Real Talk By: Ms. Throwback

In case you missed E3 2014, A new Wii U title named ‘Mario Maker’ debuted. This is one of the most exciting titles set to release early 2015.  Dubbed the “Minecraft Killer” it features the original Mario Bros. game with fully customizable features.  Pipes, blocks, coins, and enemies can be places and altered on-screen to create unique and challenging courses that can then be shared online. Most of the game consists of using the Wii U main controller’s touch screen to create your masterpiece.

Already it seems like there are tons of possibilities, but Nintendo really needs to keep focus on what is going to make this game good and that’s, items!  If you’re going to give us choices, make sure you give us all of them.  From the available videos of the game online it seems like they already have, green and red shells, flying and grounded goombas, different graphical versions of the title, endless types of blocks. I can see some genius players out there really being able to create some spectacular playthroughs, and in the end that’s what it’s really all about.  A challenging level and a creative idea.

The game is block based, which means that each items moves along the screen in a series of grids.  I can see them possibly having a problem with the grid pattern and not being able to center certain things on the screen how you’d like to, since you have to be within the defined limits of the grid.  Hopefully this is something they will work out before the release of the title.

As of right now the player can also only switch between art-styles such as that from the original Nintendo Mario Bros. and Mario Bros. Wii, however, this doesn’t actually change anything as far as level setup or item selection. A lot of the enemies from Mario Bros. Wii seemed to be missing from our first introduction to the game and we are hoping for them to show up in the final version.

Personally I also recognize a good amount of Mario Paint references in the game.  When you delete something there is a small dog in the lower right corner which is taken directly from the classic title.  When you beat a level the clapping hands at the end are directly from the Fly Swatter game in MP. It would be an incredible addition to add these throwback mini-games into M-Maker as well.

At this point I do believe the hype, “Minecraft Killer” seems like the perfect description of a Mario level editor with this type of simple control.  Sometimes a game doesn’t need anything fancy to hit the top of the charts and I can see Mario Maker being tons of mindless fun.  Creating any game is an art-form and it’s something the players always dream of doing themselves, so in the end it seems fitting to be able to edit a title that’s so loved and adored.

#MarioMaker @PlayLegit