Surprised we don't have a thread for this yet...

so, anyone getting this? I don't have a Wii U and have yet to be tempted to purchase one, so I will not be getting this. Also, as clever an idea as this is, I would rather play Mario games than create more Mario games. Although again, this is very clever. If Nintendo plays their cards right, they could have gamers create games for them! Basically for free... well, you know, with clever marketing such as: "Best 10 level designers get $1000 reward" etc.

Well, there's the problem right there: Nintendo and clever marketing just don't go together,

I was initially not interested in this game at all, but now that I've seen a bunch of YouTube videos on it I am SUPER hyped for it. There's already some really cool levels out there and it's great to see what creative people can do with the tools.
So yeah, basically YouTube sold me on the game, where Nintendo couldn't be arsed.

I still think it'll sell very well though.

If I had a WiiU I would scoop this up without a second thought.

However, I'm not gaming much at the moment so this wouldn't be enough to get me to buy the console.

Looks like a blast despite that.

I'm picking this up, but after seeing the Kaizo Mario games, these "hard levels" seem a bit tame. I'm waiting to see something to top the Kaizos.

I have it ordered. Being honest, I was mostly swayed by pretty packaging. Not even sure I'll be into the game. I find these games attract a lot of really awful levels. There were some good ones in Sound Shapes (had one of my own featured in one of their first curated packs) but I remember finding Little Big Planet frustrating due to the low quality of the levels.

It's not gonna be Kaizo levels of difficulty, because Nintendo was smart enough to require that creators actually beat their own levels before being able to share them, and that's a good things as far as I'm concerned.

I'm not looking for ball-bustingly hard levels, I'm looking for clever and creative ones, and I've already seen plenty.

So much this.  I've always thought the whole Kaizo Mario thing is dumb, and I've been afraid that's what Mario Maker would turn into.  I'm still a little on the fence about the whole thing - no matter how simplistic or reused or lazy the graphics have seemed in recent 2D Mario games, the level design is generally still really well thought out.  It takes far more skill to make a good platforming level than just filling it with as much difficult stuff as possible.  Hoping we get some GOOD stuff made by people in this.

I picked this up yesterday and I want to mess around with people's goofy levels so bad, but there's this little game called Metal Gear that I'm working through, and it's just too amazing to put down.

Anyone else pick this up yet?

I've been putting some time into it and I'm really enjoying it. Building levels is super easy (building GOOD levels though, not so much ) and it's a lot of fun to see what other people have come up with. There's some really clever and inventive stuff out there.

Let's get some level codes in here!

My copy just arrived yesterday so it will be a while before I build anything worthwhile. I love how simple the building is - really easy. Although another side of me wonders if that means it will feel limited quickly. Hopefully not. Already I have seen some nice levels.

There is one up that plays itself and, while all you do is watch, I found it really clever.

It starts out SUPER limited, and you are drip-fed new items over the course of 9 days, which is excruciating, and the only real complaint I have about the game.
Fortunately, you can easily look up some guides online to circumvent this dumb decision, so you can easily get your hands on all tile sets and stuff within a couple of minutes.

And there's a whole shit-ton of "don't touch the controller" levels out there.
I get that they're clever and difficult to make, but they're NO fun to play at all and there's just way too many of them. They're easy to complete though

There was a day one patch (1.01) that removed the 9 day thing.  It still drip feeds, but allegedly it's now like 15 minutes of playtime in between each "day?"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/com … io-levels/

"“Super Mario Maker” is a bad comedy...the game quickly collapses into a scratch sheet of horrible ideas and levels you’ll regret having played. It’s a tool for the mass production of cultural refuse, single-use distractions that fail to replicate the spirit of the original."

It actually depends on just placing a lot of junk in the level editor. So you don't have to wait 15 minutes, you can just fill up an entire area with blocks, and that will actually speed up the process.

There's a small but vocal group of people that seem to expect Nintendo-levels of brilliance from user-made levels, which is completely ridiculous. Of course this isn't going to replicate the spirit of the originals, it's made by regular people, not people who've spent years designing video games at one of the biggest game companies in the world.

I see your point of course. I'm curious as to how long SMM remains fun? Many games are fun to a certain extent, and at some point you want to finish the game because you've invested time into it and you just want to see a conclusion. A few rare games are fun until the end! SMM isn't exactly a game, so I'm really curious if people play it for 15 hours and that's it? Or 150 hours? Or more? I know everyone is different, but how much fun are you having playing and designing levels?

There's also a small but vocal group of games culture writers that feel Nintendo and their establishment are something standing in the way of indie gaming and want to see them fail at every opportunity (I have my issues with Nintendo, but that isn't one of them). Thomsen appears to be among this group, a quick Google of his past slop reveals (his link to Gamasutra is also a dead giveaway). That "review" reads too much like a hit piece to give it any credibility.

