ahead of the screen's scrolling. And so on, and so forth.

Because there's such a variety, a few bad eggs can't spoil the experience. There really is limitless potential here, at least for as long as the servers remain online (which I expect will be a good long while).

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." - John F. Kennedy on reality

"What if everything you see is more than what you see--the person next to you is a warrior and the space that appears empty is a secret door to another world? What if something appears that shouldn't? You either dismiss it, or you accept that there is much more to the world than you think. Perhaps it really is a doorway, and if you choose to go inside, you'll find many unexpected things." - Shigeru Miyamoto on secret doors to another world2