Super Mario Maker is a 2015 game and creation tool made by Nintendo. It is part of the Super Mario series and lets players design, play, and share levels inspired by earlier Super Mario games, such as Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, and New Super Mario Bros. U. The game was released for the Wii U in September 2015 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Super Mario Bros.
When it was first released, critics praised the game for its easy-to-use tools and clear design. By May 2016, players worldwide had created over seven million levels, which were played more than 600 million times. A version for the Nintendo 3DS called Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS was released in December 2016. This version did not allow players to upload levels online and received mixed reviews. A follow-up game, Super Mario Maker 2, was released for the Nintendo Switch in June 2019.
Sales of Super Mario Maker on the Wii U’s Nintendo eShop ended on January 12, 2021. Support for uploading levels and accessing the bookmark portal was stopped on March 31, 2021. Online services for the Wii U and 3DS versions, such as playing previously uploaded levels, were shut down on April 8, 2024.
Gameplay
Super Mario Maker lets players design levels inspired by the Super Mario series and share them online for others to play. These levels are based on the gameplay and visual style of Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, and New Super Mario Bros. U, which all use the same movement rules as New Super Mario Bros. U. The way players interact with the game and how enemies act change depending on the chosen game style. Some features are only available in specific styles, while others can be combined, such as adding Boos to levels based on Super Mario Bros.
In addition to classic elements like Goombas, warp pipes, and power-ups, players can customize how these features work. For example, enemies can be stacked, hazards can appear from question blocks or warp pipes, shells can be used as helmets, and cannons can launch chosen items. These changes are made using tools that work together. Players can make enemies larger with a Super Mushroom, give enemies wings to fly, or mix different traits. The Soundfrog adds sound and visual effects, but sounds recorded with a microphone are not allowed in shared levels. New tools are unlocked over nine days of creating courses. The Mystery Mushroom, which is only found in the Super Mario Bros. style, acts like a Super Mushroom and changes Mario’s appearance into one of 153 costumes. These costumes can be earned by completing the 100 Mario Challenge, finishing special Event Courses, or scanning an Amiibo figurine. The 8-bit Mario figurine causes a Big Mushroom to appear, making Mario giant and turning enemies into Mario-like characters with hats and mustaches.
After completing a created level, players can share it in the online Course World. There, others can explore and play user-made levels, or try the 100 Mario Challenge, which uses randomly selected levels with 100 lives. Players can also try the 10 Mario Challenge, which includes pre-made levels and gives only 10 lives. Initially, players could only share a limited number of courses, but they could earn medals by receiving stars from other players, which allowed them to upload more courses.
Development
Before creating Super Mario Maker, Nintendo studied the idea of a video game editor in the 1990s. In 1994, the company applied for a patent that described console hardware and software allowing players to pause a game, change parts of it, continue playing, and save or share their changes. The patent included an example game named "Mario Factory." Later, reviewers noticed that this early idea was similar to Super Mario Maker.
Super Mario Maker was first created as a tool for Nintendo’s development team to design Mario levels. The team soon saw the tool’s potential as a game on its own and shared the idea with Takashi Tezuka, a senior game designer. At the same time, Tezuka had hoped to create a Wii U game that would follow up on Mario Paint and use the Wii U GamePad. After seeing the Super Mario Maker tool, he realized that a course-making tool would be more popular than an art program. He told Polygon that creating courses is "not as hard or difficult to reach as drawing is," and that he was inspired to bring the fun of Mario Paint into this editor. The game was directed by Yosuke Oshino, who had previously worked as a programmer on Pikmin, Pikmin 2, and New Super Mario Bros. Wii. The game’s music was composed and arranged by Koji Kondo, Naoto Kubo, and Asuka Hayazaki.
The game was first announced at E3 2014 with the name "Mario Maker." Although officially revealed on June 10, 2014, during Nintendo’s E3 Digital Event, rumors about the title began earlier that month after a photo of Nintendo’s incomplete trade show booth was shared online. The game was later renamed "Super Mario Maker" at E3 2015 during the Nintendo World Championships.
Marketing and release
Before its release, Nintendo let customers try Mario Maker at Best Buy stores in North America on June 17 and 20, 2015. The game was shown with its new name, Super Mario Maker, on June 14, 2015, during the final round of the Nintendo World Championships event before E3 2015. Four courses created by Nintendo Treehouse for the Championships are playable in the final game.
Nintendo worked with Facebook to host a special "hackathon" event. One hundred fifty Facebook employees built courses using Super Mario Maker, and the winning team’s course was added to the game when it launched. Notable video game designers, such as Michel Ancel, Koji Igarashi, Tim Rogers, and Derek Yu, also created courses for the game. Ancel’s course is included in the base game as an Event Course.