I'm conflicted right now...This is one piece of software I wish I had 15-20 years ago. (I would hesitate to call it a game, as it is more of a creation tool, but it's one with a couple of the finest game engines ever built!) I remember being in middle/high school and just sketching out imaginary levels. I'm too busy right now to really give this thing that much attention, but it looks like such an amazing time waster. I really hope it meets its potential.

That said, I think it would have been better off as a sleeper Summer title than something being lined up for the holiday season.

100% with you on this.  Had some of the awesome creation games that exist these days been a thing when I was a kid, I would've spent SO SO MUCH time with them.  As a total Lego kid, things like Minecraft and the Xbox 360 Banjo Kazooie... thing... would've consumed me back then, but now I don't have the time to devote to that sort of thing. 

Maybe when I retire...

Yeah, your mileage is going to vary on this obviously.
The game doesn't have an end at all, and trying to play all stages is not realistic (Nintendo just announced they passed 1 million (!!!) uploaded levels, and that's within 1 week of release!).

If you want to see a goal for yourself, there are (amiibo) costumes to unlock, a whopping 100 of them, and if you don't own any amiibo to scan in, unlocking all of them is going to take a loooooooot of time.
I honestly don't know how much time I'm going to spend on this. I've put in around 10 hours so far, and I still feel like doing/playing more, but it's not going to last for dozens of hours, I think.

Longevity could be GREATLY increased if they added actual world map building, with secret exits and stuff though.

Seconded! As iconic as some of the Mario 3 levels are in gaming lore, they're only matched by their overworld maps. And as a player, I'd be more inclined to download a "map package".

My understanding is that the biggest issue with Super Mario Marker isn't that there are tons of crap levels, it's just that the good ones are hard to find. If Nintendo works on discoverability on the server side or through patches and makes it easier to curate and find good levels, it would really help the experience. In the meantime, I like that many game sites are reporting on the best levels they find so we can try them out and upvote them so they stick around.

http://kotaku.com/20-excellent-mario-ma … 1731659732

Can't people rate levels?

Yes, you give them a star if you like them. So one would think the ones with most stars are good levels but then how do people find them to give them stars in the first place?

My girls have pretty much taken over this. I have made a few levels I quite like (will post a code or two sometime) but it has really become their game.

Just to clarify, do they actually have a way to sort/filter by rating?

A star isn't really rating. It's like a thumbs up. A rating is if you can give it so many out of say 5 stars. I don't know what Nintendo was thinking (or lack thereof) by not crafting a rating system

It's still equivalent to rating it as good (or passively as "not good").  They probably chose this rating system to avoid peoples' feelings getting hurt from 1/5 star ratings.

http://www.technobuffalo.com/2015/09/22 … 000-tries/

I kinda figured the "highlight" would be the extremely difficult levels...
I do like a good challenge, and I enjoyed the Lost Levels, but I'm sure such levels would drive me nuts and I would not enjoy them.

I think the level is brilliantly designed... but way too crazy for me. Also, how do people find the time for this stuff

http://www.engadget.com/2015/10/02/supe … deo-games/

"I'd dreamed about making Nintendo games since I was 6 years old...It was then that a shocking and heartbreaking realization washed over me: I hate making video games."

Snicker...

"If I'm not having fun making Mario levels, is that proof that I'm not really the creative-type I see myself as? I couldn't accept that. "I'm a dang writer," I told myself."

Well, there's the problem. Ego. Why do writers and other so-called "artists" think they're more creative than anyone else? I've never understood that. Science, is almost all about creativity (believe it or not). Anyway, the author does make a valid point that making good or even great levels is hard! It is indeed an art...

I went through the same sobering experience with RPG Maker. Both the one on PS1 and PS2.

In the case of Mario though, the levels are traditionally so short yet full of ideas, it's hard not to be able to brainstorm ways of expanding them.

Having put a couple dozen hours into the game, and having tried numerous levels with loads of stars (i.e. "likes") I have come to the conclusion that the biggest problem is that:

A: It's a popularity contest more than anything. Popular personalities will get dozens, hundreds, if not THOUSANDS of stars, because they're popular personalities and have a huge following, not because they make good stages.

B: People love the SHIT out of auto-play levels, which I most decidedly do not. Seriously, the top-ranked stages are almost all either auto-play stages, or stages that use the note blocks to play some famous ditty.
Yes, I get that these are tough stages to make and it requires hours and hours of work, but they're not FUN in the slightest. The best levels I've played are low-ranked things with hardly any stars by people no one has ever heard of.

I've increasingly gotten the impression that the people playing Mario Maker don't actually like traditional Mario games.

I would be interested in demographics. How many levels were designed by original Nintendo kids (grew up with the NES & SNES)? My guess is that most of the auto play levels are by younger kids, because I honestly feel that many kids these days think their life should be autoplay...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sxY8pELhqM

That looks absolutely insane.  I'm not good enough at platformers to beat that kind of level.