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We're holding off on publishing our Super Mario Maker review until we've had a chance to test the game on live servers, so it should be with you shortly after launch on the 11th. I've been playing the game for a few weeks, however, and it's pretty special. As well as creating a celebration of three decades of euphoric platforming, Nintendo's also crafted what feels like the most accessible 2D level design tool yet made. And it's a bit spooky, really. After years of making Mario 1-1 in Lego, in LittleBigPlanet and in every other available medium, Nintendo's finally bringing it all home. Here's what I think of it so far.
Super Mario Maker is absolutely brilliant at engaging people who have never thought about level design before. The GamePad and its stylus come together with UI that apes traditional art packages to make laying down courses as simple as sketching them on graph paper, and it's easy to iterate, switching back and forth between playing and creating at the touch of a button while dragging, dropping, cloning and deleting on fly. Nintendo's unfair advantage, though, isn't just decades of experience in building near-invisible tutorials and intuitive interfaces. It's that, for most players, Super Mario Maker sends you into a world that you already understand. I remember being thrilled but bamboozled by LittleBigPlanet, with its wealth of different nuts and bolts and its brimming toolkit. Here, though, there's little to get between you and your idea, since you're probably already intimately aware of the behaviours of the Koopas, Goombas and Bullet Bills you'll be employing. The tutorial for Super Mario Maker has been running for three decades.
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