Super Mario Maker was released worldwide in September 2015 with a Wii U bundle. Each copy of the game includes a 96-page booklet with creative ideas, which is also available as a PDF download. Nintendo also released an 8-bit Mario Amiibo figurine in two color variations. The figurine is sold separately and included in some Super Mario Maker game bundles. A downloadable, Super Mario Maker-themed stage for Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U was released on September 30, 2015, and is included in the sequel, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
The game was originally designed to require players to wait daily to unlock new elements, but a patch released on launch day added new elements based on players’ content creation. Destructoid noted that some Mario series elements were missing from the game initially, but new features were added later. The first major update, released on November 4, 2015, included mid-course checkpoints, conditional power-ups, and Event Courses. Completing certain Event Courses unlocks additional Mystery Mushroom costumes, such as Super Mario-kun and GameCenter CX presenter Shinya Arino. The second major update, released on December 22, 2015, added a speedrun leaderboard and launched the Super Mario Maker Bookmark website, which lets players browse and save uploaded courses for easier sharing. The third update added more Mystery Mushroom costumes unlocked by completing Normal- and Expert-level 100 Mario Challenges and introduced Super Expert mode.
A sequel, Super Mario Maker 2, was announced in a Nintendo Direct on February 13, 2019. It was released for the Nintendo Switch on June 28, 2019, with a new level theme based on the Wii U game Super Mario 3D World, new features like slopes and modifiable auto scroll direction, and new enemies, themes, and items.
On November 25, 2020, Nintendo announced that support for uploading new courses would end on March 31, 2021. As a result, the game was removed from the Wii U eShop on January 12, 2021. Online services for the Wii U and 3DS versions, such as playing levels uploaded before the portal closed, were shut down on April 8, 2024.
Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS was developed by Nintendo Software Technology, a Redmond-based subsidiary. Some features were adapted or removed for the 3DS version. It was released in Japan on December 1, 2016, in North America and Europe on December 2, and in Australia on December 3. The game includes 100 new built-in courses designed by Nintendo. Players can share courses directly with friends or through StreetPass.
Reception
The Wii U version of Super Mario Maker received "generally favorable" reviews, while the 3DS version received "mixed or average" reviews, according to Metacritic, a website that collects video game reviews. IGN’s Jose Otero praised the game’s social features, such as online play and the 10 Mario Challenge. He said players could see a deep respect for Mario’s history in the online modes. He also praised the course editor and its user interface, writing that "[n]o matter which style you choose, creating levels is an intimidating task, but the well-designed interface makes learning easy and intuitive" and that it "gives us a fun, flexible toolbox to build and play Mario courses like never before."
GameSpot’s Justin Haywald praised the course editor, noting that the ability to mix and match gameplay elements allowed for exciting and unexpected additions to familiar scenarios. He was disappointed by some limitations, such as the lack of checkpoints from Super Mario World and the size limits of stages. He concluded that "the game won't necessarily turn you into the next Shigeru Miyamoto, but you can almost feel a little bit of that magic rubbing off every time you upload a new creation."
Polygon’s Griffin McElroy praised the game, saying he had "a tremendous amount of fun playing, but the way it developed that newfound appreciation for something I've known my whole life was the game's biggest accomplishment."
Reviewers praised the growing online collection of user-created content. Mario series co-creator Takashi Tezuka also praised the game. He noted that Nintendo kept its own game content relatively easy to play for a wide audience. He said users sometimes created levels that were more difficult than Nintendo’s own content.
The game helped revive the Kaizo level community, which designs extremely hard levels to test players’ skills. Many players criticized Nintendo for removing online courses without warning or explanation. Patrick Klepek of Kotaku wrote that Nintendo should have made sure players knew the company’s strict rules about level creation before they started making content.
In May 2016, Nintendo announced that more than 7.2 million courses had been created worldwide, played over 600 million times. When Nintendo shut down its 3DS and Wii U online servers, an online group called "Team 0%" tried to complete all remaining unfinished levels before the shutdown in April 2024. They succeeded on March 15, 2024. At the time of the shutdown announcement, 25,000 levels were unfinished, with 1,000 completed in the first seven days. By March 2024, only 178 levels remained. The final level cleared was "The Last Dance." A level called "Trimming The Herbs" was once thought to be the last, but it was later found to have been created using TAS tools. It was eventually cleared legitimately on April 5, 2024, three days before the shutdown.
Super Mario Maker debuted in Japan with more than 138,000 physical copies sold. It sold 245,000 copies in its first three weeks, reaching 245,000 by the end of September 2015. It was the second best-selling game in the UK in its first week, debuting at No. 2 on the UK software retail chart. It was the fourth fastest-selling game for the Wii U since the console’s release in 2012. In its first three weeks in North America, 445,000 copies were sold, with over 500,000 sold by the end of September 2015. Sales in the United States reached 1 million in mid-January 2016, making it the sixth Wii U game to reach that milestone. By March 2021, 4.02 million copies had been sold worldwide. The Nintendo 3DS version sold 162,180 copies in its first week in Japan. As of December 23, 2016, the 3DS version had sold 448,160 copies in Japan. As of December 31, 2016, 2 million copies of the 3DS version had been sold globally. By the end of March 2017, total 3DS sales reached 2.34 million.